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I am traveling a lot to places where pickpocketing is a regular occurrence (many parts of Africa, most of the time, but also South America and some parts of eas
by Argorak 14y ago
I am traveling a lot to places where pickpocketing is a regular occurrence (many parts of Africa, most of the time, but also South America and some parts of eastern Europe) and never had anything stolen from me. I attribute that to the (perceived?) fact that I am generally watchful and look at people alot. I never put anything valuable at easy to reach pockets and I am very watchful of my personal distance. My theory is that when dealing with professional thieves, you only have to be a harder target than anyone else on the same place. Still, I would expect any decent pickpocket to be able to steal from me - so I never carry anything which I cannot replace easily.
Then again, I never had the opportunity to actually validate that way of thinking.
- lostlogin 14y agoYes you have. What have you lost? With the time you have spent traveling I bet you have been told a host of I-just-had-my-xxx-stolen stories. Low profile, care and humour seem to keep trouble at bay in a huge way. I remember a particularly ugly moment when my wife realised that we were being eyed up by a group of pickpockets who were crowding around. It was either going to be pickpocketed or mugged. Knowing we had nothing on us, we kept joking with the guy who was supposedly distracting us, while we were subtly patted down. We left in a hurry as soon as the collectivo (dodgy van) stopped, exchanging goodbyes. I wouldn't have know I was being patted down except my wife observed it - I'm pretty sure that if we had made a fuss the result would have been very bad. Edit: spelling