[ TIPS · THE DISPATCH ]

The Travel Scams That Are Suspiciously Specific to Certain Countries

The friendship bracelet, the broken taxi meter, the 'closed' temple — common travel scams by country have local accents. Here's how to read the tell and walk away with your wallet.

I have been scammed in four countries. Not “almost.” Actually got me. And the thing that still bugs me, years later, is that the common travel scams by country aren’t even creative — they’re the same three or four tricks wearing different hats, and I fell for them anyway because each one had a local accent I didn’t recognise yet.

So let me save you the tuition I paid. Here’s the regional menu, the tell, and the exact thing to say.

Sacré-Cœur, the steps up to the basilica. A friendly guy clocks you, asks where you’re from — Canada? Lovely country! — and before your manners catch up he’s already looping woven thread around your wrist and knotting it. Now you’re wearing a “gift.” And gifts, as it turns out, cost eight euros. Refuse and there’s a small scene, a raised voice, an audience.

The local twist is the location: it’s always at the bottom of a famous staircase where you’re channeled into a narrow space and can’t easily walk around the group.

The tell is the hand. If a stranger reaches for your wrist, your wrist is the product. Keep both hands in your pockets, say “no, merci” while still walking, and do not stop. You owe a stranger nothing, not even the half-second of politeness they’re banking on.

Airport taxi, you climb in, and the meter is mysteriously “broken.” Flat rate then, friend — and the flat rate is roughly triple. Or the meter works fine but takes a scenic, mileage-padding tour of the ring road. The Cairo variant: the driver insists your hotel has “closed” or “burned down” (it has not) and he knows a better one — where he gets a fat commission.

I got the Hanoi version. Watched the meter tick in increments that defied physics, like the numbers themselves were on commission.

The fix is boring and it works. Agree the price out loud before the door shuts, or refuse and use the metered queue / a ride app (Grab in much of Southeast Asia, Bolt/Careem in Egypt). And if a driver tells you your booked hotel is closed, just say you’ll go there anyway and check. Watch how fast it un-closes.

This one is almost elegant. A well-dressed, friendly local near the Grand Palace tells you it’s shut for a royal ceremony / lunch / a public holiday — but happily, there’s another temple open, and he knows a tuk-tuk who’ll take you for almost nothing. The tuk-tuk is cheap because the real money is the gem shop he detours you to, where you’ll be hard-pressed to leave without “investing” in some sapphires.

The tell: the Grand Palace is open every day, ceremonies and all. Anyone on the street volunteering that it’s closed is reading from a script. Check the official hours yourself, walk up to the actual gate, and ignore the helpful stranger entirely.

You pay with a fifty, the cashier counts your change back painfully slowly, gets “confused,” and somewhere in the theatre a note vanishes. Or there’s simply “no change,” so they keep the difference. Markets, taxis, that one bar in Trastevere.

Count your change in front of them, every time, and say the amount out loud as you do it. “So that’s twenty back from fifty.” Naming the number ends the game. People who are about to short-change you really hate a witness who does maths.

A man flashes a badge, says he’s “tourist police” checking for counterfeit currency, and asks to inspect your wallet. Real police do not audit your cash on the street. Another flavour: a kind soul at the ATM who steps in to “help” when your card sticks, and helps themselves to your PIN.

Rule for both: nobody touches your money or your card but you. If someone claims to be police, you’re happy to walk with them to the actual station. Funny how rarely they want to.

Strip the costumes off and every scam here is one of three moves. Distraction (the bracelet, the bumping crowd that lifts your phone). Fake authority (the badge, the “official” rate). Manufactured urgency (closed today, broken meter, this price only now). Learn the three moves and the country-specific wrapping stops mattering. You’ll feel the shape of it coming before the details even land.

The annoying truth is that the vast majority of people you meet are kind, and a few of them genuinely just want to chat. You don’t have to treat everyone like a threat — you just have to notice the moment a friendly conversation tries to put something on your wrist, in your hand, or in a car. That moment is when you smile and keep walking.

Get scammed anyway? Don’t beat yourself up — file it under tuition, tell the story at dinner, and remember the bracelet guy is still standing at the bottom of those same stairs while you’re off seeing the actual city.

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