I
noticed that when I travelled with Lin before, I was a bit more careless and
less alert of my surroundings. Maybe in my subconscious mind, I felt I was
safer because there was another person with me and I felt that person could
watch out for me. Of course I shouldn’t feel that way because we could both be
targets or we could be attacked when we got separated even for a short while.
In
fact, I was almost attacked by a group of girls while crossing the street in
London. It was July 1999 and we had just landed and were killing time along Oxford
Street before we could check into our hotel. The girls were coming our way and
one of them had a long scarf and she was playing with it, spreading it out
around her. I remembered wondering as I looked at her why she would bother with
the long scarf at the height of summer. Suddenly Lin called out
(she was a few metres behind me) to watch out. The girl with the scarf was
going to grab my handbag and the scarf was either to shield her action or slow
my response down. I was too shocked to pursue them and in any case, they walked
away as if nothing had happened. Well, nothing did happen but I could have had
my handbag ripped off me.
The
next incident happened in Prague in May 2004. We were peering in a restaurant,
admiring the tables set with the gleaming cutlery and crystal glassware and chandeliers when I
heard someone unzipping my backpack. I could practically feel it too. And mind
you, like I said, we were peering through the glass into a restaurant. I looked
up as I wanted to catch the reflection of the perpetrator but I couldn’t see
anyone. Maybe the person was shorter than vertically-challenged me, maybe the
person was standing off to the side and not behind me, or maybe s/he had fled.
I turned around quickly but saw no one. My backpack was opened though.
A few days after that, we were in Barcelona. It was siesta time and many shops were closed but El Corte Inglés at Plaça Catalunya at the top of La Rambla was open so we went there to seek some air-conditioned relief and retail therapy. When I met up with Lin again, she told me that she discovered her bag was opened when her mobile phone rang. It was a good thing that nothing was stolen. The phone call helped saved her from being a victim.
We
were boarding the Leonardo Express at Roma Termini heading for the airport for
our flight home in May 2006 when two teenage girls came up and offered to help us with
our bags. It turned out one was ‘helping’ me while the other was helping
herself by opening my backpack. She succeeded in unzipping it too. I only
realised when a girl walking on the platform shouted at me, ‘Hey, watch out!
Watch your bag!’ The two girls acted like nothing happened and walked down the
train, cool as cucumber. And it wasn’t as if I could give them chase either,
not when the train was about to depart and I had a flight to catch. They looked
like gypsy girls.
We
were in Poland in May 2007 when it finally happened. I was pickpocketed in Warsaw while riding a bus and lost all my money. I lost Euros, USD, PLN and
even MYR. Good thing Lin was with me and helped me survive the next couple of
days. And good thing too that I still had my passport. We went to Citibank to
see if they could help lodge the loss of my card but they were among the most unfriendly
unhelpful lot I’d ever had the misfortune to meet. I had my friend in KL transfer over money via Western Union
which I collected in Paris a couple of days later.
I
was in Rome again alone in May 2008 on my last leg before flying back home. At
breakfast the morning after I arrived, an American fellow lodger informed that
he was pickpocketed on the subway the day before.
Alhamdulillah,
nothing untoward has happened so far on my solo trips. On my recent trip,
however, I was accosted by two females who looked like a mother with a teenage
daughter (only the mother didn’t look old enough to have a teenage daughter).
It was past 8 p.m. and I was walking along a bright deserted corridor in Le Palais des
Congres de Paris searching for the washroom (the shops were closed but the mall
area was still open so you could still browse the shop windows). They came up
and asked me how to get to either Galaries Lafayette or Printemps Haussmann
(the two are nearby anyway) and I told them I didn’t know. I tried to walk off
but they pestered me and flung a map in front of me and I was forced to look at
the map. I again told them I didn’t know as I wasn’t a local; instead I showed
them the nearest metro to where we were i.e. Porte Maillot and told them that they had to
ride the metro to Havre-Caumartin or Saint-Lazare. I also told them that the
stores were already closed and as such there was no point in going then. I could
sense them crowding closer around me but funnily I didn’t feel any danger.
Maybe I was too trusting and thought they were genuine lost tourists too although I did check to see if my Speedy was zipped properly. I kept
repeating that I wasn’t a local and that I couldn’t help them much. Then I turned
and, phew, saw a lady who looked like a Parisian walking towards us and told
them to ask the lady instead before walking off. I met them again when I walked back from the washroom. It was a few days later when I
thought back about this incident and wondered if they were trying to rob me. I’d read about the
daylight mugging in Paris before (but it somehow slipped my mind that evening).
Yes, especially in the metro and you can even get pickpocketed in the Louvre too, love.
I
don’t have a lot of advice on how to avoid being mugged or robbed or pickpocketed –
after all, I was a victim myself. I have been more careful since then though: I
carry my bag in front of me especially in crowded areas, I carry little cash
when going out in the evening and I place my wallet in the bag compartment closest
to my body. Try to travel light as you’ll be less distracted with having to keep track of your bags and consequently less vulnerable to pickpockets. You can refer to this on avoiding being an easy prey and the infopage by the American Embassy on how to avoid becoming a pickpocket victim in Paris or indeed any other city.
Safe
trips, everyone!
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