Lonely Planet founder’s ‘favourite’ travel scams (and how to avoid them)

If travel warnings have been around long enough to be available in Latin you know there’s some history to them. If Roman travellers had been heading off to Thailand in 100BC you can be certain their guidebook would have warned them: caveat emptor – buyer beware.

Just as the Thailand Lonely Planet guide, in its “Dangers & Annoyances” sections, warned two millennia later, be careful not to fall for those smooth-talking precious stone dealers in Bangkok.

Dangers & Annoyances has always been one of my favourite guidebook sections and it’s the one I always turn to first on arriving at a new destination. Checking the rules is a straightforward suggestion, but the most amazing warnings are the least expected and, at the same time, the ones that play out exactly as described.

They might shine in Thailand, but they won’t be the bargain they seem.

They cautioned that buying rubies or sapphires thinking that you were going to make a small fortune – or at least a handy profit – when you carried them back to Sydney, London or New York was not going to happen. If the story looks too good to be true, you can be fairly certain that it isn’t true.

We repeated that warning over and over again and yet every year more travellers burnt their fingers. Perhaps we should have put the warning in larger letters, bold print or somehow arrange for a hand to emerge from the guidebook to slap the tourist on the wrist.

Those Thai gemstones are completely genuine, just not worth as much as you’re about to pay for them. And Thailand is far from the only place where you can pay far too much, carpets are an equally good trap.

Never trust the words “my brother’s shop” or “my friend’s place” unless you like paying commissions. Check the rules is always good advice. Rules change regularly as I discovered when I arrived in South Korea a few months ago.

At the last moment I discovered I needed a K-ETA – a Korean Electronic Travel Authorisation, rather like the ESTA for travelling to the US. It took a lot of online messing around and cost me $12.50, but then, K-ETA in hand and even closer to the last minute, the Koreans dropped the requirement. I did not get a refund.

A few weeks later I turned up at the airline check-in desk in Seattle for a flight to Vancouver and discovered I should have spent $8 for a Canadian eTA. Really? I’d already been to Canada twice in recent months and nobody asked for an eTA on those trips. That’s because I arrived by land, different rules applied by flying there.

Fortunately, I was flying Alaska Airlines, regularly my favourite airline, and the women at the check-in desk did the job for me, took my passport and credit card, put through an online application and, amazingly, the Canadian approval came back as I stood there. OK, it was a slow day at check-in, but my admiration for Alaska Airlines certainly jumped up a notch.

I checked in at my Moscow hotel, dropped my bag in my room, had a quick glance at the dangers & annoyances checklist and 10 minutes later experienced one. I’m using an underpass to cross under a busy street and as I ascend the steps on the other side a well-dressed gentleman, clearly in a hurry, brushes past me and drops something on the steps.

Don’t fall for the folded notes scam.Credit: iStock

What do you, the helpful visitor, do? You shout to him that he’s dropped something and reach down to pick it up for him, right? But just as my fingers are about to touch the dropped item I realise what it is – a wad of banknotes – my hand snaps back and I step right over it.

If I’d fallen into the trap the next thing is the dropper would have turned back to me and his accomplice – oh there he is, lurking at the top of the steps – would soon be backing up his claim that I’d only returned half of the rouble stack. Things would soon have got sticky.

With our children in the back seat, we’re in a rent-a-car driving from Nairobi in Kenya. At a traffic light in a small town a young boy pops up at my window to report something has gone badly wrong with my car, there’s oil spilling out from the back wheel. Oh dear, I’ve blown a wheel-bearing oil seal on the back axle. Fortunately there’s a garage just around the corner where we can leave the car, grab a coffee or some lunch and they’ll sort it out for us.

Half an hour later we would have had a new oil seal fitted – only $100 – and all would be well. The reality? There’s no oil seal failure, the small boy’s accomplice has tossed a cup of oil on to the rear wheel. “Fixing” it is just a matter of washing the oil off. All exactly as predicted in the Kenya guide’s Dangers & Annoyances section.

Oil leak in Kenya? Look a little closer.Credit: iStock

Of course so many suggestions are simply good sense. Don’t drink the water if you’re not sure it’s OK, although in fact water is rarely as horror-story deadly as the worst horror stories would insist. Be a little suspicious – if you wouldn’t do it at home, then definitely don’t do it when you’re in a new place. It’s amazing how many people think only Australian beaches suffer from rips. And yes, people do get gifted with spiked drinks or food by unexpectedly friendly strangers.

Take some simple precautions – split your money and credit cards up, if something gets stolen hopefully you’ll still have back-up. Make a copy of important documents like your passport, you can email it to yourself and in an emergency it will be sitting waiting in your inbox. The Australian government representative in Bali once told me how much trouble it saved – for them and for the unlucky tourist – when they had taken that simple precaution.

But don’t be too suspicious about the outside world. I’m regularly reminded that people are people everywhere and generally they’re good. You really haven’t travelled until you’ve got your own tale of experiencing the “kindness of strangers”. A few years ago, at a hotel just outside Ubud, Bali, I arrived back from dinner and discovered I’d lost my phone. Falling back on the standard “where’s my phone” routine of calling myself provided no response. But 20 minutes later a taxi driver turned up at the hotel reception with my phone, he’d heard it ringing from the floor of his car and thought: “careless tourist”.

My favourite Lonely Planet happy-ending story came from a young woman on a train in India. She’d taken the precaution of locking her backpack to the luggage rack, so it was securely padlocked down as the train unexpectedly pulled away, leaving her behind on a back-blocks village station platform. Disaster, everything was gone and there wasn’t another train until the next day.

The village stationmaster took her in, a message was sent down the line to the next station, she was fed and looked after and quickly became the most exciting event the small village had enjoyed for years. The next day the entire village turned out to wave her goodbye and, sure enough, at the next stop another stationmaster was on the platform ready to hand her bag over. “It was absolutely the best day of my entire visit to India.”

Tony Wheeler is the co-founder the Lonely Planet travel guides, with his wife, Maureen. Last year they celebrated the 50th anniversary of its first publication. See lonelyplanet.com