While traveling through Indonesia, I travelled with a fellow from Norway. In Norway he worked with the Norwegian Power Corporation. He took a 6 week vacation every week and went somewhere off the beaten track. He travelled like a real backpacker. Nice guy. I met him in a Jakarta hostel and we travelled to Bali together with my friends John and Gary.

While in Jakarta he took a bus to a downtown museum. Nothing strange here except every guide book including Lonely Planet and the Southeast Asia handbook all stated DO NOT TAKE THIS BUS OR YOU WILL BE ROBBED. He took that bus, and he took it at rush hour. All seemed fine, until he got to the museum. When he went to pay he noticed his cash was gone. All his cash had been robbed without him noticing. He wore a button down shirt and a money pouch around his neck. They sliced between the buttons and extracted every bill without him noticing. They would have got his passport and cards too but they didn’t fit between the buttons.

He told me after. “You know Jeff, I have been very lucky, in 17 years of traveling, I have only been robbed 13 times”. I will never forget this.

I remember one time leaving a ferry in Batam Island in Indonesian and I could see hundreds of men staring at me, eyes darting about looking to see where I kept my money. You have to be on guard at all times. The moment someone bumps into you, you may be in trouble.

Honorable mention: An American in South East Asia told me that he had travelled throughout Thailand for the last month. He had figured that he must look identical to another traveller called “Jim Stone” from Burma as everyone was calling him that. It was only after a month of this he realized that they were actually only trying to sell him gem stones from Burma!