I’d make several copies. If possible, I’d lock the original passport in the hotel safe, and carry a copy. Bring a couple extra CC.
Next- don’t carry all your cash in the same wallet with your ID and CC.
In a high crime are, make a ‘decoy wallet’. Stuff it with all your 1’s and 5’s, and some various useless ID. I like those fake sample credit cards they send you in the mail. Or a CC that is both expired and from a closed account. A 'real" picture ID (hopefully without your real home address) isn’t bad to keep in there. (Video club, student, gym, whatever) Otherwise, keep your 1’s and 5’s in a money clip. Keep your big bills in a secret pocket (with one “emergency” bill in your wallet) or a money belt. Keep your most used CC in another little card case or mini-wallet, or get one of those “key ring” cards.
Pickpockets don’t have time to go through all your pockets. If they see you have a "neck safe’ or a money belt- they *can *get those, no problem. So- don’t let people see where you keep anything but your small bills. To make many purchaes, you’d only need either small bills, or that one CC you keep mostly by itself (maybe with a peice of ID).
Shalmanese- you may not be too far wrong. I have worked with carnies before. Carnies are crooked- to a greater or lesser degree. Even though not many are pickpockets, they will sometimes team up with a team of PP. Then- as was told to me in confidence- the carny will announce a warning about pickpockets. Dudes will check their wallet. PP then sees where the loot is. Wallet go bye-bye. :mad: :eek:
Risk level: very high in and around London, quite low anywhere else, but obviously thieves and pick-pockets are going to spend their time where the tourists are.
Solutions.
For a man: don’t carry anything valuable that you don’t need to carry. You probably don’t need everything in your wallet. A bit of loose cash, one credit card (for which you know the PIN - the chip/pin system is used everywhere in the UK now). You don’t need photo ID for anything except at the airport. Keep cash and credit card in your front trouser pocket. No pickpocket will go there! Those special ‘travellers’ secret pouches / secret pockets’ are unnecessary, impractical (you can’t get at your money when you need it) and not very comfortable.
For a woman: thieves are very good and quick when it comes to stealing what we Brits call a handbag and Americans call a purse. If you can manage without it, do so. If you can’t, when you walk around, hold it in front of your body with two hands. Keep as little in it as possible. When you stop at a cafe or restaurant, be vigilant, and keep the handbag/purse secured in some way (e.g. loop the strap through the leg of your chair).
Don’t wear expensive or expensive-looking watches. Wear cheapo nasty watches worth next to nothing.
Take care when using a cash machine (ATM). They are everywhere and you have lots of choice. Wait until you can use one that you have all to yourself, with no-one else hanging around or watching. If you have the option, go INSIDE the bank and use the ATM there rather than the ones in the street. It’s a lot safer.
Speaking as someone with a decent amount of travel experience (a few dozen countries), count me among those who advise to leave the passport in a safe place at your hotel, and carry a xerox of it in your luggage and on your person. The only time I have ever had to show my passport in Britain is at Heathrow.
In places that actually are seedy (like Bangkok, Macau, or my neighborhood in DC) I prefer the classic money belt with a ziplock baggie to keep things dry. Those around the neck things are very irritating to me. Some complain that these belts wrinkle and muss up your passport, but it really doesn’t matter if your passport shows some normal wear.
I have 5 months of vagabonding experience in Europe and never had any trouble with pickpockets. The chances of you having trouble during a two-week stay in London are very small. No need for paranoia.
I would recommend keeping your wallet in your front pocket. If you are in a crowded area, keep your hand in your pocket with your wallet! It’s that easy.
If you get bumped in a crowded area, put your hand in your pocket over your wallet.
Don’t carry your passport with you. You won’t need it. I suppose a photocopy is not a bad idea, but you won’t need it either, and it’s not going to work as ID. Keeping your passport in a hotel safe is not a bad idea either, but again, I think it is overkill. Just keep your passport out of plain view. I kept my passport with my return ticket, and both of them in a small pocket in the bag I left in my hotel room. No problems for 5 months, and I was in much seedier places than London.
Hidden money belts are scratchy and uncomfortable, I’ve found. I only used one when I was in really dodgy parts of Saigon or Bangkok. Generally, I stuck to doing what others have mentioned:
A decoy wallet. This was unplanned - I just happened to buy a new wallet in Vietnam, so I kept the old one with nothing in it but a note saying “fuck your mother” in the local language. I had this old wallet just in my hip pocket, and the new, cashed up one hidden.
I did the splitting up money in various pockets thing.
I did the photocopy thing.
I did the taking only what I needed for the day thing.
Never had any problem. Actually, my Vietnamese friends complimented me on my ability to sense scammers, which was nice. I had seen off a couple of little urchins around the tourist spots. Apparently, they go for your wallet as the first option, but they are still learning the art and can be clumsy. However, if you catch them and manhandle them, their dad or older brothers are watching from close-by, and they scream blue murder. Next thing you’re surrounded by a circle of rather cranky men, the local cops are called, things get heavy, and you find yourself having to grease a few palms to get out of the new spot you’ve found yourself in. So I was told, anyway.
Ianzin, I know I’m not a Londoner, but I lived there three years and visit fairly regularly. Aren’t you, with respect, being a bit on the alarmist side here?
If ever we add another smilie, a graceful bow would be in order, and I would place a row of them right here.
Mrs. Hometownboy and I thank you all tremendously. She, who has been to Europe perhaps 7 or 8 times, lived in England for better than a year more than once, bike-toured through France, etc. is quite calm.
I, on the other hand, normally the calmest of people, have to constantly have to fight the Nervous Nellie urge, though I am highly Anglophilic (gotta watch the spelling on that one) and a history buff and have dreamed for decades about making the big trip.
Probably I will be fine once the wheels touch down, but for now I’m trying to cover all contingencies.
And there’s no finer place on the Web to do that than right here.
I’m a pretty cautious traveller. There is a small risk, but it only takes getting ripped off once to make fore a very memorable trip.
I use a moneybelt. Preferably a slashproof, front buckling, protected zipper one. It’s a little uncomfy, but it is the only thing that feels safe. Certainly not those things that go around the neck- one pull and it’d be gone before you can turn around and see who did it! I keep money for the day in my front pocket or my fake wallet, and if I need more I simply take a bathroom break to root around.
I carry a fake wallet, with enough stuff in it to keep a thief busy until I am long gone.
If I leave a passport etc. in the hotel (rarely- housekeeping is a job with few perks) I had it well- taped behind a mirror, wedged in the bathroom fixtures or under carpets- never with my bag, which I expect the staff to rummage through and perhaps run off with.
I keep everything I want to keep in my daypack or moneybelt. The big backpack is for clothes and things I hate. And I never travel with anything I don’t plan to lose or destroy. The daypack never leaves my sight, and I try to keep physical contact with my stuff- if I am sitting down, I’ll loop my backpack straps around my foot, for example. No putting stuff on out-of-reach luggage racks. Extra vigilence is called for on trains and subways- thieves can grab what they can and run just before the doors close.
I carry a cable lock (essential for trainrides, dodgy hotels and taking sit-down breaks in random public places) for the big pack and little locks for zippers. In a pinch, twist ties and safety pins will do. The idea isn’t to turn your pack in to Fort Knox, simply to make a thief go “naw, too much work” and move on.
I do the photocopy thing and keep enough money for a bus to the city, a hotel for the night, and some phone calls stashed everywhere- in my shoes, in the frame of my backpack, in my clothes…
And most of all, I try my best to blend in, look confident, and not to look like an easy mark. I keep the torn-out pages of my guidebook in my pocket, so that I don’t look like a big lost tourist pulling out this giant book all the time. I wear decent shoes. I save looking at maps and rooting around in my pack for when I have some privacy- not on busy street corners, in obvious tourist spots or on public transport (a pocket map and subway map will do you well). I have a buddy keep a lookout when I’m at an ATM. I keep my eye on shadows and store windows when I’m alone. I walk on whiever side of the sidewalk seems busiest, least full of hiding places, and best lit.
It all seems a little overkill, but I’ve seen way too many like me spend their vacations hanging out at consulates and embassies.
Open your wallet right now. Take everything out of your wallet and lay out all the items next to the wallet. Now select those items that are absolutely essential on your overseas trip. Leave everything else at home and follow the suggestions about how to carry those essential items.
For me, it’s my passport, driver’s licenses, a couple of picture IDs, specific credit cards and insurance cards, and that’s it.
Carry an American Express money card
Separate your ID so you don’t lose it all in one incident
Be aware of your surroundings
Use front pockets
Copies of everything
Leave copies of everything with someone back home
I had kids go for my pockets twice in Vietnam, once in Hue & once in Hoi An. They were very bad at it and even went for the wrong pockets. In any event, the reaction of the locals was just the opposite - they chastized the kids when it was apparent they were bugging me, and apologized to me as profusely as our limited shared language would allow.
Most kids in SE Asia are trying to sell you stuff or just talk to the cool strange foreigner, and the vast majority of them are honest and harmless.
Put your passport and a credit card in your inside jacket pocket. Put cash in your front pocket. That is all you need.
The only trouble I’ve ever had while traveling, is when a man tried to steal out of a backpack my brother was carrying (it had a sandwich, a couple of drinks, and a gnome). We were in Rome in the forum, and got a pretty good chuckle out of it.
I do not leave my passport anywhere. Not the hotel, not my bag. It’s on my person always. I do however, leave a copy of my passport, in my bag in the hotel, and copies of all my documents with someone at home. Which is fortunate, as my sister lost her wallet last time we were in France, with a card of mine she had borrowed, and it was easily canceled.
A lot of you seem to think that pickpockets can’t or (according to ianzin) won’t or would have a lot of trouble taking something from a front pocket. Wrong on all counts. I recommend reading David W. Maurer’s classic study Whiz Mob, which was recently back in print after some forty years. Maurer is most famous for what is still the essential study of confidence men, which formed the uncredited basis for the movie The Sting (there was a lawsuit about it). This is the most exhaustive and most scholarly study on pickpockets done even to this day, and on the basis of it, I’m telling you that the front pocket is not safe. Tighter is safer, if you’re wearing tight jeans or something, but a determined pickpocket can get even that without your notice.
When you are selected as a mark, it takes perhaps two minutes for the tool and the stalls to get into place so the tool can work while the stalls block everyone else’s view of what the tool is doing, and makes it so that any sudden move on the part of the sucker is blocked, not only physically, but psychologically – people in crowds instinctively behave in response to non-verbal cues given by the people around them, which cues pickpockets learn to deliver for the desired results.
“…the pickpocket receives and sends a constant set of signals to and from the victim by means of manual contact and bodily contact during the entire act of theft; some of these the victim responds to although he does not know their meaning; others he reacts to without being aware that he has recieved them. Likewise, a set of signals is constantly being exchanged by the mob members, some oral and verbal, some oral and nonverbal, some kinesic, some tactile, and some unconsciously sent or received.” (Maurer Whiz 75)
By the time you are suspicious enough to do something about it, you have already given away many unconsciously delivered cues that you are about to ‘rumble.’
Once the sucker is in the frame, it takes maybe five seconds to fan him – inventory all the places where he might be carrying cash – front and back pockets, and even the pit, a.k.a., the inside jacket pocket. The fact that the victim does not believe that someone could survey his person in this way is a great aid and comfort to pickpockets. Your mind ignores most of the information sent to it by the senses. You, yes you, are very easy to keep distracted, especially for thieves willing to let you see their faces, the risk of which is quite low for thieves picking on tourists.
Back to the front pocket:
“Hooking his index finger just within the crack of the pocket, he takes up a pleat in the lining, then makes a dozen or so tiny pleats, folding the lining with great dexterity between his fingers. This is called reefing or reefing a kick… His hand does not go into the pocket at any time, but the shortening pocket-lining moves the roll of bills upward so that it emerges at the mouth of the pocket. In fact, if the reader could see this take place, it would appear that the bills rise rapidly of their own volition and emerge from the pocket into the thief’s hand.”
It takes a fraction of a second for the tool to pass the fold of bills or the wallet to the duke man, who moves away, and that moving away is covered by another stall, so that when the mark rumbles, the guy he could possibly have caught with his mitt down is not the guy who actually has the goods.
Again, this is what they can do if they want to avoid giving up the kisser – letting you see their faces. If you’re a tourist in a foreign land, they don’t fear being recognized by you, or you getting a lot of help from the local police, or that you’ll be around to testify in a trial. So, they can use much more obvious ploys with little fear of punishment – things like the ‘squeeze bottle full of bird poop’ ploy, or some of the other scams people have mentioned here. They can distract you without need for subtlety and rob you with much less slick techniques.
Shalmanese wrote:
The story I heard had it occuring in New Orleans, where they supposedly had ‘Beware of Pickpockets and Loose Women’ signs. Supposedly, they removed these signs because they discovered that pickpockets hang around them waiting for nervous people to check their wallets.
I don’t know if it’s true that there were such signs, but it is definitely the case that pickpockets watch body language to see where victims keep their money, which can save them the trouble of actually fanning the victim. People continually and unconsciously check to see of their money is still on them, and all you have to do is watch where they put their hands.
Crandolph wrote:
Honestly, I suspect that these make a thief’s job easier. They can see where the leather is, so they don’t have to fan the mark. There is never any trouble with having to top off the poke as they call it, because the nature of the chained wallet is that it is always effectively topped off already, ready to grab. The sense of security this device provides seems to lead people to be very casual about their wallets – they keep them very loose in back pockets. It seems like it would be easy to pull the wallet, clean it out, and slip it right back in the loose pocket. Or, they could just take the chain and all. Pickpockets long ago learned to steal pocket watches, fob and all, and they can take what’s in your inside jacket pocket, so I doubt unhooking the chain proves much of a challenge. Seems like it would just save the thief a lot of work.
Bob Arno, who does a pickpocketing stage act, has what seems like pretty sound advice on his web page:
It also appears that he’s finally put out that book he’s been promising for years, though the title is different now. I haven’t seen it personally, but for what it’s worth, it’s available on Amazon:
This seems akin to suggesting that installing an alarm system aids theives by suggested which houses have valuables. A chain or similar device is an additional difficulty for any potential thief to deal with & I imagine using such a device, in conjunction with generally paying attention to your surroundings, makes one a more difficult mark & encourages the thief to pick any easier target.
I generally wear properly-fitting jeans (meaning no butt-sag) and honestly it’s sometimes a little difficult for me to get my own wallet out of my pocket (I keep a lot in there, business cards &c. - it’s a snug fit.) The concept of someone working my wallet out while simultaneously reaching around to damn near my crotch and and unfastening the other end of the wallet chain from my belt loop - all of this without putting enough tension on the chain for me not to notice - is a bit much. The amount of jostling this would require A lot of the indie kids wear the chain on the back of their belt, and this seems fairly useless to me. Buying slacks for the Third World &c. I generally get back pockets with buttons.
I’ve been pretty well around the world at this point (not to mention living in a large American city), to some of the armpits of the known universe, and I’ve never been successfully pickpocketed.
Failing all that, you can do what some in the Third World do and stick a razor blade in pockets you might suspect some might want to finger. :eek: Speaking of razors, another common theft method is to slice open backpacks with a razor and take articles as they slip out. This of course has to happen behind you and the thief has the advantage of you being less likely to feel the activity. Moral of the story: keep as much in your vision as possible.
In general you could probably reduce your “mark profile” best by not looking like a tourist to whatever extent possible. Tourists do things like look at maps in public, not walk purposefully and fiddle in their waistbands for their moneybelt.
This should have read: “The amount of jostling this would require would raise my alarm all by itself.”
To clarify, I’m not talking about one of these oversized, exaggerated 5-times-longer than necessary chains some kids have taken to wearing. I’m talking about a chain which has little slack when attached to the area around your belt buckle and which would give you some tension in your wallet got more than a couple inches from your body in any direction except in front of you.
That is an important difference, sure. The dangling chain just seems like an advertisement and a handy pull string to me. Possibly keeping the chain tighter will make you seem like a more challenging mark than the guy next to you. I mean, even under those conditions, I wouldn’t put a lot of faith in the poke-on-a-rope system, but this is just based on my speculation. I have no data on how often people with these dingi get made. As for the button on your pants pocket, it is another layer of challenge, but not really much of one. Pickpockets call a buttoned pocket sloughed and they deal with them like so:
“…with a quick, gentle upward flip of the first joint of the index finger, assisted in stubborn cases by the ball of the thumb.” (Maurer 77)
I am still convinced a pocket only you know about is the easiest and most obvious answer, 100 % a sure thing, anyone with a sewing machine should be able to help you out, take them your jacket, they’ll do the rest. The piece of mind it brings is priceless in my book.
Maybe I’m just a simpleton, but the easiest answer always has a certain appeal for me.
Except, as I mentioned above, you can give away its existence without even realizing it because you will naturally check it unconsciously. I mean, it’s not a bad idea at all, but it’s just not 100%.
Or a CC that is both expired and from a closed account. A 'real" picture ID (hopefully without your real home address) isn’t bad to keep in there. (Video club, student, gym, whatever) Otherwise, keep your 1’s and 5’s in a money clip. Keep your big bills in a secret pocket (with one “emergency” bill in your wallet) or a money belt. Keep your most used CC in another little card case or mini-wallet, or get one of those “key ring” cards.