While researching part one– There’s poo on your shoe!– of this travel scam series, I ran across a couple more travel scams that tourists should beware…

You want how much for that pot of tea?! Here’s one from China: English-speaking tourists are approached by “Chinese students” at popular tourists sites in Beijing and Shanghai, for example, who want to “practice their English.” Because this isn’t so abnormal, sans scam, the tourists aren’t on guard. The Chinese students then ask the tourists if they want to go for tea, or to see a traditional tea ceremony. Why not? Seems innocent enough, right?

Wrong.

The bottom of the tea pot leads to the bottom of your wallet– when you slurp down the last drop of tea, you’ll find yourself staring down the barrel of a big, big bill that adds up to hundreds of dollars. Said one blogger, who was a victim of this scam, “there seemed to be an extra zero on the total.”

And what is there to do? You don’t speak Chinese, they barely speak English. Most people just cough up the cash and move on.

The bus station scam: my travel mates and I fell victim to this one in Delhi. One of my travel mates had only two days before she flew back to London and was desperate to see the Taj Mahal before she left. We went to the bus station to get tickets a day in advance. As we approached the counter, a well-dressed man approached us (and, yes, alarms started going off in my head at this time) and asked us if we were going to Agra. One of my travel mates said yes. He told us that there were no seats left on the public buses, but hey, we were in luck! We could book a seat with his company. He promptly hustled us out of the bus station and into his travel agency.

“You guys,” I whispered under my breath as we were filing into the office just a stone’s throw away from the bus station, “the Lonely Planet warned about this. We’re being had.”

But my travel mate really, really wanted to see the Taj Mahal before she went back to London.

Despite my protests, we ended going on a “tour” the next day. It cost us double what going on our own would have cost… and we felt like we’d been kidnapped. The “tour” lasted over twelve hours and included not only the “obligatory” stop at an Agra marble store, but also stops at various Krishna-related temples and sites. At one of these temples, we were strongly urged to donate money (which we didn’t).

We were the only Westerners on the bus and the Indian tourists seemed equally appalled at being scammed– by Krishna worshipers, nonetheless.

This leads me to my last points…

Remember that you can be fleeced no matter where you are in the world. Just as the Indians on our “tour” were scammed in India, you can be scammed in your mother country. And not all travelers are fellow innocents– travelers can be scammers, too. Stories abound about tourists who have been had by other tourists.

With all this said, I wouldn’t recommend going through your travels overly concerned about scams and strangers. In fact, some of my best travel experiences (including sleeping in an old man’s bed in Syria) have involved total strangers. Travelers must walk a line between weariness and openness.

OK, now it’s your turn! Share your travel stories– good and bad– with me…

Travel scams run the gamut from elaborate and well-orchestrated (think Agra food poisoning) to simple (giving incorrect change back). Here’s a few I’d like to avoid:

There’s poo on your shoe! Some travelers say that this is a rite of passage in India, especially in big cities like Delhi and Mumbai. I think, however, that I can get to know the country quite well without fecal matter on my feet.

Here’s how this one works: the bleary-eyed traveler is walking around a busy, crowded area. Scam Artist #1 (hmmm, maybe we should call him Scam Artist #2) squirts some poo on your shoe.

Scam Artist #2 points it out to you. “Sir! There’s poo on your shoe!” Coincidentally, Scam Artist #2 happens to be equipped with everything needed to clean the poo off your shoe… for a price.

This begs two questions for us. First, what can you do? Not a thing, really. Chalk it up to bad luck, you’ve just been had. Chances are you won’t pay much for your impromptu shoe cleaning, so try to have a sense of humor about it (you have to admit, it is a pretty good trick).

The second question is: how did they get the poo into a tube to begin with? We’re not sure we want the answer to that one.

Those samosas cost how much?! This has to be one of the more outrageous Indian travel scams I’ve heard, in part because of how nervy and blatant it is: a Dutch couple visiting India were recently charged 10,000 rupees—the equivalent of over 200 dollars—for four samosas, the deep-fried pastry-stuffed-with-potato. That’s right, as in the snack.

What shocks us is that the Dutch couple actually coughed up the dough. (Read the full BBC story about the incident).

That reminds me of another food-related scam that can leave your pockets slim: the Taj Mahal (Agra) food poisoning scam. This one is a few years past, but you never know if and when it will resurface. In fact, when I was in India in the summer of 2007, several Indian friends cautioned my travel mates and me not to stay overnight in Agra and advised us to avoid the food and water there.

So, what was the scam? Allegedly, restaurants were serving unwitting tourists bad food. OK, you can get food poisoning anywhere in the world, but it didn’t stop there. In Agra, the restaurants were in cahoots with local doctors who then charged the sick tourists exorbitant fees for necessary medical treatment. The doctors then gave a commission to the restaurant.

Yikes.

Have you ever been scammed while traveling? Have you ever been a victim of the poo on the shoe scam? Share your story here…

I’m not one of those overly-concerned-about-cleanliness-types, but I’ll admit it– I HAD to wonder how clean it was to be sitting in the overflow of an Indian dam with hundreds of other people, sipping tea all the while.

This was definitely one of those days that broke all the health and safety guidelines my guidebook listed.

My travel mates and I sat on hundred-meter wide steps, the cold overflow of Bhusi Dam splashing down upon us, sipping cup after cup.  Everyone was packed onto the steps like sardines– young couples, families, groups of rowdy guys. Children shrieked in delight at the refreshingly cool water rushing past them, young men splashed each other and shouted, and everyone was smiling. The tea vendors stayed on the go, weaving their way through the crowds, stopping to pour hot chai into small plastic cups in exchange for a few rupees. Further down, below the steps, where the water was calmer and shallower, vendors sold fresh, hot corn– from stands set up smack in the middle of the stream. And, of course, there was a smattering of cows who couldn’t miss out on the action.

It was, without a doubt, one of the strangest places I’d been to in all my travels.

Maybe I should explain how I ended up in Bhusi Dam to begin with. A British friend of mine, Sarah (not the  Sarah I refer to in the two Syrian posts) was working at a NGO in Mumbai. It was July. Now those of you who know India know that Mumbai+July=dripping hot weather. It can be unbearable. We’d sat a bar one night earlier that week, our faces beaded with sweat, Sarah blowing her bangs off her forehead, when she suggested we make like Mumbaikers and escape to the hill stations in Lonavla that weekend. She said that there were a few things to see in the area, including the Karla Caves, and that the weather is allegedly much cooler than Mumbai.

My reply: why not?

Not long after we checked into our hotel– which was damp inside and out thanks to the monsoon rains (our sheets were damp, our towels were damp, and there was a damp cow standing in the lobby. Yes, IN THE LOBBY)– and not long after a woman attending a wedding celebration in the hotel had shoved sugar into our mouths with, “This is a sweet day, no?” we met Ben, another Brit.

We’d hiked up a gently sloping mountain to go to Karla Caves and the adjacent temple, only to find a long, snaking line to enter the temple. We couldn’t quite figure out why, but there was a marching band roaming the vicinity. Between the throngs of people waiting to enter the temple and the festive music, we sort of felt like we were at a theme park.

Ben joined us as we stood– in India, foreigners tend to act as magnets for other foreigners– kickstarting a conversation with a very witty, very British line (I wish I could remember what he said). Turns out that, like Sarah, he was from London and they launched into that “who do you know? where did you study? where did you go?” game.

Long story short– by the time we’d waited out the lines, the brass band with its crashing cymbals, Sarah’d made a friend. Ben invited us to join him on his next stop… only he didn’t know exactly what it was.

“A dam?” he told us, with a bewildered shake of his head.

He explained that the company he worked for in Mumbai had paid for a car and driver for his weekend in the hill stations and that the driver was taking him around to the local spots… and that his driver had been raving about this dam all morning.

When we reached the bottom of the mountain, and the car, Ben asked the driver what was next on the itinerary.

“Bhusi Dam,” he replied.

“What’s that?” I asked.

The driver looked at me. “A dam, madam.”

But of course.

Ben shrugged and smiled. “I have no idea,” he said.

Still not sure why anyone would want to see a dam, weary of the fact that we were getting into the car with two total strangers, off I went… against my better judgment.

About ten minutes later– after the driver regaled us with tales about coming to Bhusi Dam with his family when he was a boy, managing to never actually tell us WHAT Bhusi Dam was– we pulled into a muddy parking lot. I didn’t see much but some trees, and a smattering of people following what looked like a path into some thinly scattered trees.

The driver turned to us, grinning. “Bhusi Dam,” he announced.

Ummmm.

“Where?” we asked him.

“There,” he pointed to the small stream of people.

We looked at each other. “OK. Let’s go have a look. Shall we?” Ben said.

Why not?

We got out of the car and followed the small crowd on the muddy path… which quickly gave way to a small stream. The people ahead of us kept walking, the men not bothering to roll up their pants, the women’s skirts and saris trailing in the water.

So we forged ahead, too. Past a defunct merry-go-round on the bank, past “name on rice” stands, past an empty red ferris wheel, past a sign that cautioned us swimming here could result in death. Past people who were frolicking, splashing, and sliding about in the water. Past cows, past corn vendors…

You know where this story ends.

Bhusi Dam– you sit in the surging overflow. That’s it. It’s simple. It’s strange. It’s delightful. It’s freeing. It’s India.

That was the strangest travel destination I have seen. What was yours?

Tripbase received an email from a friend recently: “I’m sorry to say I got laid off this week,” he wrote. Our friend explained that the company he worked for needed to trim 300,000 US dollars from its budget, and his position was one of many that were eliminated. “HR and I signed some paperwork,” he said, “and that was that.”

“I’m not overly upset,” he continued, saying that his wife and he have been wanting to leave Alaska, where they’ve been living for two years, for quite a while. “That’s suddenly a lot simpler,” he said. “It will take about two weeks to wrap up loose ends around here, and then we’re going to visit friends and family for awhile. We want to see loved ones and decide where to live.”

Our friend’s family lives in Puerto Rico, his wife’s family lives in Florida. While taking some time to rethink his career path, our friend and his wife will visit with both.

Sure, they won’t be paying for hotels, but it got all of us at Tripbase thinking about travel destinations with low overhead costs… places we could take a time out from the recession and size up our lives from afar.

I thought immediately of another friend of mine, a writer. He spends the school year teaching, but every summer, he sublets his places and heads to India to spend the summer vacation writing. Yes, the plane ticket is pricey, but the overhead is so low in India, he swears he saves money this way (and gains material, as well).

Sitting out the recession, or at least part of it, in India doesn’t seem like an awful idea to me. Why? Let’s do some quick math here. Bear with me…

Rent varies wildly throughout the United States, but just for the sake of argument, let’s assume an average of 1000 US dollars a month of rent, including electricity, water, cable, and internet. Of course there are other living expenses, too, such as gas and food, so let’s knock that average up just a bit to 1400 US dollars. Six months would cost you somewhere in the ballpark of 8400 dollars.

Now let’s compare that to the cost of spending six months in India.

Let’s assume that you’re paying ten dollars a day for your room (and this is estimating high– we’ve paid half of that in hostels in India). That’s roughly 300 dollars a month in overhead costs. What about food? Let’s budget something outrageous for India… let’s say 200 dollars a month. For 500 dollars a month, or 3000 dollars for half a year, you’re living in India! Even figuring in a plane ticket, you’re coming out ahead of what you’d be paying in the States or Europe.

OK, we know this idea isn’t for everyone. We know that some people have mortgages and families and can’t just pick up and run to India. But if you do have the flexibility and you want to take a breath before plunging back into the less-than-stellar job market, why not spend 6 months on the subcontinent, rather than 6 months sitting at home while the economy is stagnant?

Some other interesting travel destinations where we could stretch the dollar or Euro came to mind… one of us lived in Alexandria, Egypt for part of a summer and paid about ten dollars a week for a small room in a shared apartment. What about retreating to Egypt? Morocco? Thailand? Laos? Vietnam? Central America? Certain areas in South America are quite affordable, too…

Getting fired is never fun, especially in these uncertain economic times. But if you have been saving up for a rainy day, and you have a cottony cushion sitting in the bank, there might be a silver lining to recession-related job cuts.

Let’s be honest with ourselves… how many times have you sat at your desk fantasizing wistfully that you would be “let go” so you could have the time to do the things, like traveling, that seem to keep getting pushed aside for the sake of slaving away at a 9 to 5?

You haven’t?

It’s just me?

I hope my boss isn’t reading this.

Ahem. In any case, if you’ve got some cash stashed away, you can use this unexpected break in work to your advantage… instead of rushing headlong back into the shaky job market, you might consider picking a low-cost travel destination. Stretch your time and money out. Clear your head and reassess. Go backpacking in India or take a long trek through South America. Retreat to an ashram on the subcontinent or go spend a few months being a beach bum in Thailand. Have you always wanted to volunteer abroad? Now might be the time to do it.

You will return rich with experience and gifted with a new perspective on the life– and work– you left behind.

Next topic: Sitting out the recession in India.