LowriderS10 wrote in post #15772091
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With that said, my behaviour is about as good as it gets. I travel smart and, despite my extensive travels, I've yet to be involuntarily relieved of so much as a penny. I only wear cheap $5 watches and the only valuables I carry with me is a camera. No laptop, no iPod, no iPad, nothing...this way, I can always keep track of basically everything that's worth money. I always hold the body of the camera when walking and I'm careful to put my backpack on my front in crowded places, keep nothing other than a notebook and a pen in my rear pockets, sleep with my backpack under my arm (between me and the wall), try to walk on the inside of the sidewalk to reduce the chances of a drive-by snatching, etc, etc...hell, I even do random crap like patch up non-existent holes in my backpack with duct tape to make it look like a ratty cheap backpack, so people won't think there's anything worth stealing in there.
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I think I wasn't clear.
Lowrider, I know you didn't wanted to sound offensive and, believe me, I'm not attempting to be offensive also, or to pick a fight, but I think phillwillmedia has a point: that kind of question can be see as rude and (this is the worst) uneducated.
Please, let me elaborate.
I think that you are using the wrong mindset, as kjonnnn has pointed, but I would add this to what kjonnnn said: you not only are thinking like a photographer, but like a first-worlder photographer also, and doing this you are exposing yourself to a greater danger.
I don't have any kind of authority to say anything about SE Asia, but as a third-worlder myself I can take some educated guesses.
I am a Brazilian, living in Rio de Janeiro, a city with (at least until some years ago) a very high crime rate. Believe it or not, I never was robbed. I suffered a attempted mugging (I simply walked away) and one time I lost my wallet (there is some chance that I was pickpocketed, I really am not sure), but I never was forced to give any valuable. In the other hand, my brother, my wife and a lot of acquaintances didn't had the same luck.
My point is: Higher crime rates doesn't mean you will be, certainly, robbed. It means that the odds that you will be robbed are higher.
It is a probability game, a lottery. Statiscally, you should be safer spending some days at a city with a higher crime rate than spending years in a city with a lower crime rate.
You notice that I typed "should"? The problem is that being a foreigner you stack the odds against you. It is not because a first worlder tourist have more valuable possesions. It is because a visitor from a very different society doesn't know how to read the signs of danger around him.
A decade ago a friend of a acquaintance, both foreigners, was robbed at daylight. Whem I was told the details my first reaction was to yell "But what that crazy lady was doing alone at that street?!"
In Rio (and around the world, I believe) busy streets are safer than empty streets. That specific street is very empty during the day, doesn't offer a easy way out and attracts some unsavoury types. A perfect place to be ambushed.
Some friends lived in the neighbourhood. I knew the area, but not very well. Yet I knew that particular street was dangerous. How I knew that?
It is near Santa Tereza neighbourhood, this means it is at the foot of a hill. Hills streets are long, with fewer intersections (fewer escape routes and onlookers). It is a residential area, usually a safe kind of area in Rio, but the residents of that street are ... nightworkers. During the daylight they're sleeping, you don't see kids playing, you don't see people bringing groceries to home, you don't see anything that is usual in other streets of the city. Midday is like midnight at that street. The absence of noises coming from the windows, like pots brewing, music, people talking, should be a worrying sign. Brazilians aren't a quiet people. It was also near a somewhat decadent, bohemian area, with a population of down-of-luck, petty criminals.
At the "similar threads" section there is a post, in the"Public attention that you get with your 70-200 2.8 IS ii" thread where a British guy in a very poor area (shacks, dirty track) of Maranguape, NE Brazil, said he felt unconfortable and didn't took ou his 70-200 from the backpack fearing he could be robbed.
The ironic truth is that the risk are higher in the streets of the fancy neighbourhood of Ipanema than in a miserable village in Northeast Brazil.
I am a southeasterner, but my dad was a northeasterner. They can be hot-blooded, even violent, but they are the most zealous of theirs self-image of all brazilians, specially the poors. They have a somewhat medieval, chivalric mindset, "if I don't have nothing, I still have my honour". I'm not kidding, there are troubadors in NE Brazil!
It is not the poverty who tempts someone to do dishonest things. It is the perceived poverty. The NE Brazil's poors somewhat accept theirs lives. It is in the big cities of SE Brazil, where the destitutes live side-by-side with the filthy richs, where poor kids give in to temptation and enter in a life of crime.
My point here? If you travel to Brazil, learn the basic geography of the city. Second point, don't be afraid of the poorer cities. Be afraid of the richest cities.
Fuji X-E1
