For Anyone Traveling Abroad for the Holidays

By Charlie

Here are some travel tips from a fellow world traveler, and have helped me out in the past:

Blend in- dressing like the locals is essential in order to decrease your profile while visiting a foreign country. With this, downplaying any signs of wealth, like expensive shoes, watches, sunglasses, handbags also lowers your profile as a potential target.

Avoid large crowds, which can cause you to become lost or disoriented, which will increase the likelihood that someone will target you for pickpocketing, kidnapping, or other criminal activity.

Try not to travel alone, especially at night. A single target is ideal for a criminal group, because most street-level crime involves a small number of criminals. Larger numbers of criminals are required to target groups of 2,3, or 4 people, which make groups less attractive targets.

Learn a few phrases in the local language, this decreases your profile and causes you to blend into the background. This is also effective if conversation is kept to a minimum in public and you are dressed in local attire. In a busy urban area, it is easy to blend in if you can speak a little of the language, dress appropriately, and not stand out as an American or a foreigner.

Do not carry large amounts of cash. Along with ostentatious displays of wealth, it is not wise to show large amounts of cash when making a purchase. This will increase the likelihood that you will be targeted by pickpockets or criminals. Carry only as much money as you need, and keep different amounts in different pockets.

December 6, 2007 08:10 AM General Interest

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Comments

Good advice, but it's a lot tougher to blend in than you might think. Two key factors are dress, and body language. The first is expensive to change on a short trip, and the second tough to change. Biggest item in looking local is wearing local footwear. Probably next biggest is shirts; US shirts are different in color and style to most of the shirts around the world. As in many parts of the world haircuts are cheap, waiting to have your hair cut until you are in country and then having it done locally to local styles can provide some cost effective camouflage.

As for body language: recently apparently a US special ops group almost got fired up by a Predator in what would have been a blue-on-blue incident. The spec ops people were dressed like locals, but a sharp Royal Navy liaison officer in the US operations center (I believe in Nevada) sensed that the group wasn't local and got the US controllers to hold fire.

And we haven't even mentioned phhysical characteristics, including body type and race.

Acad Ronin · December 6, 2007 11:50 AM