Last year before a trip to Spain, a friend of mine told me a "horror story" of how her friend's purse was stolen during their trip to Barcelona. In my friend's mind, this incident clearly meant that Barcelona was not a safe place. My friend is very smart and well traveled; however, I was completely shocked when she said in passing that the purse was stolen off the back of a chair. Who leaves their purse on the back of their chair? That is one of the easiest ways for someone to casually stroll by and swipe your bag while you're busy chatting and enjoying your meal. Even when I go home to safe Midwestern USA, I never leave my purse on the back of my chair. Yet, my friend genuinely had never thought about the problems that might arise from leaving a purse in such a vulnerable place.
The story proved to me that even very smart, savvy people can sometimes lose their street smarts in the excitement of traveling. So while there are a lot of specific suggestions I can and will give for how to keep yourself safe while traveling, this post and the next are about the general mentality you need to have while traveling in order to be safe.
#1 Yourself
Of much less importance, but still important...
#2 Your passport
#3 Your money
There are two things you should do that are crucial to keeping yourself and your belongings safe: be aware and be wary.
Be Aware
The reason why people get so annoyed with tourists is that they constantly fail to pay attention to their surroundings and inadvertently end up running into people trying to go about their everyday lives. This is also the reason why tourists are targets for thieves and other no good people. So the most important thing is to be aware of your surroundings and to be aware of yourself.
Your surroundings
Always be aware of your surroundings. If you feel like you are in the middle of a scene from Law and Order (a dark, narrow alley in a bad part of town late at night), get yourself to a safer place immediately. Even if you realize the area you have wandered into has significantly more police officers or more heavily armed officers, you should be more cautious. Small changes such as police officers wearing stab vests in one part of town and not another are important to notice. It's also very important to be aware of who is around you -- periodically do a mental check of the people around you so that you know whether someone is following you or paying way too much attention to you.
Don't just ignore your surroundings if you are in a nice, affluent area. Just because you are at a place with fancy table clothes, linen napkins, and waiters with bow ties does not mean that everything is naturally safe and free of criminal activity. Also, don't automatically trust all the friendly people in line around you at the Sistine Chapel just because they are also tourists -- thefts in tourist areas are oftentimes committed by other tourists (this is particularly true in the example of the Vatican).
Yourself
It is equally important to be aware of yourself -- how you appear to others. The first thing to think about is your appearance. I'll talk more about how to dress while traveling later, but again, the fanny packs and tennis shoes (in countries where no one wears tennis shoes outside of a gym) signal to the no-good-people in this world that you are a tourist, and quite possibly by their calculation, more vulnerable. Less obviously, if you are in a poorer country, wearing nicer clothes, especially designer clothes will single you out as an outsider. Women in particular need to be aware of how much skin they are showing and how tight/short their clothes are, even in countries that are not especially conservative. Whenever I go out clubbing or to bars, I make sure to bring a jacket that will cover me up so that I don't attract any unwanted attention. Wanting to look sexy in the club is one thing, but think about how you look to that creepy old man who is drunkenly watching you at the bus stop.
Along with the way you dress, it is also important to be aware of how you present yourself. One night I was out in Geneva with some American friends and we were loudly talking among ourselves while walking to the bars. Hearing the commotion we were causing, as well as the English we were speaking, a group of men approached us, wanting to "practice their English" and "dance with the Americans." What they really wanted was to distract us while they stole the wallets from our pockets. If we had not been speaking so loudly (which Americans are notorious for doing) in a language other than what was commonly spoken in the city, we probably would not have been targeted. (The story ends well though....the guy who got his wallet stolen instantly realized what had happened, chased after the men, grabbed the one who had taken his wallet and held the guy by the collar while he reached into his pocket and retrieved his stolen wallet. While a very bold move, I would strongly advise against doing anything like this). If you present yourself as an easy target, you will likely become one.
Finally, be aware of your belongings. Just because your purse is next to you while you are sitting on a park bench does not mean it is safe. Someone can sit down next to you and while you are looking the other way, unzip your bag and steal your valuables. This happened to a friend of mine, although she was lucky enough to notice what was going on before her things went missing for good. Someone who was not so lucky was a girl I once traveled with who got on an uncrowded metro car with a big satchel purse that did not zip, and while she was chatting to another friend, someone stuck their hand in her purse and took her wallet. If she would have spent more time thinking about how she appeared to others, she may have opted for another bag or held her bag in a way that did not make her such an easy target. Think about the ways that someone could get into your bags and pockets, and position yourself and your belongings in a way to keep this from happening, but do so in a way that doesn't make you stand out like a total idiot (no need to hug your purse).
Coming up in Part 2 of "Be Aware, Be Wary" is the importance of thinking like a criminal.
