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Published: March 30th 2008
Hey hey... am now rather behind in my travel tales but have 7 hours to kill in Manila while i wait for my bus to Bontoc in North Luzon's Cordillera region (famous for it's rice terraces - doesn't sound exciting but supposedly a truly beautiful sight). Manila is a bit of a dive and seeing that:
a) i'm staying right in the middle of seedy Malate - full off girlie bars and prostitutes
b) it's sunday and very little is open
c) i'm hungover
i think it's a good time to catch up a little.
So think the last time i wrote i was leaving Thailand for the thrid and final time en route to Kuala Lumpur for the second time. The 7 hr bus trip down to KL necessitated by my lacking a battery charger for my camera. Facebook addicts will be well aware that i was succesful in this and after several camera related challenges on this trip i am back to my snap happy ways.
The original plan was to stay in KL for a day or two. Do what i needed to do then move back up North to the island paradise of Pulau Perhentian and the massive national park of Taman Negara. The weather though was awful. My previous trip to KL involved ducking into malls to take advantage of the air-con and dodge the 40 C temperatures. This time malls were needed to dodge the rain. Further investigation led to Pulau Perhentian sounding less and less attractive at this time of year. Monsoon season was just finishing. The islands were still being forecast a week or more of bad weather. And the islands were only just reopening to tourists (i like the idea of a closed island!) so would likely be fairly empty. The problem was that my other potential destinations of Sabah and the Philippines were both under the weather too. So i procrastinated for nearly a whole week before realising that i had to go somewhere, anywhere, that wasn't KL.
One incident that really strengthened my resolve to get out of KL was a chance meeting i had with a Filipino called "Jo Jo". In hindsight i should have seen this coming a mile off. It was soo textbook. Man approachs on street. Man is friendly and chatty. Man asks where you're from. Man is happy as "coincidentally" his "sister" is about to go there to be a nurse/student/teacher (*delete as appropriate). Man invites you to dinner to meet his "sister". Really this should have been ringing alarm bells. But i'd just spent 3 days hanging out with a group of local chinese malay girls i'd met and was really enjoying being taken off the tourist trail slightly. Not to mention that the girls kept buying my drinks and food for me! (Including an awesome Chinese meal with the best Crispy Pork Shoulder ever as well as my first bit of crab). Ands so it was that the offer of meeting some more local people, and perhaps more so, the offer of another free lunch sounded most appealing. The next day i met Jo Jo and his "cousin", went back to the "family" house and sat down for dinner. Nothing spectactular, some beans, rice, fish and chicken, but nice nonetheless. And free! It was only after dinner that the real purpose of my visit became clear.
Sitting down to watch some football with "Jo Jo's uncle" the conversation meandered around before settling on the fact that "Jo Jo's Uncle" worked at Genting Highlands. Genting is little retreat up on a hill outside KL containing a theme park, some cinemas etc. and a casino. I had been thinking about going there as much for the cable car ride up there as for anything else and mentioned this. Now was time for another conincidence. "Jo Jo's uncle" worked in the casino and dealt on the blackjack table. And being a kind generous sole he wanted to teach me some tricks about how to win at Blackjack. However rather then tips on tactics or such like (which would be hard with blackjack being a pretty basic game) the tricks involved "Jo Jo's uncle" giving me brief glimpses of the cards as he's dealing. And so it became very clear that i was trying to be set up for the traditional dumb traveler gambling scam. The basic premise is that you are convinced to gamble a substantial amount of your new friend's money (in this case $5,000) in the casino. He can't gamble himself as he works there and his fanily and friends would be too obvious. So they need an outsider. They need you. Or me. Or any other backpacker who could really do with a bit of extra cash. And here's the great bit, as he will be dealing you can't lose. He takes 75% for doing all the work and fixing the cards. Which is much better then the small wage he collects from the casino. And you make 25% for doing pretty much nothing at all. Starting with $5,000 the potential winnings are massive (though he should be offering Great British Punds at the moment really, not puny American Dollars) so your 25% stake becomes very attractive...if you are f%^&ing stupid. If you don't quesiton why complete strangers would trust you with their money, their jobs and their freedom (with the proposed scam obviously being highly illegal) then you may just find yourself in a very sticky situation. Because the real victim of the scam is not the casino... no, shockingly the real victim is you, or me! The way this usually pans out is that after arriving at the casino your man is surprisingly not at the table (in fact he's probably banned from ever entering the place). You then choose between either leave straight away, or playing anyway and losing the money. Either way when your new friends catch up with you you're accused of pocketing the winnings and are then strong armed into emptying your bank account. This kind of scam is attempted a lot (credit to Lonely Planet for filling in the gaps of my experience). In fact a girl i met a week later had met two other people who had experienced in KL variations on my experience (nice not to be the only one btw!).
So here i was, fully realising what was going on, but also fully aware that i was in these peoples house. And the more i looked the more i noticed that i had been boxed into a corner by some clever positioning (or perhaps my own stupidity). Not being one to worry about offending a few blunt comments later and i was out of the door walking down the street. Only problem was i had no idea where i was. And they had started following me. I'm still not quite sure what the intentions of their pursuit were. They said they wanted to give me a lift home. My mind thought otherwise. In Filipino culture (much like other Asian cultures) losing face is a big deal. And when something you say causes someone to walk straight out of your house you have lost some serious face (a whole cheek and a nostril perhaps). So maybe, just maybe, it was a genuine attempt to pacify things and regain some lost honour (and the other stories i heard did involve people getting a lift back). But i wasn't taking any more chances and spent the next 5/10 minutes being pursued around a little housing estate with no idea where i was heading. Eventually i saw a highway, hoped onto a bus and was soon heading back into the santuary of central KL. I'm still not sure whether i was really in any serious danger (though certainly at the time i did!) though in future i will remember what has to be one of the golden rules of travelling SE Asia. The people who randomly approach you on the street generally want something from you. This may not seem a particularly friendly outlook but it seems to be true - the more genuine honest people would be too polite to bother you.
As for the rest of my stay, too much time was spent in a dingy little internet cafe. One of my memory cars had wiped itself and finding a (free) program to successfully retrieve the pics, backing them up to facebook and burning them onto a DVD took a frustratingly long time. Bit of advice. If your memory card wipes itself, ot you accidently delete pictures then as long as don't take any more pics with the card you can usually get them back. As soon as you take another pic you've lost them all.
Other than this little stands out. I spotted a Menara Wesley in Chinatown - translation "Wesley Tower". Which was nice. I ate some awesome curry. Malaysia in general, and KL in particular have some awesome indian eateries. Unlike western curry houses the food is typically pre cooked and out buffet style and you go up and pick what you want. Ridiculously cheap (1.50GBP at most for rice, a couple of meat curries, a vedgie side and a drink) and incredibly tasty these were some of the best places i've eaten at soo far. Thai food was good but ultimately all seemed quite westernised (and mild unless you ask otherwise), whereas Malaysia hasn't been hit with tourism in the same way and hence the food is more authentic. I watched Vantage Point at the cinema which i thought was good until the end (won't spoil it for anyone)
But all in all with the weather, the Filipino con men, and the fact i had clocked up nearly two weeks in KL now meant it was definitely time for me to go! And i think i chose well, because Sabah was absolutely awesome!!!!
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Jimmy Berg Nilsen
non-member comment
Same thing happend to me in manila
almost exactly the same, word for word.