Snatch Thief
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We’re in … Cambodia? Singapore? I’m not sure. Moving fast makes me dizzy. What I do know is that I wrote this ages ago, in December, which was (no exaggeration) half a dozen countries ago. Dizzying, I tell you. Dizzying.
Snatch Thief
From the breakfast room of our hotel, I can see a sign on the busy, touristy Sukhumvit Road that says “Beware snatch thief.” I’ve never seen such a sign in Bangkok before, but we’ve never stayed on this exact stretch of Sukhumvit. We do see such signs in other cities, though—London, Paris, Rome.
Tourists—of all nationalities, as far as I can tell—worry a lot about being ‘pickpocketed,’ which I suppose is shorthand for all street theft, including ‘snatch thief’ robbery.
I don’t. I do worry about a lot of things—after all, I’m somewhat anxiety-prone. I worry about food poisoning, rabid dogs, being yelled at, offending someone with my bare knees, getting run over by a bicycle, falling in an open sewer (I’m convinced that’s probably how I’m going to die, but Lee says the data suggests it’s going to be a car crash in a taxi. In Kathmandu.).
Mostly I worry about food poisoning, though—it’s a shitty reality in this lifestyle.
But pickpocketing? I just can’t get fussed about that. I don’t keep things in my pockets, other than wadded-up tissues, and nobody wants those. I always use a cross-body purse, a habit I developed years ago to keep my shoulders from getting lopsided. It has lots of zippers and pockets, so that I can keep my stuff organized. I once had a broken-zipper emergency in South Africa and bought a fringed suede monstrosity/purse that didn’t have any pockets, and my daily necessities got so jumbled I felt like my hold on reality was beginning to slip.
But I still didn’t worry about pickpocketing, and that was in South Africa, which has a terrible safety reputation.
There are three cities in the world where the idea of being pickpocketed actually crosses my mind: London, Paris, and Rome. I still don’t worry about it, though.
Lee’s iPhone was snatched out of his hand in London, during the peak of Covid (lock down your online security, y’all). We had previously seen that kind of snatching in action, in Buenos Aires, and assumed it was unique to Argentina. It clearly isn’t, so now we’re both mildly aware, and mildly careful with our phones, when we’re in one of these big European tourist-magnet cities—London, Paris, Rome.
The thing is, those are all real cities, full of real people going about their daily lives. As a matter of fact, they’re some of the most desirable cities in the world, if real estate prices are at all indicative. I can’t imagine that the average Parisian spends their days fretting over whether someone is going to pick their pocket.
They go about their business, which, significantly, is probably not touristing. It’s not that Paris is particularly dangerous, you see, or more prone to street-crime than anywhere else in the western world—it just has more tourists, and pickpockets are looking for easy targets. Which some tourists are.
Normal-people neighborhoods aren’t crawling with pickpockets (one reason I like to rent an apartment). The pickpockets are all in the places where they can find a density of distracted tourists, like the Louvre, or the Champs-Elysees—or Sukhumvit Road. They’re looking for people who have big wallets stuffed in their back pockets. They’re looking for unzipped purses hanging off shoulders, making it easy to pluck out a phone or feel around for the cash and credit cards.
Plus, how much would I really care if someone stole my purse? When Lee’s phone was snatched, he was up and running with a new phone the next day. The whole event was not much more than a minor inconvenience. I don’t carry anything terribly valuable or important in my purse, other than my phone and a couple of credit cards. They’re easy enough to cancel and replace.
My daily necessities are limited to a foldable shopping bag, a grubby sweat cloth, a paper fan, some Tylenol, a small tub of Vaseline, and more wadded-up tissues.
I don’t have jewelry in my purse, or expensive makeup, or important documents. I never carry my passport around (exception: China, because all entrance tickets were linked to our passports, but I definitely wasn’t worried about safety in China). I rarely have cash, and if I do, it’s probably not a large amount.
I just can’t get worked up about pickpockets. Now, whether or not that salad is going to make me lose my lunch? That is something to get anxious about.
Priorities, people. Priorities.
Take care,
Lisa
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