1

Well he will have plenty of subject matter and has made the right choise of Indian cities.

2

I knew there was a reason that I don`t go to Delhi.

3

Well I was in Bangkok a couple of weeks ago , jet lagged, couldnt sleep and in the small hours I watched Nat Geos. "'Scam Cities"" featuring Bangkok. What a load of crap... so badly made , the guy is an insufferable jerk, the ""ruthless ploys used to steal your hard-earned holiday cash "" included a guy with pigeons who tried to get a couple of $$ from him for feeding the birds, making a date with a bar girl who didnt turn up, revealing that bar girls dont do it for love and just want as much cash from you as they can get, that when a strip joint invites you in you will have to pay a fortune for the drinks and touts trying to get him to jewellery shops when he wanted to get to some temple or other. Where ,BTW, the ruthless ( actually polite and not pushy), jewellery shop owners tried to, wait for it.... sell him some jewellery!!...Shock , horror .He and the crew are obviously on a good little earner but I am amazed that National Geographic would put its name to this amateurish tosh.

" getting himself scammed, robbed and conned so you won’t"".

Well he wasnt in Bangkok.. hopefully he will be in Delhi

4

In Prague he was roughed up in a clip joint for not forking out EUR500 in order to leave the club. I thought it pretty brave when he returned (with a translator, but no visible heavies as protection) to interview the guys who had intimidated him the night before.

Also, tracking back to confront some dealer who had sold him "cocaine" just minutes before was better than walking away and chalking it up to "experience". The coke, of course, turned out to be crushed OTC medicine, and the "drugs" dealer said he could make EUR1000 per night with the scam, and he never gave the money back even if the buyer insisted.

5

I got a little weirded out with the old buggers in Anjuna selling pot some years back. Uh, thanks but no thanks. Now I call my "friend" on his mobile.

6

Thanks to your years on the road, the type of mistrustful personality you have (no doubt) and your disdain for anything that appears to be a scam, you have learned either to avoid these traps or not even to go near the situation that might involve one.

The blindingly obvious to you may not always be so to the neophyte traveller, nor indeed someone on an RTW gap-year. Did you see the numbers of young people needing hospital treatment after binging on buckets of cheap alcohol at Samui/Phangan's full-moon parties in Thailand? Usually chased with "ecstasy" they had bought on the beach while ploshed.

If we took away what nijkerk defined as the "blindingly obvious" from this branch, would we be left with any forum at all? Maybe not:
"Just get to the airport and ask around; the rest is blindingly obvious."
I'd certainly fear for the FAQ if we were to include only that information which was impossible to acquire without having being through the experience.

I have no interest in defending this particular program, but I disagree with you that it was "amateurish tosh". There was nothing pretentious or nonsensical (this is what tosh means) about getting accosted by a "prostitute" on the street in Prague and having your pockets expertly picked. Even the local cafe owner fell for this. Nor of taking a taxi and finding the price at the destination was three times what it should have been, and having no way to seek redress (taxi mafia - not a zillion parsecs from Delhi's scams here).

Sure, the documentary style (inherited from US news shows) of running over the highlights of the program twice ("coming up after the break...") becomes irritating on occasion, but such slick sleight-of-hand of filling a 30 minute slot with 18 minutes' material is now standard across all channels. It's not amateurish, rather the opposite.

7

Tried the charas wallas in Paharganj ever? I never did, but met someone in Almora who'd been flogged some lovely hardened boot polish in clingfilm when he became impatient for smokables before reaching the hills.

8

I wonder if anyone caught this programme on Delhi. Would be interested in the reaction.