We had all our stuff stolen, two other robbery attempts, several stalkings and heaps of scams.  Bla bla bla… Most of the time we were at fault.  Ahem.

But there were benefits to this.

For one, my negotiating skills became more dangerous than their rabies-fueled street dogs (who, by the way are irresistibly cute.)

Let me tell you how.

On my first day ever in Asia, I was walking with stars in my eyes.  I was so enamored with the idea of being there, and although I had prided myself on street smarts when I lived in Europe for two years, being on guard was the last thing on my mind.

The aromas, the languid pace, that extraordinary heat that renders you swoony and only able to consume coconut-based sweets…I was swept up.

Plus, I was traveling with two overly-protective ex-marines.

So I felt a certain safety.

But after, oh, the fifth or sixth scam on day three, I noticed my walk changed.

I got a little strut.  I’m not kidding.

It reminded me of what one of my opera conductors once said about his experience living on a tough street in New York:  He adopted a fearless and firm stance.  Nobody fooled with him..  Even though he was a softy elderly gay man with a penchant for soaring violins.

Well walking tough just happened naturally for me.

But I discarded that strut later, in favor of more effective methods.

I’m too much of a lover to promote hardness of any kind.  I want world peace.  I want good vibes.

I want to have fun.

These are the stages I went through in becoming a rabid negotiator:

First I got tough. I walked tough, my eyes were distant.  People messed with me less. I was still stalked a lot.

My posse of ex-marines started sending me out to do the negotiating, after they saw I was good at it.  Back in my corporate days I was known for this skill, but when you are negotiating with thief police to get your passport back, it’s a whole other ball game..

I learned how to read people very fast.

I thought I was good at this before.  No, no I wasn’t.  Reading people fast means you take in their intentions, their probable life history, you anticipate their next move AND you memorize every piece of clothing they are wearing.

This comes in handy when you need to describe them later to the police.

This attention to detail came naturally and I can tell you that Thai people in particular are very sharp observers.  Sometimes scary sharp!

Reading people fast = Better negotiating.

You know what they want.  You know how to communicate with them.  You know when to run or when to make an offer.

I could tell when people were lying.  I knew what their secret limit was, the limit they try to hide under a facade.  I started watching them before they were watching me.

One good way to negotiate in S.E. Asia is to watch what the locals pay.

Learn the currency, and watch a local buy something you want.  Learn to watch without appearing to watch.

Peripheral vision is helpful for this.

Then you could start the negotiation by simply handing them the same money the local just paid.

One Thai vendor gave us a shy respectful smile when we employed this technique whilst buying a bear-shaped alarm clock…  They admire this type of intelligence.

In Indonesia, trying the same thing with a local food vendor, she managed to rip us off about thirty cents by creating a fake reason.  “This sauce cost extra.”  Such lies are just part of the negotiating game in S.E. Asia.

I learned to not take the lying personally, or judge it as some atrocious moral defect.

Then I learned the value of having fun in negotiating.

Having fun made me even more focused.

I remember walking through a street market and hearing some Western dude screaming at his wife, “C’mon LET’S GO!”  Then he turned to the polite Thai vendor and burst, red-faced “Three dollars is my FINAL offer!  Final!!”

I was embarrassed for his behavior but I was mostly just concerned he might keel over.

Negotiating in its ideal form has nothing of stress in it.

It is playful, it is smart, and it is above all a respectful and bonding experience.

Yes I said bonding.

Once I started seeing it that way, I had the most marvelous experiences negotiating.

Now remember, even though I was playful, I was still tough.

But I learned being tough is not about acting hard, it’s about being wise.

You’re not going to let them pull the wool over your eyes and you are going to call them out on their bullshit.

But then you’re going to warmly give them a little wink that says,

“I still like you.”

And being tough is about being persistent.

Persistently going after what you want.

Sometimes that means repeating the same thing over and over.  Like when the cab driver keeps pretending to not understand your request to “reset the meter to zero.”  He makes excuses.  You say it again.  He ignores you.  You say it again.  You point to the meter and you say it again.  He shrugs his shoulders and plays dumb.  Finally, after you make your request the sixth time, he acquiesces, usually with that shy respectful smile.

Then the real conversation can begin, because you’ve proved yourself worthy.

When bonding starts flowing amazing generous things happen.

You get invited into someone’s home.  You see them lower their defenses.  They start to share their dreams and fears.

Or they offer to give you an even bigger discount.  Or you suddenly insist on paying them more because you love them so much.

Everyone benefits.  And you get scammed a whole lot of a frick less.

What parallels can you draw to American-style negotiating?

Let’s give her a warm welcome, shall we?

In her post, Hilary discusses the balance in a website between design and substance, and how words can make your business sparkle.

Enter Hilary…

By Hilary Parker

I grew up loving my beautiful Barbie dolls, but I spent more time primping and preening them than I did coming up with story lines for Barbie and her friends. Your slick new website, and the rest of your branding, can be a bit like Barbie – all dressed up with no place to go.

Fortunately, I grew up enough to know that even pretty girls like Barbie are a lot more fun when they have stories to tell. Your marketing should have a story to tell as well, which will make it a lot more fun for the rest of us to read and engage with your business or organization.

Just like you express your essence in your design, you want to be able to express your essence in your story – the way you communicate with your stakeholders.

When I work as a copy writer to help clients tell their story I, too, want to find out a little bit about their essence. To bring this essence to light, I take a two-pronged approach. First, we simply sit down and talk. I ask questions and then use my listening skills. Second, I give my clients a little bit of homework. I have them write a few paragraphs about their business. I find this is exercise really helpful for getting clarity on what’s really important to my client about their business or organization.

Then I start in earnest the work of getting something down on (digital) paper. I work to adopt the voice of my client in my writing, so that the words don’t reflect my take on subject as much as they do – here’s that word again – the client’s essence. I often work to incorporate the writing my clients did within the work – editing it to develop and refine my clients’ own words into their most eloquent form.

This is the advantage of working with a professional writer/editor: We can make you look good. Not only do you want your own story to be compelling, making sure it’s written in a way that really communicates with your readers, you want and need to ensure that proper grammar, punctuation and word choice is applied. (This is kind of the primping and preening part of the writing process.) Even if your readers aren’t English teachers they’ll appreciate the professionalism put forth by having clean, well-written copy.

Combine this clean copy with your engaging story and you have style and substance. What more could a girl like Barbie want?

This is *hopefully* my last day in Asia, where I have been adventuring, or you could say, hurtling through space for the past seven weeks.  

Today we missed our flight home. 

More on that in a sec..  Did you know Twitter is banned in China?!

Well, this post is a sneaky attempt to circumnavigate the ban.  See, my fancy WordPress plugin is programmed to update my twitter each time I write something on The Blog Beast.  So you tell me since I can’t access Twitter, did this post show up… in my feed?  Drop me a comment to tell me so, as I won’t see your @ replies as long as I am in China.  Thanks luvs!

Why is Twitter banned in China? 

I have my ideas, but fact is elusive as China has also banned the news sites which cover the story. 

Facebook is banned too.  Sigh. 

How did we miss our flight?

I can’t even talk about it right now.  This has been one rough, exhausting day.   

On the plus side, the people of Beijing are fascinating.

In the first few moments of observing them as a collective, I was struck by their mental strength.  It is no wonder to me now that they are excelling in many ways…of course, I am speaking from a bubble perspective.   I have not yet left the airport!

The preview showed Julia, in an expensive white pant suit, cycling by herself through a palmed forest in Bali, with the vapid expression of a movie star who has only been exposed to the 5-star hotel version of Bali.  Then shots of her with a wise old Balinese man who gives her what looks like some spiritual break-through.

What’s wrong with this depiction?  Well, it’s totally false, for starters.  In reality, her white pant suit would be a catastrophe of sweat and dirt, she would be chased by three men on motor scooters yelling, “transport?” and if she entered an old man’s house he would stamp his foot and tell her to get back to “tourist territory.”

Movies are sneaky, eh?  And disturbingly effective in shaping the world we believe to be true.

Let me tell you my story of the real Bali.

Well, my posse and I escaped to Bali after having all our passports, credit cards and money stolen in Thailand…  Yay!  New territory!  The famous paradise of Bali, where tourists had been coming for hundreds of years to appreciate the awesome, tropical beauty.

Hmm.

“Hundreds of years” should have been our first clue to the reality of Bali.  Also, the fact that the Dutch occupied Bali for 350 years…

When we arrived in Bali we were immediately ushered to buy our Visas.  (Americans are required to purchase a 30-day visa.)  The cost is $25 U.S. dollars per person.

We asked if we could pay with Thai Baht.

“Sure,” the government officer smiled.

She showed me the total amount due on her calculator.

I quickly did the math and realized the conversion was off- she was charging more like $40, not the $25 due.

But when I asked about it she insisted the exchange rate between Thai Baht and the U.S. dollar had drastically changed.

“We have the most up to date technology,” she assured me, smiling sweetly.

I was dismayed.  How could the exchange rate have inflated nearly 50% since we left Thailand this morning?

I persisted in asking how this could be, and she played dumb.

“I sorry.  English not good.”

We paid it, thinking confusedly that a government official would have to tell us the truth.

This was before I learned that in Bali, the concept of truth is about as familiar as a decent cheeseburger, which incidentally they can’t get right in Thailand either.

Fast forward a few minutes later, when my posse stood in line to get our passports stamped.

“It’s just not making sense.  Let’s go back and talk to a manager,” said my brother.

We had gotten good at maths on this trip, and the thing about getting good at maths is it makes you a passionate stickler for accuracy.

They saw us coming.  An expression of panic flashed across their faces, then disappeared under a mask of stoic smileyness.

A manager came out and began the back-and-forth with my brother.  He adamantly insisted that we were wrong, their exchange rate was accurate, and there were no hidden fees!  Does this sound screwy to you too?

Finally he broke down under my brother’s bull-doggedness.

“Okay…see, we try to profit, so we make up exchange rate here,” the government official said without a shred of shame.

“Thank you for finally being honest,” my brother said, much too nicely in my opinion (I was the fuming pit bull in the corner of all this).

“Can we pay in Indonesian rupies and get a better rate?” my brother asked.

The manager said yes we could.

But then the other officer, the one who first lied to me, smiled tightly and said, “sorry, the money is already absorbed into the system.”  (Suddenly her English was perfect.)

They had successfully scammed us.  We had not left the airport yet.

As we walked away I heard them giggling at us, triumphant.

Our next stop, literally, was a grocery store outside the airport.  We bought water.  The beaming vision of innocence behind the counter gave us the wrong change back.  We returned and she pretended it was a mistake, fixing it immediately.  Hmmm…was it a mistake?

We continued to get “the wrong change back” at every single 7-11 we visited for the next two days.

7-11!

The government!

Dunkin Donuts!

The places you depend upon to give your life some semblance of meaning.

We were getting cheated left and right.  And it was getting exhausting keeping our guard up.

Much harder to bond with the locals and have the feel-good experience every backpack traveler craves!

And we’ve been here for 3 weeks.  And every city has the same non-morality.

But then, love.

I titled this blog post cheat, cheat, love because even when a people are trying to use you so ruthlessly and constantly, there is still the opportunity for compassion.

As I mentioned before, the Balinese were occupied by the Dutch for 350 years!  Can you even imagine what it would feel like to have your society suppressed for that long?  It makes sense that they would see tourists as an outsider to rob from.  They are trying to even the score.

Plus, we don’t know what kind of propaganda the Balinese are being fed by their televisions.

I suspect there is a lot of anti-tourist sentiment encouraged by their media.  It’s us-against-them sort of thinking.

There is a feeling of a thick wall between tourists and the locals, and try as we may to penetrate it and bond, they only seem to extend a certain type of temporary friendliness aimed at your pocket book.

But happiness is a state of mind, and there is still much to enjoy here.

At the moment I am enjoying a deliciously warm breeze, and in a few minutes I will be jumping into our deluxe pool, a glittering blue crystal under coconut palms.  The food is inexpensive and fresh.  And they have street monkeys!

However, I would never recommend Bali to anyone, unless perhaps their ideal vacation is a tourist-packed beach and a high-rise hotel.

Ooh, just thought of some other things you should know.

• When tourists try to cross the street, cars don’t stop.  They speed up.  They slow down for locals.  Creepy, yes?
• Hardly any locals go swimming or surfing in the ocean.  We found out why.  They have an abundance of deadly sea snakes.  They don’t tell this to tourists though, who are fed dreamy surf/snorkel tourist packages.
• We have had several locals swear there are no snakes on Bali, despite statistics that testify Bali has one of the world’s highest number of deaths by snake bite.  Admitting the truth would be “bad for business.”
• It seems the entire society believes that “profit” is the most important aim when relating to a tourist.  Although you occasionally get scammers in Thailand it is not nearly as organized and consistent as Bali!  Even their ATMs are designed to squeeze extra charges out of you.

What is the business lesson from this?

Uh…try gratefulness for how business is run in America.   I had taken it for granted, the honesty of American business.

You could call this the I Love America Tour.

Also, although I have not visited other parts of Indonesia, I am guessing there are some great parts to it.  I don’t know.

But I do know that if you take a small island that attracts millions of tourists every year, you will also attract a swarm of cheaters.

Despite all this, we are having an enriching time.

It is all an adventure!  I have been riding a big wave of books.  And you know the old sayin:  reading a good book outside, in lovely weather, slightly drunk, is one of the greatest joys in life.

Also a place where, somewhat comically, restaurants hold on to their brand like its a slippery fish, out of control, doing back flips in the dirt.

What follows is a mini case study of restaurants’ branding in Bangkok & Chiang Mai.

But first, let’s talk about the food.

Coconut milk shakes.  Papaya, watermelon and bread fruit in the morning.  Fishy, oily Pad Thai tossed in a wok before your eyes, served with a side of green onions, red chili flakes, a mound of white sugar and lime.  Constant self-seasoning options.  $1-3 a meal.  Sweat inducing spicing.  Mama mia!

Then, after 2 weeks of stomach upset, suddenly your will demands Western food.

You find yourself day dreaming of swimming in cold oatmeal stouts with a life jacket made of cheeseburger.

The restaurants know this, which is why almost all of them offer “Western” menu options.

Branding trap #1:  Undermine your brand by trying to do it all.

We quickly learned, when a Thai restaurant offers both Thai specialties and Western specialties, none of it is special.   In fact, it was a fast way of deducing whether a restaurant was worth trying.  Offering everything under the sun?  Forget it.

If your brand, your defining essence, is ‘Sporty Irish Pub in Bangkok,” what are you doing selling Thai dishes and Mexican dishes?  And why oh my goodness why do you only have Thai beer on tap?

However, there are exceptions.  We proved ourselves wrong after finding a drool-tastic British restaurant that did offer Thai food too…we stuck to the Brit fare, which was so to-die-for we ate there 3 meals a day for a stint…Fresh baked bread, steaks with melting compound butter and peas and garlic potatoes for $4, buttery pie crusts, thick-cut bacon and rare, non-instant coffee.

Sometimes you are lucky to find a wonderboy chef who really can excel in several cuisines.  But not often.

Also, it is worth noting that our fantastic British find was not a particularly successful restaurant, despite the unusually high quality cooking.  I believe this was because of the weaknesses in their branding, namely the watering down of their British food specialization by offering Thai food as well, and their failure to grasp their rightful claim as one of the only restaurants in town offering good British food.  This leads me to…

Branding trap #2:  Don’t specialize enough.

Okay, so you offer Western food, but what kind?  Hilariously, I saw my first “Canadian specialties” heading on a menu the other day.  Right on!  I shudder to think what Canadian food might entail, but I commend the effort to specialize.

Specializing is important because it means you are good at something.

So why don’t more Thai restaurants specialize?

My assessment is, the Thai people of Bangkok & Chiang Mai are living in a hectic world that rattles at such a high-speed pace, there is little time to catch up on cultural understandings, like, what “Western food” really means,  and how a cheeseburger is in fact not a combination of pork patty, fried egg and hot sauce.

Also, the temptation to dilute a brand can be enormous, in any business.

We are all guilty of it.

In the case of Thai restaurants, their temptation stems from a hurried greed to catch the business of any Western tourist passing by.  They aren’t thinking.

If they were thinking, they would start asking tourists, “What do you eat back home?   What are you having a hard time finding in Bangkok?  Is this cheeseburger accurate?”

Here is what I would say, “Hells bells I need a cupcake.”

I swear, it would be a gold mine for a Bangkok baker to specialize in cupcakes with butter-cream frosting, then publicize it to all the U.S. popular hostels.  They are nowhere to be found.  You had me at cupcake.

To recap on the food bit,

If you want great Thai food, go where the locals swarm.

If you want great Western food, good luck!  But beware of places offering multiple cuisines.

To recap on the branding bit,

Specialize, highlight your specialization in your branding, and don’t be tempted to dilute your focus.  Remember, branding is about consistency, consistency, consistency.

What I’d like from the comments:

What have your own experiences been with brand dilution?  Observations?  Temptations?

What is the food you would miss the most if you were living in Asia?

~

Cheers from Indonesia!

In Thailand you see everything from hardware to dental floss to flights being advertised by submissive, beautiful Thai women giving the wai.

At first it is cute.  Then seriously redundant.  Then disturbing.

Imagine in the states, or whatever country you are reading from, if everything was advertised by Barbie.  Wouldn’t it creep you out?

Here are the many problems with Thailand’s overuse of sweety-pie pretty girls in advertising:

1.  It is not a true picture of who Thai women are.

We had all our money and passports stolen by a family including two Thai women who were obese with missing teeth and pig eyes.  I had a second robbery attempt by two middle-aged Thai women who were neither beautiful nor submissive.  There are punk girls, tomboys, and lesbians.  The point is there are many types of Thai women but the advertising represents only one.

2.  It teaches Thai women that they should be submissive and pretty.

This is pretty sick.  Do we all agree?

3.  It continues the cycle of sex tourists coming to Thailand to abuse Thai women.

The advertising capitalizes on what draws in millions of Western men each year:  Thai prostitutes.   My impression after being there for 30 days is, the Thai people don’t care.  They don’t care that families regularly sell their daughters to be whores, or about the disease risks.   Of course, this is just my impression.  I hope I am wrong.

4.  It gets old.

When everyone selling something advertises with a billboard of pretty Thai woman, nobody stands out.  It is bad for business.  Using a different image, a different approach, would just be plain smart for making your business stand out.

5.  It supports racism.

Yeah.  Did I mention the models are white-skinned?  No dark-skinned models allowed.  This is also supported by the cosmetic industry in Thailand, which tells women that dark skin is unattractive and pushes the use of “skin lighteners.”  As the dark-skinned Thai women are of certain descent, this qualifies as racism in my mind.

….

What I’d like from the Comments ~

Tell me what you think of all this business.  Surprised?  Outraged?  Have you seen other countries fall into similar advertising traps?  Or maybe you had an experience in Thailand you’d like to share.  Do tell.

~

Amy

Massage in Thailand deserves more than one blog post for a couple reasons:  Firstly, it’s a major business here.  Secondly, it’s one of the main ways I’m spending my time, so opportunities for business analysis (when I’m not drooling on my pillow getting my owies pummeled out) are boundless.

Let me take you back to my last post about Thai massage, when I described the difficulty in choosing a masseuse from hundreds covering a few blocks alone.

How does a masseuse make her mark and convince people to choose her?

How do you make your mark and convince people to choose your business?

One way is through social marketing:  Your service is linked to a social cause.

In Chiang Mai, Thailand, we noticed that our guidebook mentioned something about the women’s prison offering massage, with the money earned being allocated for women who will be released in the next six months.  The rates were reasonable.  ($5/hour)

What a lovely way to spend the afternoon!  Get a massage, and know the money goes towards a woman who’s getting a new lease on life.

But maybe it sounds scary?

I admit that when she leaned on my hip-joint pressure points to the point of excruciating pain, the thought crossed my mind, “Is her mean streak coming through?”  Even perfectly good girls have moments of reverting to past, bad behavior.

But actually the girls were sweet.  Like, strangely sweet. They were skilled as all hell.  And I have to admit, having the uniformed prison warden in the same room supervising the whole thing was a bit of a thrill. 

Signing off in S.E. Asia,

Amy

By a surprising marketing method…

It was quite a remarkable experience for me.  My background in professional singing has imprinted on me a fascination with the human voice.  But never have I heard it employed as irresistible marketing quite like this…

In Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and I assume most cities in Thailand, the massage therapists sit on their front stoop and call out “Massaaaage?” whenever they see a farang (foreigner).

They elongate the word “Massage,” curling the tone upwards at the end.  It can sound like a soothing siren call, or it can resemble the buzz of a mosquito, depending on the quality of the voice and perhaps unfortunate abundance of nasality.

I picked my first masseuse because she sang to me.

In Bangkok, we saw this common, unremarkable massage parlor with the regular therapists sitting on the stoop.  Something, maybe the hot pink decor, grabbed my eye, and I was further drawn in by the price (equivalent to $4/hour U.S.)

But it didn’t look like anything special.  We were about to walk away.

They handed us a menu, gave us the regular “Massaaaage?” line, drawn out and lazy-like.

But then they gave us space to decide, which was really nice.  Most of the time they stare at you and it gets all pressure-y.

Give your customers space to think over your offer.  They will appreciate it.

Then, as we tried to come to a decision, she began to sing.

Slowly, softly, deeply, the little masseuse sang the word “massage” over and over with hypnotic rhythm and increasing warmth.  I felt myself becoming soothed, reassured, lulled.

With her voice she was promising, this is a safe place, a place where you will feel wonderful and comforted and healed. We will be good to you.

Then I went in for the most mind-blowing massage of my life.

You don’t have to sing to your customers as this Masseuse did, but it is important to make them feel comfortable and safe in purchasing your product or service.  In healing professions this is especially important.

By this I mean the *average* graphic design seen in print ads, television commercials, billboards, etc. 

It was prettier, smoother, more appealing.

Then, steaming one day on a Bangkok train, I allowed one such graphic design-pimped commercial sweep me away…a commercial for Mister Donut.

Now, I feel confident in proclaiming that donuts are one of the most unromantic things in the world.  They’re fried, they’re bready, they’re police fuel…

But this commercial’s sophisticated graphic design convinced me that Mister Donut is one of the most romantic things…ever.  It is THE place to take your sweetheart for a classy, top-notch date. 

Mister Donut is a fast food chain. 

The question now is, if graphic design can change my mind about donuts, can it change the world?

After a week in Thailand I’ve realized that what happened that first day was no random event, but the typical way of street business here.  

In between whiffs of fish sauce, hot rain downpours and sucking up sticky sweet drinks, I must have lost my street smarts.

Here’s how I got scammed:

I was trotting along with my posse when we collided with an impeccably dressed gentleman.  Impressive, crooning excellent English, he introduced himself as a Malaysian ambassador.  He asked us where we were heading.

“The royal Palace,” we said.

“Oh no,” he exclaimed with complete confidence, “The palace is closed today.  Buddhist holiday.  “Where else will you be going in Thailand?”

“The islands next,” we shared.

“Do you have your plane tickets yet?”

“No,” we admitted.

Then he began his schpeel, warning us about scams at travel agencies and how we should only go to the “government travel bureau.”  We could get there for free on the blue tuk-tuks, but not the red or the yellow tuk-tuks, which were not to be trusted.  (A tuk-tuk is a marvelously dangerous buggy without doors, which races and weaves through smogged-up traffic).

Then the distinguished Malaysian “official” whistled to a blue tuk-tuk driver, who happened to be hovering 10 feet away…

“Take my friends to the government travel agency,” he instructed.

The tuk-tuk driver bobbed his head, ushered us into his death cab, and we gratefully bowed to our incredibly generous new friend before speeding away.

What came next was a wild ride.  This tuk-tuk driver was sharp and tough.  Seeing Bangkok this way, I cannot recommend it enough.

After 20 minutes of thrilling near-death, the driver screeched to a halt before the “government travel agency.” 

We walked in to see an unassuming white dude sitting behind a counter. 

“I’m from Vancouver. We’re neighbors!”  He oozed.

For the next two hours our Canadian neighbor tried to sell us on tour packages that ranged in the thousands of dollars.  He was nice enough, but when we asked about it being a government travel agency, he squirmed and shifted.  When we asked if it was a Buddhist holiday (the excuse the Malaysian official used to divert us to shopping) he played dumb.  Later we found out it was indeed not a Buddhist holiday, and that this is a typical part of the scam.

When we turned down his travel packages, he got weird and guilt-trippy.  I couldn’t believe how persistent this guy was, to the point of embarrassment.

I quickly discovered that in-your-face persistence is the regular way of conducting business in Thailand.

One of my posse finally caved and bought some travel stuff, but not nearly the amount this Canadian pushed for.

Later we read about this exact same popular scam in a local magazine.  In short:  Someone poses as an official, tells the tourist that their destination is closed due to a Buddhist holiday, redirects the tourist to a shopping destination or in this case a travel agent, and offers a free tuk-tuk ride (the tuk-tuk driver gets paid off and the person posing as an official gets a cut of whatever we buy from the travel agent.) 

The Canadian was in on it. 

Clearly he has submitted to the way of doing business in Thailand.

As much as we felt betrayed, we also had to laugh at the experience.  Today, one week later, our senses are sharpened and I doubt we’d fall for the same act! 

Sadly, it was right before we realized it was a set-up that one of my posse said, “See, they’re not all out to take advantage of you.  This inspires me to be more trusting and open.”

But even though people are daily trying to screw me over, I’m not taking it personally.  I enjoy detecting the mischievous smile that creeps into their cheeks when they lie to my face, and if I do the exact opposite of what they recommend, I usually win.

Reporting from a dreamy tropical island on the Andaman Sea,

Amy