Issue No. 594
Travel
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11 - 17 July 2002 Issue No. 594 Travel |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Travelling safely
Keeping your wits about you when you're away from home can prevent a holiday from turning into a disaster, says Jenny Jobbins
If you have a black belt in Tsin-yi you can go and make a cup of coffee now and rejoin this article a few paragraphs on. The rest of us may need some help with protecting ourselves. Living in Egypt, which is one of the safest countries in the world to travel in and where personal attacks are almost unheard of, can lull one into a sense of universal invulnerability. "Abroad" can be tougher.
Click to view captionLooks good -- but what lurks under the surface? In all aspects of safety, preserving one's body has to be the first concern. Martial arts adepts are trained to be spatially aware: they are as unlikely to be hit by buses or trip down flights of stairs as they are to be mugged. You, the average person, should not risk any such mishaps unless you are covered by generous travel insurance. Stairs are there to trip you up, while handrails also have a purpose: use them. In New York you are forbidden by law to fling yourself in front of a flow of traffic, so why do it in Istanbul or Tehran? (In Cairo at least they try to miss you.) Remember what your mother taught you: don't walk along dark alleys, don't brush up to strangers and avoid eye contact with dogs.
I firmly believe everyone owes it to him or herself to take a self-defence course. Being rather too busy myself, I asked a Korean master for a few tips. Here's what he told me, and I pass it on in the hope that you, too, will never need to apply them, but will walk the streets with more confidence now you know what to do if the worst happens. Both the moves he recommended involve pinching and twisting a very sensitive part of your attacker's anatomy with the thumb and forefinger: the first place is the skin between the upper lip and the nose, the second (rather more deeply) the skin on the inside of the forearm, just below the elbow. Try it, pinch and twist at the same time -- it's extremely painful. There is a third defence move, but everyone knows that one.
While you do any of these, scream. A scream will startle your attacker, release and increase your energy flow, and might conceivably summon help.
I once tried The Scream in Saigon when a passing motorcyclist paused at the kerb in front of me as I was about to cross a road and grabbed the gold chain round my neck. There was no way he was having it: I caught hold of his wrist and, with a loud yell, gave him a basic Tai-Chi push with the same hand (I was holding my camera in the other). He let go as, to my surprise, both he and the bike keeled over. The smiles and solicitude of the crowd in the street helped soothe my battered nerves, and I walked away feeling like Superwoman..
Physical safety has another side. Obviously you shouldn't take risks with food hygiene: wash fruit, avoid salads, drink bottled water. If contamination doesn't get to you, microbes will: if your body lives with the germs in Bangladesh it will almost certainly sicken when it arrives in London, so go easy on strange foods when you travel and don't go in for a radical change of diet.
Personal safety is one thing: possessions can be easier to manage. Airport shops sell excellent gadgets with chains you can attach to parts of your person, so thieves and pickpockets will have to resort to kidnap to steal anything. You should be as aware of what you are carrying as you are careful of your person. Make sure you know how many handles you are holding so you don't leave a bag in a taxi. Even so, everyone learns the hard way.
I'll never forget one terrible evening when, at dinner in our hotel in the Malaysian resort of Penang, I suddenly remembered that, after dressing, I had left my small jewellery case in the room. Too polite to leave the table and check (while it was probably at that very moment that it was being snaffled), I waited until dinner was over before running up and finding, as I feared, the case gone and the room not made up -- a sure sign that the maid had pretended not to enter. I went in search of the mole security chief, an ex-police officer who, one of my nosey children had earlier discovered, was disguised as the barman. I related my problem over a stiff Mai Tai; he told me to search every nook and cranny, and if it wasn't there to make a list of the missing things and give it to him at breakfast the following morning. The list was enough to put me off breakfast, hotels and holidays for good: a lovely moonstone ring from the Khan Al-Khalili, my grandmother's diamond engagement ring, a string of baroque Gulf pearls. The barman was aghast: what was I doing on holiday with all this stuff? After breakfast, he drove me to the local police station to make a statement. This took an hour and a half: back at the hotel, he asked if he might come up to my room while I made another search. Now it was my turn to be cross: didn't he believe me? Hadn't I been through enough? But, wearily, I complied. As he and my husband watched, I searched through suitcases and drawers, and found the case, contents intact, tucked under a pile of T-shirts.
Much later I learned what had happened. The hotel management had hired the ex-detective to put a stop to a spate of thefts, and he didn't want his job to be the only one on the line. At the start of the day, he had summoned the entire staff and told them I was going to the police station and would be away for some time: while I was gone, the jewellery must be returned in my room, and if it weren't the entire staff would be dismissed. As he intended, there was enough time for the culprit to go home and get the goods. The strategy worked. I got my rocks back, and the thefts stopped.
Now when I go on holiday the rings and the pearls go away too -- to the bank. All I take is a few rings I never take off and earrings pulled from Christmas crackers. It must work -- I don't look rich enough to be mugged, and if the plane I'm on is ever hijacked no one will mistake me for a dot.com millionaire, or even a member of the bourgeoisie. Which reminds me... at airport check-ins, do find out exactly when you must reclaim your bag. Please don't assume it will automatically be transferred to your next flight... but that's another tale.
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