Global Mendicancy

I was always considered a softie because of my ‘promdi’ ( I come from Davao City) upbringing. No street-smart Hong Kong kid would worry about bringing leftovers to poor people or dropping coins into a beggar’s cup.

I toughened up after my first childhood visit to Mainland China in the 1980s, when urchins clung onto my ankles outside Guangzhou’s train station. “Just keep walking,” my parents said. “Don’t look at them. Don’t say anything. Don’t move your hand near your pockets or bag.”

To this day, I never give money to Hong Kong street people, as many are reportedly controlled by triads with a knack for taking advantage of the disabled and geriatric, mostly from the Mainland. These victims are placed on busy street corners, where they sometimes bang their foreheads on the ground in the traditional gesture of subservience. At the most, I’ll drop off some basic food, like fruit or buns, which at least they can eat and not pass to their “bosses”.

Most awful are the “fake monks”, beggars who don robes and shaved heads, and roam the posh bars and eateries of Hong Kong’s Soho and Lan Kwai Fong areas, hoping that foreigners won’t know the difference. Not only are they dishonest, but they also give real Chinese monks a bad name - the last thing they need right now.

Hong Kong is one of Asia’s more affluent, and therefore relatively beggar- and hawker-free, cities, but they are still there, e.g. those annoying Tsim Sha Tsui fake-watch people.

What to do? How do other travelers balance being safe and not being cheated, with not being totally heartless? Do you bargain down to the last dollar with an obviously impoverished vendor? Do you give a bit of money after snapping a shot of that beggar with your expensive digital camera? What has been your worst experience?

Occasionally, I’ll get a really good local guide who will do more than drive me to tourist spots. Recently, I had the pleasure of traveling with Gede around Ubud, Bali. He redid our schedule so we wouldn’t be at the Gunung Batur volcano lookout with all the other tourists (there’s a mobbed buffet lunch to avoid), and also warned us about the aggressive hawkers. He said they were getting so bad that some guides were reluctant to bring visitors to see the volcano at all.

In Bali, they are gentler than their counterparts in parts of India or Thailand, but I still don’t like it when I feel a strange hand touch my arm, or when people crowd around so I have to make a concerted effort to ignore them. Both here and outside the beautiful Tirta Empul temple, we were followed by cries of “One dollar! Everything one dollar!” Bali’s Kuta beach was worse. Gede had the same advice my parents gave me 20 years ago. It might seem rude to ignore someone who seems both genuinely friendly and needy, but it’s worse to encourage them by oohing and aahing over their sarongs or wood carvings, and then not buy anything. Having to shoo them away after wasting their time and getting their hopes up would be ruder, and harder.

Easier said than done. One colleague told me about being mugged in India… by a monkey. An American friend was pursued so aggressively by desperate girls in Hong Kong’s red light district that he had fingernail scratches down his arm. Travelers aren’t even safe while seaborne. In Vietnam’s Halong Bay, a lady with a young child rowed up to us in a dingy and tried to guilt us into buying overpriced bananas.

I’ve never been robbed in countries I visited in Asia (knock on wood — and that’s more than I can say about New York), but my most disturbing experience happened one evening in northwest Beijing. We were getting into a taxi when two young boys grabbed hold of the open car door. They looked to me like western Chinese migrants and were in rags. They did not touch, threaten or talk to us; they just hung onto the car with one hand and motioned for money with the other. The driver inched the vehicle forward and looked to me for guidance. We drove slowly along, hoping the kids would jump, but they clambered onto that swinging door for dear life. Should he drive faster? No. I did not want to encourage kid beggars, or whatever adult had sent them out there, but I didn’t want them to be killed on the side of a dark highway either. So I gave them a wad of small bills from my pocket. (There was no way my wallet was coming out).

Francis