That errant State Department tweet, explained

But the problem wasn’t so much that the tweet was offensive but rather that it was clumsy and lacked context. That said, the advisory was well worth making. Here’s why.

Most Westerners traveling abroad need to be aware that they could be targeted by scammers, men and women who are expert in the art of separating tourists and business travelers from their money. This happens in the West too, of course, but it’s taken to another level in various parts of the developing world.

I encountered more than a few would-be scammers during a week in Nairobi and Addis Ababa last month. One particular incident stands out because it was related to exactly what the State Department tweet warned against — being lured into buying expensive drinks.

One day while strolling around Addis Ababa, an Ethiopian man approached me and started to make small talk. He told me his name, “Jon,” and said that he had seen me around my hotel. He was friendly and I was open to chatting, in part because I was doing some reporting and wanted his opinion on a few things. But mainly I just wanted to get to know the city and its people, and I wasn’t going to do that by keeping to myself or turning down invitations to talk to locals.

I asked Jon some questions about the city and about the best places to visit. He then invited me to stop in for a beer at a nearby bar. Why not, I thought. But this was also the point when my guard started to go up a little. I made a point of being aware of exactly where I was and how I could get back to my hotel.

Once we ducked into the bar, I became more suspicious as the beers came without me having ordered them from a menu. It was a special “honey-beer,” I was told, that I would enjoy.

He also told me that its Ethiopian tradition for the visitor to pay for the first round. Looking back, this is where I should have gotten up and left. But I didn’t want to be the “Ugly American,” so I stayed.

But after a few minutes, a half-dozen young women strolled in with open bottles of beer. Apparently, I was expected to pay for their drinks too. I knew that I wouldn’t be paying, but my hosts didn’t know that yet.

I was told that all the girls were studying at the university next door (fashion design, of course). Then they started to dance and a couple of them began complimenting me and asked if I was busy later.

By this point, I had said that I needed to leave. Just then, an older women walked in with a bill that came to the equivalent of about $60. This confirmed to me that I was being scammed. A beer in Addis Ababa would usually cost the equivalent of $2 or $3.

I told them that I would pay for Jon’s drink and my own but that was it. I gave them the equivalent of about $10 and started to leave. They were pretty adamant that I pay the full bill, but I wasn’t having it. “We can do this the easy way,” I said, “or we can do this the hard way.” I walked out and that was it.

I was lucky. Google will provide you with plenty of other examples of Americans being scammed while abroad. Many are quite heart-breaking.

My twin brother, Jordan, has spent a lot of time in developing countries on four continents. In Cuba, he quickly learned to be very skeptical of the men who approached him with a friendly “How are you, my brother?” and offered to help him in some way. This happened almost non-stop in the countryside.

And it didn’t take him long to realize that the beautiful young women offering their hand in marriage or other things were not interested in him because they had fallen in love at first sight but rather because they were looking either to get paid or for the fastest way off the island.

In the Phillipines, a local friend pointed out all the middle-aged Western men walking around arm in arm with who they thought were beautiful young Filipino women. The surprise would come later as they discovered that most were not women at all, but effeminate (and very convincing) men dressed as women, whom locals refer to as “he-shes.”

The key, again, is always to be hyper-aware of one’s surroundings and skeptical of people are overly-friendly or solicitous.

But it’s hard because, when traveling abroad, it is important not to be closed off to the people and places around you. Being open to people and experiences can be very rewarding.

Not everyone is a scammer. In most of the developing countries I’ve visited, I encountered people who went out of their way to show me around their cities, to give me a sense of what the people and history are like. This has happened in Tbilisi, Georgia, Nairobi, Kenya and other places, but especially in Addis Ababa.

A young woman there befriended me and spent a fair amount of time showing me out-of-the-way restaurants, museums, old churches and other sites without expecting anything in return. I was skeptical at first, and people who saw us might have wondered whether a financial transaction had been involved.

But there wasn’t. In fact, part of the reason she volunteered to show me around was that she was proud of her culture and heritage and was impressed that I would travel there to experience it.

This baffled me as a Washingtonian. We D.C. locals generally regard tourists as something between a nuisance and a menace. Things were much different in Addis. My new friend was willing go out of her way to show her culture to someone who was willing to go out of his to encounter it.

Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner