It’s time to talk about a subject that’s a bit ugly, but an important one if you’re into the kind of things we do. That subject is crime, and specifically its sub-category: scams. If you grow up in a nice western city and come from an honest hardworking family, chances are you’re surrounded by decent honest people who normally avoid ripping off their neighbors, stealing, and the like, and you don’t think too much about being scammed on a day to day basis. It’s also natural to develop a world view that most people generally are this way, which is to say you assume people are good until proven otherwise.

The sad reality we’ve learned is something quite different, a fact that’s punctuated on a voyage like ours where we’re frequently in vulnerable situations, operating with an information disadvantage due to our inexperience in a place, and an easy target for unscrupulous types, where we find ourselves frequently defending ourselves against scammers and petty criminals. The most common ones are police and border officials who are professionals at putting us in very difficult positions thanks to their uniforms, and then offering us an easy way out… we find corruption in all shapes and forms, the examples too numerous to list. Money changing scams are another common one – if the advertised rates look too good to be true, we assure you they are. Petty theft from the boat also is not uncommon, but quite easy to prevent with some caution. Pick pockets are prevalent in some places but not others, and children are better at it than adults. Needless to say, our old assumption that “people are good until proven otherwise” was not one that served us well over time, so we abandoned it some time ago.

So here we are talking about this in Singapore, one of the most developed and modern cities in the world, and a place where one might let their guard down for a few days knowing you’re back in the first world where “most people are good”. That was our attitude as we went shopping for a new Samsung phone in Singapore’s Sim Lim Square, essentially a full sized shopping mall exclusively for electronics stores. So we picked a Samsung merchant, negotiated a $515 price on a Galaxy Note, then paid by debit card. The merchant then offered to register our warranty with Samsung, which requires us to sign the warranty documentation (we’re told) and return in 20 minutes once he’s completed the registration… our critical mistake at this point (besides not reading the warranty docs) was failing to be suspicious when he asked to keep the phone with him for the registration procedure. We returned 20 minutes later to find a surprise new $860 invoice for “warranty and registration services”, which we apparently signed up for in tiny incomprehensible text on page 3 of the 5-page “warranty registration doc”. We immediately insist on canceling, at which point they refuse to cancel and insist on the additional $860, and then also refuse to return our new Samsung on the grounds we’re indebted to them. With five employees now present, and the “contract” in our hands, we refuse to return the “contract” until they hand us our phone. And when we try to leave the store, we’re predictably tackled, the “contract” is ripped in half, and we escape the scuffle with half of the “contract”, no new phone, and $515 deducted from our checking account. We call the Singapore police for their help, and besides from their advice to “never shop in this mall”, and providing a case number along with a few words of sympathy, their ability to do anything useful is entirely blocked. Live and learn.

The rest of Singapore has been pretty much as advertised. Nice hotels, ultra modern transit systems, an amazing skyline, some ridiculously priced restaurants, and high-end shopping malls that are the nicest we’ve ever seen (and where you get to leave with actual products once the transaction is complete). So we leave another country with a bittersweet taste in our mouths and will be heading into Malaysia just a tiny bit more skeptical of human nature than we were a few days ago… we’re alert to a trend forming and are lowering our general expectations of humanity accordingly.

We used to take a lot of things for granted about how the world works before taking up the nautical lifestyle we’re now living. Buying an iPad, filling up the car with gasoline, or switching on an air conditioner are examples of things we might have done without thinking too deeply about what made them possible. We just do these things knowing that a few dollars will be gone from our bank account, and if we can keep the dollars flowing, so too will the iPads, petrol, and cold air. But that’s a simplistic and ignorant way of thinking about commerce, and things are really much more complicated than that. The reality is that we (westerners) mostly occupy a position at the very endpoint (the consumption end) of a long and complex commercial chain. Resources are first mined or harvested from the ground, then made into consumable products, packaged and shipped half way around the globe, and delivered to us for automatic and almost mindless consumption. Our experiences at sea frequently reveal this more complicated reality, we peek behind the curtain and see how the world really works, and again realize the narrowness of our own ways of thinking about the world.

Since leaving Borneo almost a week ago, we’ve spent most of our time at sea, moving a fairly large distance across the Java Sea, then across the southern part of the South China Sea. Yesterday we cleared out of Indonesia and made our way around the tiny island country of Singapore on our way to Malaysia’s port of entry, which sits just across the narrow channel separating Singapore from Malaysia. This 10 hour hop took us through perhaps the most heavily trafficked commercial shipping lanes in the world. As we crossed shipping lanes and rounded the Port of Singapore, dodging every imaginable type of commercial ship, we felt a bit like a baby chicken crossing a busy interstate freeway. And as the countless ships passed by, each one broadcast its own interesting story, quite clearly visible by its shape, features, flag and labels. Oil tankers, car haulers, cargo ships, natural gas tankers, and earth movers all went about their routine business, each carrying out a vital role in making the world work the way it does… too far up the commercial chain for us to ever bother thinking about until now.

The rest of the crossing here from Borneo was largely uneventful, which is exactly what we’re always hoping for in any of our sailing passages. We’re arriving here in the southwest monsoon season, so we’ve been getting a fair dose of foul weather as we move further north, but nothing we haven’t seen before, and so far none of the nasty 60 knot “Sumatra” squalls that this region is known for. From here on Malaysia’s southern tip it’s an easy drive across the causeway into Singapore, and the public transit system there is supposedly some of the world’s best. So so we won’t miss the opportunity to pause here for a few days of exploring Singapore before making our way up the Malacca Straits and diving into Malaysia.