Originally Posted by chinook79  I have done multiple SEA, from budget backpacking to luxury travelling. I spent many nights on $5 hotel as well as $1300 a night Villa with private pool and butler. After years of travelling in both style, it is really budget backpacking style travel that I enjoy the most. When you are travelling in luxury style, you are missing out a lot on their cultures, and as a matter of fact, I can't tell difference whether I am in SEA, or Caribbean as the bed you sleep in, food you eat, people you see are basically same.
However, when you travel in budget style, you would naturally be out of "safe" zone and experience a lot more. Safety should always be everyone's #1 priority as if something goes wrong only once, that could as well be end of everything.
As for bribing police, I had few run ins at Mexico(I know, not SEA) and Thailand where they stopped me for nothing and asked me to pay "fine" in cash to them immediately.
Particular offense they put on me in Thailand was not having proper international driving permit. I actually did have valid internal driving permit with me when they "fined" me for not having it, and they claimed that it is not valid despite it clearly stated on the license that it is permitted to drive with it in Thailand. Naturally when I argued with the cop, he just says "no English" and demand to pay immediately. Despite trying to reason with the cop, the situation didn't get better and I could sense annoyance and tension building up. I ended up paying the "fine" and got out of the situation before it got any worse. After that day, I did quite a bit of research and found out that paying the bribery was the best decision I made as there were cases where corrupted cop put some travelers in jail for years without properly providing any reasons.
Philippine is my next planned destination. Although it is not my first trip, it will be my first backpacking style trip. Naturally, when I did some research, I came across many articles about their corrupted cops. Just earlier this year, police captain in Philippine set up a kidnap ransom cases which ended up getting the kidnapped businessman killed at the end. This was not an isolated incident, and as a matter of fact, many countries advises you to contact their embassy in a case of any altercation or involvement with the cop immediately and let the cop know that your embassy is aware of your situation and expected to be in contact next day. This is to reduce chance of you being jailed for crimes you did not commit for years in some situation or being extorted for "bail money". |
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