In the Netherlands homeless shelters are free nowadays. The homeless people who tell you they need 80 cents for a place to sleep are lying. It used to cost a total of 4 euro per night, but it doesn't anymore. Those who tell you they can't get welfare because they don't have a permanent address are lying as well: they get welfare via an ingenious system of P.O.boxes set up by the state and cities. I honestly don't mind people asking me for money, but I hate it when they lie about the reasons for doing so.

Full moon parties in Thailand. Watch out for dealers who work with cops. They come up try and sell you stuff, cop comes out of nowhere. Asks for bribe or will arrest you. They then split money with dealer

If you ever fly in Bucharest and want a cab, demand from the driver to actually start the timer and pay attention to it's growth. If he snaps it(resets the timer to 0 without confirming the fare) when you reach the destination - don't pay. If he doesn't start it at all - don't pay or demand to start the timer. They will ask for a lot of money if they see you're a foreigner. Up to 10x the actual fare price.

These are mostly for tourist areas, but: In France, if someone asks you about signing a petition (especially in English!), mind your purse, don't make eye contact, don't respond, keep walking. Even just by signing your name, they could be pick pocketing you when you're not looking, or they can make a big scene saying you've pledged to make a donation, and yell at you till you give them money. In the U.S., don't take f*****g pictures with fake mascots. They will freak out if you don't give them money after, even if you give them money and they don't think it's enough. Seriously. I have seen these people smack around children. Plus their costumes are terrible.

Egypt. If you visit the pyramids, prepare to meet a ton of souvenir sellers who will charge you 10x the price that they will demand from an Egyptian. The best idea is to go to an established souvenir shop (there are many big ones) instead of those guys near the tourist attractions. Also, they can tell where you are from and will charge you accordingly. If you are White, you'll attract a ton of attention from them. Asians are usually completely ignored unless they approach the vendors.

I live in France. Paris is a very touristic place, so if you plan to visit the city, you should be aware of the scams ! First of all, don't buy souvenirs from people in the street : they often sell key rings (such as Eiffel Towers), little gadgets, sunglasses, bracelets... On a carpet on the floor. Ignore them. If you seem interested they will insist until you buy something. It may be cheaper than the items in the shops, but in fact those are poor quality garbage. Plus, the money is given to some mafia. Also, there are many thiefs. Don't act as a tourist and keep your things close to you, especially on the subway or in very touristic places (Montmartre, le Trocadéro...). Don't let your phone on the table of a café, if you are outside. Even if you stay right there. When you go to the Eiffel Tower, you may encounter young girls who practilly don't speak french, claiming they are tourists and asking for water : don't even talk to them, they often distract you meanwhile another person steals your wallet, cellphone, etc... They are very good at it. Same as "lost" children in the subway, who don't know where to go and don't really speak french. If you're not sure about it, report it to the persons working there (RATP, or the Police Ferroviaire).

I've lived in China for 9 months. A scam that I've heard about in larger cities like Beijing and Shanghai is that a student-aged person will come up to you and ask to practice their English. The supposed English practice will end up in a real tea/coffee house, where they will ask you to pay for said tea/coffee because they are a poor student. The tea/coffee is invariably ridiculously overpriced, which a tourist wouldn't know about. "Student" and shop get a nice payout. Someone tried this with me while I was in Beijing last month. After telling them I'd lived in China for awhile. I knew what was going on and had some fun. Played along until getting to the tea shop and looking at the menu, then said (in Chinese) "this tea is too expensive!!!" and walked away giggling.

I don't know if this is exclusive to America, but I get calls all the time from "Microsoft" saying that they have detected a problem with your PC, and if you sign on for them they can help fix it. Don't know what they get from it because I've never given them control.

Iceland: Don't buy the bottled water, unless you just need the bottle to fill it up as often as you like with all the wonderfully cold, safe and free water running from the taps.

America here, specifically North Carolina, but I've seen it in Texas, too. People will come up to you in the parking lot of a grocery store with a sob story about running out of gas on their way back home to a town >50 miles away and ask for money. They may also have a wife and kids who are very hungry. For some reason, they get upset if you ask to see their driver's license so you can see if their permanent address is actually in that town. I've only witnessed this one once, a dude was trying to trade a gift card to the grocery store we were in for it's cash value, even offering to let me check online/over the phone that the card was valid. Not sure what the end-game is, maybe hoping people won't actually check?

If you visit Chicago, beware of the scammers on the CTA trains that go around collecting money for their basketball team. Actual youth sports teams raise money through fundraisers like selling chocolates, not walking around the trains with a flyer. Plus most of the "kids" look like they are 20 and are never able to give believable information when asked about their team.

I'm from New York City. Taxi drivers here are HUGE con artists. HUGE. They will deliberately take the longest and most complicated route to get to the location. They will deliberately drive into the worst traffic and worst road construction in the city. The longer the ride, the more they get paid. My advice: Look at a map before you get into the cab. Figure out how to get there. Know the shortest route. As soon as you get in, tell him EXACTLY how you want to get there. If he tells you "Oh, this other way is faster", don't believe him. He is probably a big fat liar. Give him exact directions and don't let him give you any "suggestions." If he drives you into traffic, immediately get out and find another taxi, if possible.

Hollywood, CA. On Hollywood blvd. in front of the Chinese theater, the main tourist drag, there are guys who will hand you a cd (some will actually put it in your hand). Dont take them, they arent free. Once you accept them they tell you that you owe them $20. When you say no thanks and try to hand them back they wont take them and they demand their money and will get aggressive. You try to give it back and they put their hands up saying its yours now, pay me. If they put it in your hand dont close your hand, just let it drop and walk away. They will yell that you broke their cd and demand money but if you ignore them and keep moving they cant do much. If you do take one and they wont take it back place it on the ground at their feet and get out of there. They will sometimes cuss at you but so what, just go.

America. Fast food places usually ask if you want a large or super size drink. They also have free refills. Just get the regular size.

UK. If you ever visit London via heathrow, don't take the "heathrow express". It's a massive rip off: the normal tube (underground), which also runs to the airport is about 1/10th of the price, and only a couple minutes slower. In fact, it's faster if you're going to central / east London.

We got approached in Paris for the “gold ring” scam. There are a few variations of it, but the general idea is that the scammer approaches a person with a “gold” ring they found. When you tell them it’s not yours, they ask if you want to buy it. It’s obviously a worthless fake ring, so even giving them 5 Euro to go away is a “win” for them. In our case, the woman approached us with a men’s gold wedding band. She asked if it was mine. It wasn’t (wasn’t married at the time). She was insistent that she wanted me to keep it for “good luck”, so after like the fifth time, I said “OK”, took it and kept walking. That was my mistake. She flipped her s**t and caused a big scene...I didn’t give a f**k though, we knew about the scam. I wasn’t giving anyone any money for it. Only there are usually more than one person involved in the scam. So we found ourselves surrounded by four or five people claiming we had stolen her ring. I didn’t care. I told them we could all go to the police and sort it out, I wasn’t paying them s**t for “stealing” anything. A French couple approached us and went off on the group of them - in French - and the group dispersed fairly quickly. I did give the ring back, I was going to throw it into the water, but the guy that intervened shook his head “no”, so I just gave it back to the woman and told her to f**k off. The couple that chased them off never stopped afterward, so I don’t know what was said...or if they even spoke English. I felt like an idiot though for that happening to us. Especially since we knew about it in the first place.

In restaurants in Prague, Czech Republic if you speak English and require an English menu, be prepared to pay at least double the normal amount.

In the US, could be more, there is malware that can get put onto iPhones. It puts a message on safari whenever you try and access the internet that says "iOS has crashed, call this number" where they want to charge you $60 to "fix" your phone. Just clear out your safari history and you are solid.

There's that famous one where people ask you the time, and use that as a distraction to rob you. Fell for it in Barcelona, luckily nothing was taken and nobody was after me. In Paris at the Arc De Triomphe, me and my girlfriend taking a photo, man asks if we'll take a photo for him if he takes a photo for us. I nearly said yes then remembered, it'd be so easy for him to run off with my phone. So I said no, he didn't take too nicely to it. We'd agreed beforehand that unless a waiter or attraction worker offered to take a photo for us we'd refuse.

Portugal: The price that you will pay for the taxi right after you leave the airport will be really really high.

Flew from Europe to New Delhi to travel for a while. Arrived late night around 3am and struggled a bit to find a taxi without internet on my phone. Kind stanger greets me and offers me a relatively cheap ride into the city. I hop in and listen to funky Bollywood tunes while excited indians tell me how excited they are for me to travel India. They ask me to call my hostel to ask for directions, but since i had no internet access, they offered their phone and they would put in the number. So im calling my hostel and they tell me that there had been a terrorist attack in the city (taxi driver mentioned that earlier and even showed me videos on youtube), he wants me to go to a tourist office of a friend of his, so he can send someone to pick me up. Thats when things became weird. The guy in the tourist office tried selling me a trip to the north with a bus leaving in the morning, but at that point all i really wanted was a bed to sleep in, even asked to sleep on the office floor, but they guy insists it wouldnt be save... Fast forward i agree on a taxi drive to another town i wanted to go anyways, cant get money out of atms for some reason and finally run off to take a TukTuk to my hostel. Tuktuk driver tells me its not save and brings me to a 'save goverment office'. I tell my story and they confirm the story the other guys alreasy told me. Again they tell me the only option is a taxi to another town, so i take the deal, pay approx 250$ and fall asleep in a taxi on a ï hour drive to rishikesh. In rishikesh its boiling hot and i struggle to find a hostel. Asking around, nobody is able to help. Find kind foreigners that advise me to a close by guest house. I collapse in the room and sleep 5h. Wake up, turn on wifi, tell gf and family im ok and what happened. Check mails and read a mail from my hostel in delhi giving me heads up for possible scams in delhi. They explain the whole scam that happened to me and i start crying over how dumb i was to fall for that. During the night i had contact to around 10 different indians that all knew the exact same story and even though they didnt talk to each other were all on the same scam scheme.

Australia: everything you pay for might seem like a scam, it's not, everything here is just expensive.

I'm from the UK. For god's sake make sure you understand how the currency conversion from your country to ours works. I knew a guy who visited here and paid £90 for a short taxi ride all because the taxi driver took advantage of his ignorance in said situation. I can see this being similar across many countries but there are people out there who'll bet on you lacking knowledge in the money department; do your research, don't let them.