F-the-Middleman
I just came back from a 3 day trekking with no electronic devices. No pictures taken. Completely disconnected.
Lessons from it:
- I didn't miss anything significant
- Did me a lot of good (mentally)
Though I got to realize that I probably spent 3 to 5 times more than if I bought at the source.
What mainly disgust me is that the locals don't make much. All the money is taken by the middlemen a.k.a booking agencies (scammers, liars, profiteers). I am using strong words because the industry itself is a Lemon's market. Any existing booking/travel agencies is incentivized to be rogue when it is difficult for the tourist to get "good enough" information.
Let's say you are in location A and want to book something in location B. You will inevitably spend less if you get to location B and get smart about your purchase.
If you get preyed upon and scammed. All the middlemen in between will take cuts. Jacking up the prices to the moon. They really don't care. It is a one time transaction. You are only a tourist. And actually the best scammers will make you pay 5x - 10x more by cash, take most of the money, dump the deal (whatever you're buying) onto other agencies down the food-chain and give the breadcrumbs to the poor locals. What you end up with is an almost emptied wallet and probably a shitty experience.
If you got scammed though, don't waste your time asking for your money back (I vehemently did, even to a Tourist police). Your complaints will fall into deaf ears.
That's why I am excited about blockchain technologies and decentralized applications. With them we can scale economic activities and human communications. In a few years, we won't have any reasons on why we would put up with a middleman.