I’m actually surprised Tim Ferriss goes through such lengths to explain how he ‘cleverly’ identified the scam… Being told ‘We were approached by art students’ is more than enough of a tip-off.

The difficult thing when traveling is finding the balance between healthy skepticism and openness to people approaching you. For me, it’s a constant struggle. I start off at ‘China level’, and slowly mellow out when nothing bad happens. It sucks when you think of how you might have turned away someone who was genuinely interested in talking to you… But the alternative is spending a fortune of your limited money, so I prefer to err on the side of caution. In the case of the art student scam, it’s not so much the money that’s the problem, but the difficulty in getting rid of the scam artist, who really latch onto you.