I was talking to Wayan, a local person here today in Sanur and somehow the topic of getting ripped off came up. I said, yeah - we got ripped off by someone in a position of authority and it ended up costing us about 10K. That person did that to a bunch of people - her superiors caught her and transferred her to another department. Wayan deals with foreigners a lot and said he hears that all the time. Most people who've been around a while have some story like that. Locals have them too. Our visa agent got ripped off twice by visa agents in Java when he was trying to get a visa to go to US - first time for $2500 and next time for $1500. Then he gave up trying to get to US. Wayan said it made him feel so bad to hear stories like that, embarrassed him. I said that we were even more embarrassed by the behavior our homeland. I also told him it's still way cheaper to live here than back there and at a higher standard of living. But there are trade-offs.
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