Is this the Ultimate Touron?

So I am sitting in the pizzeria which is my regular local base for “work”.

Or, more accurately, that mixture of social media, gibbering quietly at the parlous wifi and jabbing at the Google Analytics reload button* like a starving lab rat that mysteriously displaces my actual work for, y’know, clients, while I await my spawn’s return from school…

Anywise. I am working. Or consider myself to be so, anyway.

So when a chap comes up to me and asks “Do you speak English?” I am not entirely welcoming.

“Err, yes,” I say.

“Can you help me get some money out of the ATM?”

“Which ATM?” I say.

“The one up there.” He points.

“That one? Just select English as the language when it offers you the choice between that and Indonesian.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” he says.

I am pretty certain that said ATM speaks fluent English. Or Indlish, at least.

“Well, if it doesn’t, try the one in Circle K. Same side of the road, round the bend, a couple of hundred yards,” I say.

He looks at me like a stranded puppy.

“Can you come with me and help me?” he asks. “I need to get some money out before I get my flight. The travel agent said I should take it all out before I get to Sydney. I’m sorry to have to ask…”

I am a muppet when it comes to tech and anything mechanical, so have a degree of empathy with his plight.

“OK,” I say.

Now, Ubud being a safe place, and this being my local, I routinely leave my laptop and camera bag on the table while popping off to the loo or, for that matter, round the corner.

But this feels weird to me. The guy, who is 50ish, has a patterned shirt that isn’t a chain store shirt. He has blue tinted shades. He has a scrawny, strung out, hippie look about him.

And he’s Australian. He’s not some fat Mid-Western tourist fresh off the Eat, Pray, Love solo-friendly bus tour.

He’s not part of a group. He doesn’t have a driver.

If he has the nous to get to Ubud under his own steam, he should be capable of working an English-language ATM.

So I gather up my stuff, leaving only the bike helmet as a sign to the staff that I’ll be back to pay.

I walk with this guy to the ATM, an air-conditioned box which forces one into uncomfortable intimacy with one’s companion. “It’s Visa, right?” I say. “Both these take Visa.”

He endeavours to put the card into the slot where the receipt emerges.

“No,” I say. “The card goes in there.”

He tests it, tentatively. “Yep,” I say. “That’s the right way up.”

In it goes. A screen appears. “Select ‘English’,” I say.

At this point I am beginning to seethe a little.

As I look dutifully away for the geological time span it takes him to locate and enter his PIN, I am thinking of the deadline I need to hit, and how very productively I would be beavering away at it right now, right this second NOW, if only this muppet had not picked me, of all the people in the pizzeria, to assist him with his card travails.

“Now, do I put savings, checking or credit?” he asks.

“Ah!” I say. “That might be the problem. If it’s a Visa, they often like to treat it as credit. Check credit.”

“No,” he says. “It’s savings. I’ll check savings.”

“Ooookkkkkaaaaayyyy,” I say.

Because if there’s one thing I like more than dropping “work” to assist total strangers with basic life skills, it’s having my advice ignored when I do so.

The machine offers him three choices. I nod encouragingly as he tentatively, and agonizingly slowly, selects “Withdraw Money”.

The princely sum of 1,250,000 rupiah, or around 120 Australian dollars, appears on the screen.

“Is that what’s in my account?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “That is the amount this machine will allow you to withdraw in one single transaction. You can withdraw that amount again until you hit your daily limit on the card or there’s no money left in the account.”

He types in the number. All those zeroes are confusing, so I nod approvingly when he gets it right.

The machine spits out an enviable wodge of 50,000 rupiah notes. “What do I do now?” he asks. “Do I count it?”

I am cursed with a very expressive face.

I look like my Polish grandfather, and, like most Slavs, have features that are tailormade for a range of emotions from ineffable contempt to “pistols at dawn” by way of melancholy and bitter, angry drunk.

“What are you going to do if it’s wrong?” I say, in my best British English.

My face, meanwhile, is bellowing (in fluent Polish) “CRETIN! LET ME BACK TO MY VERY IMPORTANT WORK!”

“Ah yes,” he says. “Now how much more can I take out?”

“Like I said,” I begin.

I am by now at that stage familiar to all teleworking parents when childcare or school is about to end, bringing our loved ones back to us, and we count the toll that social media has wreaked on our productivity and search for someone to blame other than ourselves.

“It depends on how much there is in your account. It will let you take out 1,250,000 at a time,” I say, in a controlled manner.

He types in the number. The screen flashes up, in fluent English, “Insufficient funds in your account.”

“That means I can’t take out any more?” he asks.

I begin to wonder whether he is simply taking the piss. But it also seems, well, rude, to abandon him to the machine.

“You have either hit your daily limit for withdrawals or there isn’t enough money in there,” I say.

“How do I find out how much is in there?”

“You will need to ring your bank and ask them,” I say, by now so irritated I am enunciating like the Queen.

“There will be a number on your card,” I add. “Why don’t you try a smaller amount and see if it lets you have that?”

He types in 500,000, and looks at me for approval before entering. I nod.

The computer says no.

“Do you think I’ve taken it all out?” he asks.

My child can work a bloody ATM. Why can’t this man?

And why on earth did he pick me?

“I don’t know,” I say. “But you’re looking at less than fifty Australian dollars now so you can…”

I pause. A thought has struck me. “… You can take it all out when you get to Sydney.”

“Will it work in Sydney?”

I look at his card. It’s a Travelex Visa with an Australian contact number, among others, on the back.

“It should do,” I say. “But if you’re flying to Sydney tonight, what do you want Indonesian rupiah for?”

“Oh yes,” he says. “It’s not dollars, is it? But if I take it all out here, I can change it at the airport. I will be able to do that, won’t I?”

“Yes. They’ll change rupiah at Sydney. You won’t get the best rate…” I begin, then decide to drop the topic. “You’ll be able to change them, yes.”

“And what do I do about the rest of the money?”

“I really suggest you ring the number on the back of the card once you get to Sydney.” I point to the Australian number. “Then you can ask them to refund the balance to your account. Or, of course, you could just use an ATM and see how many dollars it will give you.”

“So I’ve taken it all out?” he asks.

I have had more lucid, less repetitious and infinitely more entertaining conversations while walking people around the garden to talk them down from bad acid trips.

I am beginning to wonder, what with the Bali Spirit festival and all, whether this might, in fact, be the root of the issue. The shirt is loud enough. And he’s of an appropriate vintage…

“I can’t tell you how much there is on your credit card,” I say.

“Why don’t you find out when you get to Australia?”

He thanks me so pitifully for my help that I feel a little unkind writing this.

But, as I head back and resume my work, with that crazed productivity which strikes as the school gates approach, I cannot take my mind off this guy.

And so, gentle reader. Your opinions please.

Scammer, with accomplice ready to lift laptop and camera bag should the table be abandoned for a second, but compelled to go through with the rigmarole and wind me up while he’s about it? Doubtful.

Acid casualty in need of some assistance?

Victim of a wildly inappropriate travel product?

Or the ultimate touron?

I honestly haven’t a clue.

*: Google Analytics magically tells me how many people are reading this site at any given time. It does lovely graphs, and pie charts. Provides elaborate content breakdowns. It is also the biggest time-suck after Facebook and Twitter for anyone endeavouring to work for themselves, wherever they are in the world.