Looking to come home from a trip and tell a great story to wow your friends with a tale of some criminal separating your property from you? Well, you’re reading the right words. This step-by-step guide is your one stop for knowledge about what to do to make the crooks take notice of you enough to hold you up at gun or knifepoint.

While The Expeditioner can’t guarantee you’ll get mugged abroad, anyone who follows these stops consistently for any length of time while traveling is just begging for it.

1) Get Drunk and Walk Around Aimlessly

Muggers are the original opportunists. They work in very high-stress environments and the last thing they want is a difficult target. They rarely say things like, “I’m going to rob the next person to walk past this doorway I’m hiding in.” Rather, most like to feel things out and wait for a sure thing. They trust their gut, and if their gut tells them that you’re wasted, expect trouble.

2)  Don’t Worry About Being Self-Aware

You know how a good book can transport you into another world causing you to forget everything in your immediate surroundings? Yeah, thieves also know this. It’s the best way I know of for getting that backpack just inches away from you on a park bench lifted. But they probably need it more than you do, right? So go ahead, lose yourself in your Kindle or iPhone or Netbook or 50 Shades of Gray. When you return to the real world (yawn), you will have fewer things to worry about.

3) Roll Like A Pimp and Make It Rain

Travel is a great opportunity to send the clear message to the rest of the world that you have more wealth than they do. Things that normally wouldn’t impress people back home — like flashing large wads of cash — go a long ways in countries where two Benjamins is what some families earn in a month. This is another surefire way to make the pickpockets and muggers and stabbers notice you. Just remember this easy rule: Flash your cash to make the muggers dash.

4)  Ask the locals

Guidebooks and the internet are great resources to find out which neighborhoods you should visit when you want to be robbed, but they aren’t as great at giving you current information such as, “Only recently have people started getting robbed in that neighborhood north of the park between the hours of 9 p.m. and 3 a.m.” Try asking someone who lives there where you’re most likely to get robbed and then take an unmarked cab there late at night.

5)  Trust Everyone

Some people go through their lives wondering if they should trust people. They think that just because they met Rico Suave, with his black leather jacket and shady eyes behind a dumpster in a dark alley, that they shouldn’t trust him when he says he knows a great coffee shop that he’s happy to lead you to. These same untrusting people will likely also go through life without ever feeling the rush that comes when Rico Suave pulls out a knife and borrows their camera indefinitely.