spottycatz - re it being my fault - yeah it must've been that "hassle me" sign i was wearing on my back :-)

mr twister - yes, been all over the country. mi wife's from Kingston so i've spent time there. it's been about 10 years. maybe it's not actually gone downhill in that time but it's just me getting more and more tired of it. true, the overt hassling disappears outside the tourist areas, but the "take care of mi" culture seems to be pervasive. if you're the white guy, you are expected to pay for everything & it's perfectly fine for even the most remote acquaintance to aks for tings. ("hey, nice cellphone, can you buy me one?" "nice kicks, can i have them?"). one of my theories is that the tourism-based economy has led to this, because the source of wealth is it literally falls out of the sky with the tourists and you grab what you can get. rather than something to be earned with hard work. i'm not that widely travelled worldwide, but i've visited a couple other countries with similar per-capita income as Jamaica and have not experienced this.