2 Children tried to scam/rob me in Shkodra

I am a tourist from Germany and was supposedly almost robbed today.

I was trying to get a to a river in Shkodra. I couldn‘t really find a way to get there so i just kept going through small villages/suburbs until i reached a road leading towards it behind what looked like a trash dump. When i reached the riverbed it was full of trash and i tried going more upstream since it looked clean there. Thats when two kids (i suspect around 7 and 15) saw me, waved at me and came towards me.

The small child essentially ran towards me and hugged me and i immediately felt uncomfortable. He then asked for money (they both looked very poor). I was stupid and thought i should give them some since they could really need it. I gave them 200LEK but the small one kept asking for more and the bigger one had now also arrived and asked for money but not in a begging tone, more demanding. From there on i knew what was going on. I was carrying some bigger bills on me that i didn’t want them to see so i put away my wallet and tried to leave while the bigger one tried to hold my arm and the small child stole a snack i had in my outer bag pocket. I shook them off and kept walking until the bigger one stopped for a second and turned around. I was scared he was pulling out a knife and took my chance to run as fast as i could. When i ran past the trash dump i realized it were in fact scrap metal houses…

I saw that they went back there and didnt run after me so i was only scared they would get a bike or something and chase me. I jogged as fast as I could and never saw them behind me again…

I learned my lesson, that im not giving money to people that get this close and demanding and that i should pay more attention to my surroundings… No more scrap metal hut "ghettos".

After that i got a delicious hot chocolate from a nice woman in a cafe though and processed everything before i kept hiking as i had planned :) What would you have done in this situation?