stolen life

So my friend essentially had her life stolen this past weekend. We went to Koh Samet for the weekend, an island approximately four hours away from Bangkok. We had a good time on Saturday, just sitting on the beach and relaxing. On Saturday night we went out to the bar at the beach. I ended up going to bed around 2, but some of my friends stayed out later. A couple of them decided to go swimming in the ocean, so they left their stuff on the beach and went into the water. They came back about ten minutes later and everything was gone! (Yes, they realize that it was stupid and the fact that it was a completely avoidable situation makes it all 100 times worse).

My one friend only had his wallet taken, which had some cash and a debit card, so it wasn’t really a big deal. My other friend, though, had a bag full of pretty much everything. She hadn’t wanted to leave it in the hotel room, because the only lock on the door was a small padlock, so she decided to take it with her so that it wouldn’t get stolen (ah the irony…). In her bag she had some cash, credit cards (which she was able to cancel immediately) her passport, her digital camera, her cell phone and her debit card…and that’s not even the worst part. She had just got her debit card a few days earlier, and still had the PIN in her purse. This hadn’t been an issue a few days earlier, because she hadn’t had any money in the account. On Friday we got paid, though, so she had 52,000 THB in her account, which they drained immediately. 52,000 THB is approximately $1500, which is a large loss in Canada, but a much bigger loss in Thailand (52,000 THB is the amount of money that some people in Thailand make in an entire year). Her Canadian debit cards were also in her bag. They were not able to get access to those accounts, but that means that she can’t even take money out of her Canadian accounts, so she really has nothing. Obviously, we have been lending her money, and it’s not problem, but it just sucks having to constantly borrow money from people.

She went to the police station on the island, which was pretty much a joke. She said that there was one rusty jail cell in the corner, and two guys sitting in the back with no shirts on, just hanging out. They spoke a little bit of English and couldn’t believe how much money she had had stolen (the guy who she was talking to actually called his friend over to show him how much had been taken). They wrote a police report, but pretty much told her that nothing would happen and that they would probably never find any of her stuff. One of our friends who speaks Thai called the stolen cell phone a couple times last night and left some messages for the thieves and basically said that Allah is watching them and that their dead ancestors would not be happy. This kind of thing really scares Thai people because they believe very strongly in kharma and ghosts and things like that, so she figured that if she can’t get the stuff back, she might as well scare the thieves a little bit.

We have also decided to think positively and we have decided that her purse was stolen by someone who actually needed the money and that now a family is eating well and all of their kids are going to school. Probably not the case, but it makes you feel a little bit better about the situation.

Other than the horrible ending, the weekend was actually quite good and my face is quite sunburnt right now. We met some other people from Canada, which is always fun, and had a good time. We heard that apparently a typhoon is supposed to hit Bangkok today, but it is 2:30 in the afternoon and the worst that we have seen is some drizzling rain. I know a bad typhoon hit Hanoi, Vietnam yesterday (which is where we were originally going to take our two week vacation…sure glad we changed those plans!), but I haven’t really heard anything more about it hitting Thailand. Oh well, I live on the 20th floor of a concrete building, so I’m not too worried about my own place, but that would definitely do some damage to a lot of the homes in my area of the city.

I should get back to work, since I am technically getting paid right now. Hope all is well back home!