Ooops...

Even the most experienced of travelers encounter little snafus once in a while. Here is our tale:

Craig and I booked a tourist bus from the Koh San Road area of Bangkok direct to the pier from which we would take a boat to the gorgeous island of Koh Samet. 20 minutes into our journey, while stuck in Bangkok traffic, I reached into my carry-on bag for my I-Pod. When I could not find it (I emptied the contents of my bag on Craig's lap), I immediately looked for Craig and my passports, which I also kept in a special pocket of my carry-on bag. They too were missing.

"Oh %*^@, Craig! Where are our passports and my I-Pod?!"

"Are they still in the safe in the Bangkok hotel room that we checked out of an hour and a half ago?"

Yup- that is exactly where these important (and expensive) items were.

I ran to the tour bus organizers and attempted to hurdle the language barrier to xplain our situation. Could we turn the bus around? Nope. Could I hop off the bus, cab to our Bangkok hotel, then cab back and meet the bus at its next stop? Negative (no more stops until the pier three hours away). Well, what can I do?!?!?! We are in the middle of Thailand without our passports!!!

The bus organizer let me use his cell phone to call our hotel. After a while on the pheon with our Bangkok htoel front desk personnel, we ascertained that indeed my I-Pod and our two passports were in the safe of our hotel room. Craig and I felt better immediately upon confirming this (at least we knew for sure where the items were!).

Now, how to get the items to us...

Koh Samet is east of Bangkok, as is the airport. We didn't intend to return to the city of Bangkok at all before departing for Australia, and we especially had no intention of returning to the Koh San Road area, which is in the western part of the city riddled with traffic.

Could the Bangkok hotel mail our things to our Koh Samet hotel? Yup!!

We gave the Bangkok hotel our Koh Samet resort contact info (and our credit card number). Upon arriving in Koh Samet, we explained our situation to the personell at our hotel. They seemed to understand that we were expecting a very important package the next day.

Well, at that point, there was nothing left to do but hope for the best in terms of the Thai postal service being efficient, so we turned our energy to enjoying the gorgeous resort in which we were staying.

The next day (Tuesday), we took a boat trip around the island of Koh Samet and to visit neighboring uninhabited islands. We snorkeled and swam and enjoyed the view and the boat ride. In the evening, we took a walk to watch the sunset over the water, had dinner at our hotel and played Scrabble on the veranda overlooking the water. While Craig was in the midst of kicking my patootie in Scrabble, our package was delivered. What a relief!

It ended up costing us the equivalent of $2USD and 36 hours without our passports in our possession. A little snafu indeed, but a problem solved quickly solved!

So, now we are in the land of "No Worries" and we will indeed double check the htoel safe before checking out :)