Lost my wallet today!

Lisa has just been paid and so I decided to get some of the things that we need for the house, like a washing machine, a big fan for the living room, a water cooler - not exciting stuff but we need it. So after dropping the kids off at school I jumped into a taxi and asked him to take me to Tesco Rama. Armed with Lisa's ATM card I was gonna spend.

As I got to Tesco Rama I took out some money to pay. The taxi driver faffed about with the change and asked for another 20 baht so that he could give me 50 baht change, and that's when it happened. I got my wallet out, passed him the money, put my change in my shirt pocket, picked up my umbrella, and got out of the taxi.

I walked into Tesco and realised that something was wrong. I rushed back outside but he was gone, nowhere to be seen. A sickening feeling washed over me - I have never lost my wallet before, ever.

I walked home, and thought about all the things that I would now have to do. Once back at Bangkok Garden I headed for Customer Services and told them what had happened. I popped back up to the apartment, got our bank passbook (Lisa's pay actually goes into a savings account rather than a current account) and headed back to Customer Services. The girls there were great - they cancelled Lisa's ATM card for me, contacted the Taxi company's lost property, told me to go to the local police station and wrote out some instructions in Thai for me to give to the police.

Returning to our apartment I logged onto the Internet and started to contact our British bank and credit cards to cancel them.

Next I got into another taxi and headed to the police station. The reason for visiting the police station is that the bank will not issue a new ATM card without a police report. Now a Thai police station is a world apart from a British police station - for a start there are policemen there (anyone who has been to Chichester police station will know what I mean), as well as the TV going full blast and the cycling machine in the corner. When I got to the front of the queue it transpired that as the ATM card was Lisa's then she would have to come in.

To cut a long story short, Lisa and I trudged back down to the police station and then the bank, and got everything sorted in the end. But this time we took along Lisa's Teaching Assistant, Usa, who is Thai and did all the talking for us.

At the end if the day nobody has used our cards (yet) and we have only lost about 2000 baht in money. What is annoying are the non-monetary things that I had in the wallet - pictures, the receipt for Lisa's engagement ring, my Spotlight card (can I have another one please?).

So tomorrow I will try again to spend some money, rather than lose it. And now I have to buy a wallet as well - they've got some 'real' Gucci ones up on Sukhumvit Road for three quid....

Posted on 1 October 2003.

Back