Lost

My eyes nearly fell out of my head when I read on Friday in My Paper (the English first half of it) that 42 million bags were lost at airports around the world each year and never found, and about how thousands of lost bags were auctioned off. Lost. Is that number equal or less than all the souls in the world lost forever each day? Pastor Mike used to give us the statistics in his sermons. They were mind-boggling.

Then a few days ago, I got some disturbing comments (already deleted) from one of these lost ones to 'leave Cambodia alone' or some such thing. 14 million (2007 estimate) lost in their false worship? Sure, there are less Cambodians than lost luggage but no, we're not going to leave them alone. You leave me alone if you don't like when I write here.

Lost. My first trip to the Philippines nearly became my last. Yes, it was due to my lost luggage, and Pastor Paul remembered what happened very well even though it was in Sept 1999, and he would relate the story often. I too remembered what happened very well... at least the important bits, and it taught me a lesson to always keep an eye on my stuff in airports.
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We were returning to Singapore after nearly 3 weeks all over the Philippines, and we flew from Bacolod City to Manila in the early morning. With lots of time to kill till our international flight at around 2pm, we went to a cafe in the airport for a very long lunch, and left our luggage standing outside the door.

I'd forgotten what sort of lunch I had. Or the conversation. However, I remembered the people who were at the next table - they were rather noisy and there was one oldish Japanese chap surrounded by a few local ladies. I couldn't see them er... him clearly because they were behind me and my seat and it would have been too obvious if I kept turning my head to look, but the others at my table had a good view of them.

They finished their merry-making and left, and a little later, we also made our way out of the cafe. And that was when I discovered that my one piece of luggage was not there. It had been kidnapped! The other interesting thing was that there was another piece of luggage, which looked rather similar but not exactly similar to mine, standing in its place. Wahhh, so my luggage was not only kidnapped, but substituted!

I am sure that all you parents out there, if you find your child missing and another similar-looking one waiting for you in his or her place, you won't say - oh well, no problem, and bring the new child home with you. By the way, that looks like a good plot for a new Hollywood movie.

Well, we looked over the suspicious substitute, and although it was locked and had no name on it, we concluded that it must belong to that Japanese chap, who must have been very distracted with the company he was keeping (and probably going to say farewell to). After all, he was the one who left a little ahead of us, and the cafe was quite empty. Pastor and I took the bag and hurried to look for the flights bound for Tokyo while the rest of us went to check in for our flight home.

It was true, there was a flight bound for Narita airport, Tokyo, about half an hour before ours. The ground crew at the airport tried their best - they took the abandoned, substituted luggage, went on board the Tokyo-bound flight to make announcements - who does this belong to. They came back to me with the abandoned one to say no one on that flight claimed it. What! Oh! It's not mine anyway, I'm not going to check it in to bring it to Singapore! Goodness knows what's in it!

We had a similar scenario during my last trip - flying home from Bangkok three weeks ago, the ground crew were making announcements to look for one person, but that person never owned up. And so we sat with our boarding passes, and the crew went down the rows, looking at each boarding pass again and again - checked by different crew members at least four or five times, and the flight was delayed for hours before we finally took off. Perhaps it was due to luggage problem.

Back to my first Philippines trip - I flew back home without my luggage, because the plane wasn't waiting for me to go scrambling into all the Tokyo-bound flights to go after the elusive Japanese chap. There wasn't anything important in it anyway, so I looked on the bright side - no need to do laundry. Can go shopping for more new clothes. Three days later, I got the call from our airport. Luggage had returned from Japan (which I'd never been to) and would you come to claim it? Waaah, so smart... you mean it went on a free trip for three whole days, and was able to come back on its own?? Waaah, I was very impressed with both Narita and Changi airports.

Whatever happened to that Japanese chap and whether he got his left-behind luggage sent from Manila to him or not, I couldn't care less. He didn't have his name or address on his bag while I definitely had mine properly marked and labelled so mine was able to be identified and returned to me. If he couldn't prove the one standing stranded in Manila was his, or if the ground crew couldn't be bothered with it, perhaps they had auctioned it off. It would have saved a lot of trouble, though, if he hadn't been dreaming of his lady friends on the plane while he was still in Manila.

Anyway, I'd been to the Philippines a dozen more times after 1999, and I'm still using the same old bag which got kidnapped and went to Tokyo. I always checked it in, although it's possible not to if the airlines are not too strict with its dimensions - it can pass off as cabin-sized. And I seldom get travel insurance. Usually I forget to buy any. Well, I haven't had any more experiences with lost luggage despite flying several times a year, thank God. If it does get lost again, I think I won't say sayonara too quickly. I hope its first experience will be beneficial and it will know how to catch the right flight home the next time.