Safeguarding Valuables

If the accommodation has a safe – use it. If not, lock your valuables in a suitcase and keep the key with you.

True Story:

On one of my expat assignments we had a bloke who was a real know-it-all pain in the arse. He couldn’t be told anything. When every new employee arrived they were briefed on travel safety and security and were given the hand out which spelled out all the potential problems. He and his wife went on holiday and ignored all the advice [because he knew better]. In the first two days, whilst they were relaxing on the beach with cocktails, some nefarious local characters walked into their room via the unlocked patio doors and helped themselves to their:

– Wallets / purses containing all their cash, credit and bank cards;

– Passports;

– Mobile phones;

– Everything else of value;

none of which was in the safe where it should have been.

This effectively left them with nothing. They had not scanned their passports, travel insurance, tickets etc. They had not registered with the nearest embassy, they did not have bank telephone number separately to advise of stolen cards, that was in their [missing] phones.

They couldn’t pay the bill because they had no cash or cards. They couldn’t call the embassy to report their passports stolen because they hadn’t taken down the details nor pre-registered first.

They couldn’t notify the insurance company because they hadn’t taken a separate note of the phone number and their policy.

The hotel allowed them to use the phone and call a family member to pay the hotel bill [it was huge].

They found the number for the nearest embassy on the net but it took days to get through on the phone. There was not an embassy in the country that they were in but a neighbouring country where they would have to get new travel documents. But they couldn’t get there because they didn’t have passports to cross the border. An embassy official had to bring the documents to them and they had to pay his travel costs.

Then they had to return to their home country and obtain new passports. Then obtain new visas for the country we were working in for the project. That whole process took 2 months – without pay.

The bad guys had already rifled all their accounts. They got the money back from the bank but it took a long time and a lot of pain. Much of this could have been avoided if they had followed the travel advice and not ‘known better.’

Tips:

– Scan your passport data page and any important current visa pages and e-mail them to your private address. If your passport goes missing, you can access your e-mail account from any internet terminal in the world and print off a copy to start the replacement process;

– Scan your itinerary and travel insurance and e-mail them to yourself for the same reason;

– Scan all your cards, the entire contents of your wallet and if ever it goes you have a record of all the cards and numbers you have safely in your e-mail account;

– Keep a separate record of the phone number of your insurance company and your bank for reporting cards missing whilst you are overseas;

– If you don’t know your important phone numbers off by heart, record them somewhere else [maybe write them down and e-mail them to yourself];

– Register with your embassy on-line