Friday, October 06, 2006

Kuala L'impure

I can't pretend I wasn't warned about this because it happened to almost all of my expat colleagues here. I have been briefed many times. I heard many stories. But it was meant to be, I guess: I have been victim of bag snatching last Thursday night :-(

After a great gathering at Guilhem's I gave a ride back home to a friend living in the opposite side of KL. She sat behind me on my motorcycle while Marie was following me on hers. It was around 2a. As I just got my new motorcycle I don't have the rear fly case yet so I don't have a place where to put my handbag. So I dropped it in Marie's motorcycle front basket, along with her purse.

We have had a very good evening at our friends place. We were happy. We felt comfortable and secure in this district of KL we know well. So we didn't act especially carefully. There was not much we could do anyway: two guys riding on custom bikes came from being, snatched our two bags and flew away. For a sec I thought about chasing them, but I might I put myself in much bigger trouble, not even mentioning the risk for a car accident.

Content of the bags:
  • our two wallets, including several hundreds of ringgits, 3 credit/debit cards
  • one digital camera + a 1Go flash drive
  • two cell phones
  • Marie's eyeglasses + my sunglasses
  • two international driving licences which happen to be not renewable from overseas
  • my Malaysian motorcycle licence which I had obtained the very same day!
  • and last but not least: the keys to our apartment
So there we are, in the middle of the night in KL, with no money, no ID, locked out of our apartment, and in the urge of finding a way to cancel our credit cards...

We filed a report at the police station until 5a. We called an overnight locksmith who tried to took advantage of the situation and asked us an insane price to open our door. So we sent him back to his bed. We ended up waking up a friend (thanks again Jerome!) in order to sleep two hours before waking up with the dawn to call the real estate agency for a spare key. Couldn't get a hold of them, so we finally borrowed some cloth from Jerome (yes, Jerome, the tall guy... almost 2m long! We looked funny...) A quick shower and let's look fresh for an intense workday which ended up for me in the late evening... What a day!

I won't let this happen ever again!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh man, that really sucks....I hope you are alright... I mean i know you are, but how about M.? Hopefully the passport are safe. Now it is time to fins a way of killing someone for that trouble. Hum. And by the way, gimme some pics from the i-m-not-jerome-but-i-wear-his-clothes
Was he the only one to answer hos phone at 5am? And one piece of advice, change your lock. It only cost 80RM. And it is worth t he troubble.
Big up you too.

Anonymous said...

Tu n'est pas seul au monde...

http://raffleswaffles.blogspot.com/2006/10/its-all-gone.html

Remi said...

Haha, no picture of "i-m-not-jerome-but-i-wear-his-clothes", but we have a dessed up housewarming party going on next Friday, funny pictures expected ;-)

I checked out your Friend's blog: he mentioned he saw ruthlessness in the thief eyes... I didn't see ruthlessness, but a lot of self confidence and ... entertainment. I feel they were having fun all the way, and that they didn't have any doubt they wouldn't succeed in snatching us... Which drives me even further mad than just ruthlessness!