We headed back to Phnom Penh for a couple of day to wait for our flight out to Bangkok. A place called Lakeside Guesthouse which is built on the water. I jammed out a few tunes at a local cafe with a lovely couple from Germany / Ireland to celebrate Saint Patricks Day even though we forgot all about it.
The next day we flew to Bangkok and stashed our bags there so that we could go shopping. The place was called Chatuchak and we picked up a few small gifts for the people back home. Whilst there we were very careful of our bags because we knew it was a great spot to get robbed. Even so after being distracted for a total of 5 seconds we looked down at our bag and found our wallet had been stolen out of our bag. It was done so professionally we didnt feel or see a thing!
This was a totally scary experience. Everything starts running through your head like: "Oh no we wont make our Canadian entry deadline and will have to come home", "We will forfeit our flights", "Oh credit cards will get emptied of money". A bit of disciplined thinking was in order, so after calming down we had the locals assist us in getting to the police station and having our statement taken. This helped immensely in getting new emergency travel documents sorted out. The locals were SOOOO helpful and nice, they even offered us 500 Thai Baht which is equivalent to 2 days wages - very generous, but we declined. So we had to stay in Bangkok whilst it was all getting sorted out - and hopefully paid for by insurance.
We were so demoralised initially, but after a couple of days of plain sailing, and staying in comfortable accommodation, watching cable movie, we started relaxing again. The New Zealand Embassy was really helpful, especially Cameron who was a kiwi expat. Our flights all needed re-scheduling and luckily didnt incur any rebooking fees.
Finally we jumped on a plane to Hong Kong and knocked on the door to the apartment at 11:30 pm at night. Poor Andrea she was still waiting for us when we arrived.
We had a great 2 days whilst in Hong Kong. Lauren's cameron broke day on the last day as we exited SE Asia. Lucky that it was the end of our trip, but kinda unlucky given all the other things that have happened all at once. We took this into the local agents who gave us a transferable warranty for Canada. Then we got a few other necessary gadgets - Hong Kong is the best place to buy cheap good quality electronics.
Andrea and Kris took us for two wonderful dinners in Hong Kong. This was really a step up from any fair that we had treated ourselves to in SE Asia.
We got up early at 5 am in the morning for our flight to Vancouver. We had a couple of connecting flights in between and each time we got held up for a couple of hours because of our unusual emergency travel documents. Annoying, but at least they checked out OK and we were able to board with no real problems.
