I am not one for giving out travel advice, but have you ever considered just how safe your room safe is?
I have lost count of the number of times I have booked into a room only to find the previous occupant has left the safe locked.
And nobody knows their code. It’s easily solved though because after a quick call to reception somebody you have never seen before turns up with an override key, opens it up, shows you how to set a new code and then disappears.
You might never see him again.
But, did you notice the important part of that last sentence? Override key. If this stranger can by-pass the previous occupant’s password then he can by-pass yours too. And everybody else’s.
Now, I am not suggesting, that in a half decent hotel, you are going to return to find your Rolex, or passport or toothbrush (that’s where I keep mine – I lived in Africa and Vietnam and know how resentful some of these little room cleaners can be) missing because if you do then there are sometimes ways to find out who has used a key card to get into your room and at what time.
Plus, it would be an obvious theft and so the hotel will call the police, although you will have to prove you had a Rolex in there in the first place. And that’s not going to be easy.
More Travelers Tales – Albert Jack: Your Man in the Orient
However, if you, like most travelers, also have fifty to one-hundred thousand baht in cash in your safe then don’t be surprised if at least part of it has gone missing when you count it.
It will never be all gone, that’s just not subtle enough.
But it is possible that as often as you are dipping into the pile, to peel off a few thousand, somebody else may well be doing exactly the same thing.
And you will never know. Because you don’t count it every day.
You will never notice how that one-hundred-thousand baht became ninety-thousand. In your room and in everybody else’s room around you too.
That safe in your room is not as safe as you think it is. – Albert Jack.
