Missing Purse

We took the night bus which left Chiang Mai around 8:30pm and got us into Bangkok around 6am. The bus was surprisingly comfortable as I was able to sleep just about the whole trip. You've already heard Evan's thoughts at 3 a.m. in a previous post, so you know what he thinks. When we got off the bus Evan handed me the blackberry to put in my purse (I'm in charge of money, credit cards, the bberry, passports, tickets, etc and he's in charge of finding us good places to eat and our daily itinerary). I was in that still sleepy state until I realized that I didn't have my purse and must have left it on the bus. I ran back to where the bus had parked, but it had already left (it had only been about 3 minutes).

Going into panic mode I ran into the information office and told them what happened. They had Evan stay there with our bags, and I went with a guy who quickly put me in the front seat of a bus and sent me away with a non-english speaking driver. After driving about 5 minutes he pulled into a parking lot and pointed at my bus. I hopped out and found the bus attendant and she informed me that she had found my purse and left it at the ticket window at the bus station.

She had a guy help me cross the fairly busy road and bring me back to the station. My purse was there with all the belongings intact. Woohoo! Then I went off in search of Evan. Since they had driven me away from the station I didn't know what terminal we had started in and nothing looked familiar. After 15 minutes of searching I finally asked someone for help at a different information booth. He spoke some english, but not enough because he kept asking where I wanted to go city wise and didn't understand that I was looking for Evan. So then I decided to tell him the story of how I left my bag on the bus and they drove me away to get it back. I showed him my ticket and he saw the office where I had gotten my bag back and took me back there. He must have thought that I had lost a different bag or something was missing because when we got there he told the lady that I was missing something and she thought I was accusing her of stealing something out of my purse so she started yelling at him and pointing at me.

By this time I was getting very frustrated because of the language barrier and to make matters worse the information guy left and told me to figure it out with the ticket lady who spoke even less english. Luckily she was smart and got on her cell phone and started making calls. After 3 or 4 calls she finally handed over the phone to me and there was a guy on the other end who spoke perfect english. He asked me what was wrong and I told him the story and when I mentioned that I was missing my husband he said, "Husband? Not a bag?". Yes!! Then I handed the phone back to the lady and he relayed the message and you could just see the light bulb flick on over her head. We were finally getting somewhere! She made another phone call to find out what terminal we had arrived in and had another lady point me there. This terminal was 3 terminals over from where I picked up my purse and I had to walk through a hole in a fence to get there, so I don't think I would have found it by myself. Evan and I had a tearful reunion and hopped in a cab to Bangkok.