What do you want to question today?

So on the way back to India, we took a taxi form our hotel, President Solitaire Hotel & Spa. On the way the weather turned stormy and there was lot of lighting. The taxi driver made me switch off my mobile phone. I guess he believed mobile phone attract thunder bolts. Not a good idea to offend a taxi driver while in his cab on a highway away from city and in middle of pouring rain.

On arrival at airport, we paid up, gathered our luggage, checked in and soon found ourselves in line for passport control counters. It was then I realized that my phone was missing!

Panic!

First, breathe and do not try to imagine all the disasters that can happen when you mobile office is lost!

We left the queue immediately and tried to figure what to do. As we had just checked out, we got the hotel number form the invoice. My wife called them up. She remembered the person at the gate had noted the taxi number.

They asked us to continue the journey and they will get back to us on email if they recover the phone. In the meantime, I checked at the point we alighted the taxi. Asked the cops who were controlling the traffic and they asked me to talk to Lost+Found.

In the meantime, my wife was done talking to hotel on her phone (Thanks to Airtel’s international roaming that actually works!). We checked with Lost+Found. He just said he had not received any lost iPhone.

Almost giving up, we walked towards the passport control counters. My wife wondered if we should give our flight information to the Lost+Found counter. In case someone does find it, he will be able to contact us. We walked back to him and he suggested we talk to Tourist Police in the airport.

So we went to the office on Level 2 of Suvarnabhumi Airport. We approached on of the officers on front desk and told her the whole story. Within 5 sec that followed, I realized that if there is a scope of the iPhone being returned, it will be.

She asked us for the name card of our hotel. We showed her the invoice. She called them up and started collecting information. Fw minutes in the conversation she confirmed wit us if we had contacted the hotel. I told her that they had noted the taxi number. She replied with a short, sure and authoritative, “Of course they will!”

In the meantime, another office came and gathered other information from us. They asked us to identify the taxi color from a booklet. This helped them identify the company. Another one took our number and asked if it was Thailand or India SIM. She called up the number and told us it was switched off. I told her about the thunder storm and all that. I was handed a form and by the time we had it filled, the first office came to the front desk and said she was able to track the taxi and had called the driver. He acknowledged finding the iPhone and was on his way to airport to drop it. She asked us to pay him the fare for this trip.

Breathe!

While we waited, she called up the airlines office and told them about our position. As we were close to boarding time, the airlines asked us to stay at Police post as it will be easy for them to trace us.

The driver showed up just in time. He handed me the phone and I handed him the fare and some extra.

The whole staff clapped as I thanked all of them and the driver. I think it was mostly for the driver for acknowledging he had found the phone.

While we ran to our gate, I clutch to my phone hard. It was, probabaly first time in my life, I saw real police work.

To the  Thai Royal Tourist Police, a big Khob-kun-Krub!