Comments

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  José Balido March 24, 2011 at 1:44am

  OK, I'm dense: I didn't get the underwear story, and some of you guys find it hilarious. Could you clue me in? Was it just a prank, to embarrass their cousin in front of his secretary?
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  Evelyn Kanter March 23, 2011 at 11:45pm

  Allan, the underwear mailing story made me laugh out loud, too.  

  Jose, love the RFID idea. I would put it on my house keys first.  They always seem to migrate from where they start a long trip to a secret location I can't remember when I arrive back home.

  My trick for not forgetting chargers is to plug-in the phone and camera batteries in the bathroom, which is more visible on that final obsessive-compulsive departure look around than if you plugged in under the desk or behind the night-table.  

  I left behind a favorite pack-into-its-own pocket windbreaker in Las Vegas last year.  I had hung it by its carry strap on the side of the luggage rack, rather than put it in a drawer or  in the closet, where it surely would have been forgotten -- silly me.  Calls to housekeeping were useless.  Then I got switched to security -- which had my jacket and sent it to me FedEx.  So I guest not everything stays in Vegas.

   
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  Judy Wells March 23, 2011 at 11:16pm

  I was returning from an arduous trip to South America and when I deplaned in Miami left my best designer blazer - and travel mainstay - in the overhead compartment. Ran back to the gate when I realized  it, but then TSA people had already boarded and I wasn't allowed to go on and retrieve it. An angel of an American gate agent at my next gate tried vainly to track it down but admitted if TSA had it, the jacket was probably torn apart already in search of contraband.  Made the connecting flight but still miss that blazer.
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  José Balido March 23, 2011 at 10:30pm

  I come from a long line of moderate-to-severe obsessive-compulsives, so I will typically check under the bed three times before I leave a hotel room to make sure I didn't stash anything there. Even so, I've been known to leave the occasional minor object behind (cell phone chargers, that kind of thing). It's really tough on travel writers, since many times we change hotels every night on a press trip, and with all that packing and unpacking, disaster is all but guaranteed. 

   

  Someday, each and every one of our belongings will have a little embedded RFID chip, and all we'll have to do is look on our iPhone 9 to see their exact location. Hmm. Not a bad idea. Any investors interested? ;-)
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  Lucy Corne March 23, 2011 at 9:43pm

  I leave something everywhere I go. It's become my trademark. Once left a month's worth of research pamphletts and notes under a bed (got them back!) I once left my camera on a bus at the China border and while enquiring about getting it back (bus was returning to HK) I left my guidebook on the bus heading into China. Amazingly got it all back. Worst of all was the realisation in Swaziland that I had left my moneybelt, passport, cash and all under a pillow in a backpacker hostel. The travel gods were smiling on me as I got that back too!!
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  Amanda Harling March 23, 2011 at 9:34pm

  On a press trip, a photographer friend I was travelling with left her diaphragm in the drawer of our not very smart hotel room in Catholic Malta some years back.  She realised when we got to the airport, and phoned the hotel and the young guy on reception got in a taxi and brought it straight over.  Amazing and very  understanding service, all things considered.   Going back there in June for the first time in 25 years. 

  On another trip to the Caribbean my return air ticket disappeared - lost when 'house-keeping' on a private island resort moved all my belongings to another room on the morning of departure. I returned to my room to find it in the usual chaotic state only my belongings had been replaced with someone else's. Hairbrush looked like mine, but wasn't, same with make-up though clothes definitely different. It was nightmarish.  I ran down a hundred steps to the office where staff were clueless. Eventually back up again to 'new' room where my stuff minus air ticket had been dumped. Packed in a panicked nano second and then back down the hundred steps to where our party was waiting to leave and where I confessed my ticket to London was lost.  BA, the world's favourite airline kindly produced a new one when we got to Barbados. 

   
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  Northeast News March 23, 2011 at 9:26pm

  I feel sorry for Allan. He leaves behind cell phone chargers, I've left transformers in half the hotels of Europe. And they're not cheap. 

  That story about underwear made me laugh out loud. A good story and a well-told one. 
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  Allan Lynch March 23, 2011 at 9:13pm

  So Sam are you operating a B&B?

   

  This is why I never unpack anymore. I seem to be really bad at leaving behind cell phone chargers. And at one hotel I left behind a great light fleece top that I really wanted back, as well as another charger. I called the hotel housekeeping department and they promised to forward it. It never arrived.

   

  On another trip my cell phone slipped out of my pocket at the airport in Toronto. I didn't realize it until I was home (I don't get a lot of calls). A few days later I got a call from the airport authority who had my cell phone. They asked for my address and I gave it to them. The phone never arrived. See a pattern here?

   

  I'm told that hotels no longer automatically return items to guests because they don't want to get people in trouble. Sometimes guests aren't supposed to be guests. Or they're sharing accommodations with someone they shouldn't be. So if you've lost something, you have to ask for it. Not, in my case, that that does any good.

   

  This reminds me that I had cousins who used to mail underwear to another cousin's husband's office whenever he or she had been away. They did this because his secretary opened his mail and he would feel the need to explain it was just his wife's crazy family. 
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  Sam Scribe March 23, 2011 at 8:58pm

  A travel writer who stayed at my house for a few days accidentally left a dress shirt, shoes, and a toiletries bag behind. Most travel writers, I'm sure, leave things behind just as he did, because you're always changing hotels. What things have you forgotten in hotel rooms -- and did you ever get them back?
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