Lost Passport

Of course, losing your passport is bad. Of course, it can mean lots of hassles while traveling. Of course, I had to lose mine. Actually, I didn't lose it per se, but I thought that I did and it caused waking nightmares for nearly an hour. Here's the story.

While checking into our hostel, I had to give my passport to the receptionist for them to log us in for the night. For some reason, the guy kept my passport, but I didn't think too much of it. This is sometimes customary for certain places, and we are going to be here for a few days so I didn't worry about it.

Later that evening, we were in the reception area looking at their collection of dvds for an evening movie, and I saw a different receptionist give a passport to another guest. Typically, all passports look basically the same. Other than the color of the passport book, most are identical. However, my passport is a bit beaten up from our travels (it has gotten wet a couple of times, i keep it in my pocket, etc). So, when the receptionist gave the passport to the other guest, I thought it looked like mine.

This bugged me for a while, but I wasn't worried. After a while though, I had to check. I went to reception and asked for my passport, and the lady told me that they don't keep guests's passports. This shocked me, because they had kept mine. I told her that the guy had put mine into the safe, so she checked and it was not there. Yikes!! This had me in a tizzy. I explained that I had seen the other receptionist give my passport to someone else earlier, and I thought that I heard that they were checking out.

In my haste, I ran out of the hostel to search for the person who had my passport. I had just seen her earlier and I knew the direction that she was going, so I thought that I had a chance. Of course, in a city with nearly 5 million people, this is impossible. After about a half hour of searching, I headed back to the hostel.

The receptionist explained that the woman had actually checked in and they would leave a note for her, so that she could return my passport and retreive her own. After a while, there was a knock at our door and the receptionist gave my passport back with profuse apologies. I was so gleeful that I asked Erin to take my photo with the newly found document. I think it is obvious that I was a bit anxious up to this moment.

So, on with our trip.