When My Phone Was Pick Pocketed In Egypt

Travel can be bliss and it can be painful. There is the good and bad. Generally the good always outweighs the bad or this is the case for me. I never get back home wishing I never went on a particular trip. However, my list of bad – luck, stories and encounters are present on each trip. One of the worst things to happen on my trips happened in 2013, not once but twice. This story is about the time when my phone was pick pocketed in Egypt .

When My Phone Was Pick Pocketed In Egypt

After about a month of traveling in the UK and Europe, I headed over to Egypt. It was absolutely incredible and was where the first disappearance of photographs happened.

We arrived in Aswan after an unexpected 18 hour bus trip and settled into our hotel. After a quick nap and shower with traveling overnight from 8pm to 3pm it was time to head out and see what this town had to offer.

The night markets were alive and filled to the brim with locals and tourists seeing what tickled our fancy. Everyone is trying to sell you something and it didn’t feel like you could quickly escape with it being so packed. One man came up to the four us and draped a scarf over our shoulders trying to push a sale. We brushed him off and kept walking down the alley.

My Phone Is Gone

When we got to the other end of the alley we thought let’s turn around and head back. It was here when I noticed that a zip on my bag was undone. I always have my wits about me and I knew I had zipped it up when I left the hotel. I quickly reached in and noticed straight away my phone had disappeared.

The three boys on my tour were trying to get me to reassure myself that I hadn’t have left it at the hotel. I knew I had brought it with me though. Thinking about it for a second I knew what happened and even more, I knew who took it.

That overly keen man who was draping the scarf over my shoulder. He lingered for too long and he placed it right over my arm and my bag. I conveyed this to the boys and as we had to head back the way we came, we were on the lookout.

Of course by then, you can imagine the luck we had searching through hundreds of people looking for a particular person we saw for 20 seconds of our lives.

Losing 4,000+ photos

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not one for taking photos, being in them or asking for someone to take a photo for me. When I started international travel in 2009 I still didn’t take many photos and for several trips that continued. That was until my big eight month backpacking trip in 2013. With going away for quite a while, I wanted to capture all the amazing places I was going to see. Also, because I was use to traveling with my sister who was always the photographer.

So I started looking through the lens to snap moments that I’d have for a life time. Or for a month or so it turned out to be.

I’m not the best when it comes to technology. I feel like I’m Stone Age in the modern world, where I am not too keen on capturing moments with snaps on a camera but in my mind. However, things change and now I do like taking photos to get that beauty on my iPad, iPhone, MacBook or Canon camera. Of course that doesn’t mean I’m a professional photographer, but I try. Loosing 4,000+ photos in one night at the hands of a thief was pretty rough, but what about everything else on my phone.

When You Lose Everything That Was On Your Phone

You think at first how you’ve just lost all your photos, but it’s so much more than that. I no longer had a way of contacting my loved ones. I couldn’t check my notes for any upcoming trips or checkins I may have had to look at. All my notes I had in my iPhone for languages, countries, my Schengen day count, people I had met, tips from travelers, pins and codes for access. All my contacts that I had in my phone whether old or new contacts. Couldn’t listen to my music. I didn’t have a laptop, second phone or iPad with me back then. I had nothing.

The Creepy Part About Losing My Phone

If you thought it was all crazy enough, it gets creepy. I was one of those people years ago who was yet to put a pin on my phone. Yep, it was an open book that you could push the home button and access everything on my phone. Which is exactly what happened when my phone was stolen.

It became apparent that he/they were definitely on my phone as my sisters had weird voice messages on the app Hey Tell. It only happened one time and they never heard from him/them again.

And so it gets worse, I also had no luck in ever finding it. Unfortunately I incorrectly set up my Find My Phone app, so I was sh*t out of luck there too for an option.

Reporting To The Police Station To File A Report

My sister, back in Australia, was quick to let me know (via my friend) that I had to get a police report for insurance purposes. So the next day I headed to the police station with my tour guide, he was so helpful. He translated everything from Arabic back into English for me. Then they had to scan it so that I could email it back to my phone company in Australia. I have to say, they were pretty good (Optus).

You Cannot Send Phones Internationally

As if I wasn’t having a bad stretch of luck all stemming from a phone, how was I going to get it? My phone company in Australia was not going to send the new phone on a plane to Egypt for me. Due to lithium batteries, you can not air freight. As perfect luck would happen, one of my girlfriends was coming over to Turkey in a couple of weeks and I was meeting up with her. HALLELUJAH!

This came down to the wire too mind you. The day that she was flying out my Mum had just received the phone from the shop and was able to quickly drop it around to her place before she headed to the airport. Man, was I glad that I struck luck there.

Setting Up My New Phone

Next I had to get my new sim working, register the iPhone and get everything sorted on my phone and back to no music. I wasn’t an iTunes user so couldn’t reload anything on to my phone. I am unorganised I know.

But I did manage to set up a pin and the find my phone app successfully. I was finally able to snap away again and talk to my family after about three weeks. What a relief.

A Story For Another Day

This was a crazy enough story with one month into my eight month trip around the world. But guess what! In August of 2013 this phone went in water and I was sh*t out of luck again!

That can be a story for another day though!

Moral of the story, be organised from the get-go. Have contacts saved to the cloud, have a pin on your phone (I think 10/10 people do these days) and backup your photos, everything!

You feel lost without a phone, particularly while traveling. The main purpose of a phone is communication, and I couldn’t communicate without it!

Bye Egypt

Despite this upsetting part of my journey, I absolutely LOVED Egypt. There is another dramatic story that happened here – being stalked – but we can just save that for another time too.

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Click here to read more stories about Egypt or return to my blog page.

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