It should have been so straightforward: a boat transfer from Gili Air to Padang Bai (Bali) and then a minibus transfer to Kuta. This is the reverse of the journey we had taken a week previously, which went very smoothly. The return trip was slightly more eventful….

When our boat arrived at Gili Air, they loaded everyones bags into the hold first before boarding the passengers. We watched Graham’s bag go on first and mine a short while later. We then got onto our rather busy boat and sat on the top deck in the sun. The boat made a short stop to drop some passengers off on Gili Trawangan before making the one hour journey to Padang Bai.

When we arrived in Padang Bai, we watched them unload every other bag except for our two. Upon further investiagtion, it transpired that ours were no longer on the boat. The staff assured us that there would be no problem though, and that there was another boat coming into dock shortly which would certainly have our bags on it. We couldn’t figure out how this could be the case, as we had seen our bags get laoded on to this particular boat, but there was nothing we could do except wait. We were feeling quite confused, as our bags were loaded at separate times to each other and yet they were the only two missing…

The next boat came into the jetty and once again we watched all of the bags being unloaded, and once again ours were not there. At this point we were more than a bit worried!! The Wahana boat company staff were completely perplexed and were phoning all of their offices on various beaches. None of them had seen our bags. Lots more phone calls were made, lots of confused looks were exchanged and lots of hurried Indonesian conversations were had. We got asked several times what the bags contained, and we explained that they had our clothes, toiletries and medicine in them.

After quite some time had passed, Graham and I decided that we were going to have to cut our losses and accept that we had lost our bags. We were very relieved that we had our small bags with us, containing all of the important things (passports, laptop, money, kindles, ipod etc.) and accepted that we would just have to make an insurance claim and bring forward our flight to Australia in order to replace everything.

We asked the men from Wahana to take us to the Police Station so that we could file an incident report, in order to make our insurance claim. We hopped on the back of two mopeds and went to the station. When we arrived outside, the manager of Wahana was there and he was on the phone. He asked me once again what was in our bags, and once again I gave him a non-specific answer (we didn’t want to make them seem to contain something other people might want). He asked me if my bag was red and if I had a pair of shoes in the outside pocket, and if the second bag was black with grey. When I excitedly said that he was definitley describing our bags he said, ‘hmm its possible these might be the same ones. We might have found them’. It took a while for me to convince him they were exactly the same ones and that he’d better figure out a way of getting them back to us. Somehow, our bags had made it all the way back to the beach on Gili Air, i.e. our starting point….And they were found just as we arrived at the police station.

It was going to take two hours for the next boat to bring our bags back, so we said we would go to a cafe and have some lunch while we waited. We would then collect our bags and get on the next transfer to Kuta – we had long missed the one we were meant to be on. The Wahana manager then said we would have to pay for our own transfer as we had missed the one they provided. By this point, I was pretty fed up of the whole situation and pointed out that we had been there for our transfer and had only missed it as their staff had lost our bags and then left them unattended on a beach! It was then agreed that Wahana would find another minibus for us to go on.

We went to a nice cafe, had a tasty lunch and made use of the free wifi while we waited for our bags to return. We chatted about how lucky we were, and about how the worst case scenario was that we would have lost a couple of bags of dirty laundry and some toiletries. At least we had sensibly kept our valuables with us…

Our bags were then brought to us and we were put on a minibus to Kuta. It was a long, slow journey back but at about 7pm we were the last people to be dropped off in the centre of Kuta. We then walked the ten minutes to our hotel and checked in.

A few minutes after getting to the room, I realised that my little bag containing my passport, the camera and some money was no longer in my handbag. I did a panicked search of the room and outisde before shouting to Graham. At this point I didn’t think I could deal with any more disasters! To make it worse we had smugly been discussing that losing our big bags wouldn’t have been so bad as we had all of the important stuff with us. Then I lost the important stuff.

After a second search we realised they really had gone, and that they could be at the cafe where we had lunch, on the minibus or on the road somewhere. Graham phoned Wahana and explained the situation and that we were looking for a very small, bright orange bag with a passport in it. I don’t think the man there could believe that two people could lose so much in one day! He said he would call the cafe and get back to us. A lot of waiting around followed before we spoke to Wahana again. They said they had a bag that may match the description and wanted to know my name to check against the passport they had. They would call us back soon…I was pretty excited by now as there can’t be many bags in that location matching the descrption we gave. We waited more than 15 minutes for them to call back, and eventually decided to phone ourselves. It turned out they didn’t have a bag at all and he was just being ridiculous! We then phoned the cafe and went through a similar process.

After this we decided to check the bus company. This was very difficult, as we had been put on a random minibus by Wahana. The bus had dropped us off in town, so even if the driver found the bag there was no way of him returning it. Graham phoned a few companies with names we recongnised and eventually found one that sounded promising. They said they would call all their drivers and get back to us soon. We also phoned Wahana back to confirm which companies bus they had put us on. After a bit more waiting, they confirmed that we had found the right company. Obviously the bus company didn’t phone back, so eventually Graham phoned them again. They said they had the buses parked outside their office but had found nothing. Then they hung up. This seemed rather suspicious, and we were even more worried when we tried phoning several more times and they kept cutting us off.

We had nothing to lose so at 10 pm we decided to get in a taxi and go to the office to search ourselves and possibly confront the owner. We were a bit worried as it seemed like it might not be too safe to go to a bus yard and demand the owner return my belongings, but being stuck in Indonseia without a passport wasn’t going to be a walk in the park either!

When we got to the office though, it was on a busy street and was well lit and still open. We went in and I told them staff that I really needed to look for myself. I wasn’t worried about having the rest of the contents returned, but I really desperately needed my passport back.

They took us out the front to the three minibuses and showed us the one we had used. Then, they couldn’t find the key! This gave me some confidence as they clearly hadn’t been in it to check when we called before. Eventually the key was located and they opened the door. And there, sat on the seat in full view, was my bright orange bag with everything in it!!! I was so excited I could have kissed everyone!! The man apologised that he hadn’t spotted it on his previous ‘search’. I couldn’t have cared less – I had my passport back and I felt like a ginormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

We got a taxi home, stopping on the way to buy a gift for the hotel staff who were amazingly helpful with making phonecalls and letting us use their mobiles. Graham was amazing too. I was so, so mad at myself for my stupidity and I was pretty useless at fixing the problem. It would have been a disaster without him.

In total we lost, and found, three bags in one day. I lost all of my belongings and got all of them back. I went from hating Indonesia to loving it. But the moral of the story – don’t leave your passport on a minibus!