Beware of Pickpockets!

Always keep your bag in front of you. Shortening the strap would be helpful in keeping the bag closer to your chest

 Never hang your bag on your side or behind you; I learned this the hard way!

I've heard of many instances of people being victims of pickpockets and never in my wildest dreams thought I would be a victim too! It happened on Monday, 13 August 2012 at about 2.00pm in Zhuhai. We had checked out of The Guo Tai Hotel and as it was raining very heavily, we waited for about an hour in the hotel lobby for the rain to subside. We were planning on walking the short distance to GongBei Port to cross over to Macau. With an umbrella in my left hand and my trolley bag in my right hand, I was the perfect target for the pickpockets as I won't have any free hands to defend myself. There were two of them walking right behind me, one was working on my sling bag while the other acted as a shield to prevent other people from seeing what they were up to. Two of my friends were walking about 5 metres behind me and didn't noticed anything amiss. I didn't know how he managed to unzip my sling bag which was hanging on my left hip but when I turned my head, his hand retracted very fast (he was going to dip his hand into my bag a second time) and that was when I suspected something was wrong. As soon as I noticed that the zip was opened, the two pickpockets had vanished! I lost my "san zhai" duo-sim handphone which has my China Mobile and Malaysia's Digi lines and consider myself very lucky not to have lost my passport as well which was also in the sling bag together with the phone that was pickpocketed! Here are some tips on how to prevent being pickpocketed.