this is something that happened almost six years ago. i was en route to shanghai after a few days by the
li river in yangshuo. i left early in the morning, headed to the bus stop, and caught the next one available to guilin (from where i could take the train to shanghai).
upon arrival in guilin, everybody shuffled out of the bus. as i was the last one to alight, the bus driver looked at me and asked 'where are you off to?' i responded the train station, which i knew was a few hundred metres walk away. he leaned closer and warned 'hold on to your belongings. whatever you do, hold on to everything. thieves are everywhere.' i laughed and thanked him for the tip. 'no, this is no time to laugh. you have to hold onto everything, it's dangerous between here and the train station.' i nodded but felt blissfully ignorant and confident.
my phone was in my pocket (deep by pocket depth standards, there was no way someone was going to be able to reach into it without me noticing), and my belongings were all locked in my backpack.
when i was almost at the train station, i stopped by a small grocer for ice cream. as i was buying the ice cream, the man behind the counter asked me 'where are you going?' and i tell him i'm just going to the train station, which was now less than a 100 metres away. he looked at me, and said 'between here and the train station are plenty of thieves, makes sure you hold onto your belongings.' i looked down and could still feel the weight of my phone, so i didn't reach for it incase he was a thief.
this story could have ended here and the scars of that day would have never existed, but as i closed in on the train station, i decided to stop by the post office near the entrance to send some postcards. it was exceptionally dark for a public institution that was not a jail. suddenly i felt a hit to my body, i can't describe the sensation, i looked down and saw blood my pocket (deep as it was compared to standard pocket depths!) was turned inside out.
my phone was gone.
sure, i noticed.
but my phone was gone.
d'oh!
those moments immediately after felt strange. my head started spinning and my stomach wanted out. i threw the postcards i had intended to send in the bin because the weight of five cards suddenly multiplied. i looked around to see the man who bumped into me walking out the door. i ran after him, out onto the street.
'you stole my phone,' i said to him.
he turned to look at me, there were some people who stopped to see his response and he laughed. 'i didn't,' he said with a smile, 'but there are a lot of thieves around, you have to be very careful, and hold onto everything!' he got on his motorbike, and before i could gather my next thought, he drove off.
later when i finally got to file a police report they kept asking me if the thief was uyghur (he wasn't), berated me, blamed me, and said i deserved what happened because i was 'travelling instead studying'.
ugh!
