Incompetent bag thieves

Foiled a robbery the other day. My own. We were heading to the train station for an overnight trip to Siena, moving through pretty thick tourist crowds, at a fair clip. It was the usual chaos and madness in Italy. And then I became aware of a presence behind me. It wasn’t much, just the lightest brush, which I probably shouldn’t have felt at all in the crush of the crowd, but I did.

I spun around, and there was this guy holding a letter from my backpack. It was the bill from the hotel in Saigon. He looked completely shocked. I looked down at my pack and saw that two of the zippers were open. That pretty much sealed the deal. I’m absent-minded enough to forget one, but not two. And I almost never forget to zip up anyway. He started prattling at Jane, rather than me. “Miss you dropped this, Miss.”

No, she fucking didn’t. He took it out of my backpack. I gave him the stare, and realised that he had two accomplices. They were standing a few feet back, also looking a bit surprised. I assume the idea was that he would pass stuff back to them, so that if I accused him of having anything, he could show me his empty hands. Also, if I decided to get a little sporty, three on one is pretty good odds. I decided I wouldn’t punch him in the throat. I got my receipt from Saigon back, and we resumed our journey to the station. However, I couldn’t help wondering how many people they were going to rip off over the rest of the day