keeping documents safe

kristinm

Oh please! I'm taking enough crap as it is to India .. I was actually wondering about those portable travelling safe things - to store valuables in not to pee in!

minoo

everyone got the inside joke- what can i say

ananda2193

Though I usually leave some things in my room, e.g., Passport, Ticket, Travelers Checks, sometimes.Especially if I'm staying a long time there. But I will hide them in a good place. If you have a dresser with drawers, you can pull out the bottom drawer and put your stuff below the bottom drayer. But a money belt or money pouch you put around your neck are the safest IMHO. If you use a money pouch, put a guitar string inside the string connected to the pouch for extra strength.

Years ago though I was in Jaipur and hid my stuff in my room. I left Jaipur and about 3 weeks later I couldn't find my return ticket. I was confused as I really didn't check to see If I had it for those 3 weeks. I didn't know where I lost it or if it was stolen. I returned to Jaipur a month later and went to the hotel where I stayed and told them I forgot it in my room when I was there before (though I really didn't know if I did, it was a bluff to see if they found it). They searched around and checked in the lobby area and found some papers of mine behind the sofa there but not the ticket, so I knew I left it there. They eventually sent the boy working there across the street into an empty lot where they threw their garbage, and they found it there, 1 month later.

Thank god it wasn't the rainy season.

I would never carry valuables in my pockets or bag.
Pockets can be picked and bags can be slit open.

Many years ago I was in Jerusalem walking through the Arab Quarter with a daypack on my back. It was like sardines walking through the narrow streets there, when an old women touched my shoulder from behind and she had all these papers in her hand that came from my pack. Appearantly someone opened it and I didn't notice. Luckily I wasn't stupid enough to put anything valuable in it. I was wearing a money belt with all my valuables.

SteamBuff

I hate wearing a money belt, so I got my wife to stitch one into inside band of my trousers. (The only downside is that you have to buy 1 belt per pair of trousers - I only took 3 pairs - including the ones I was wearing so not too big a problem)

I kept the documents on me, but left copies at the hotel in my bag.

I kept the money I needed for the day in a zipped up pocked in my jacket or front trouser pocket.

hfot2

For all foreign travel, not just India, we have devised lots of plans to try to keep things safe and keep things from causing us to have to worry about them once we are on the road.

My husband sews extra long nylon pockets inside the waistbands of his travel pants for money, tickets etc. [This assumes you don't buy any more pants while traveling or, you can bring extra spare pockets to sew into new pants!] I think he wrote a description somewhere here with simple sewing instructions for the pockets. He keeps his day money in a nylon wallet attached by a string to a loop in his waistband.

I use an Eagle Creek silk zippered thing around my waist inside my pants for stashing tickets, credit cards, money etc.. For money for the day, I have a mini-zippered 'floating' pocket attached by a string and a hook to a loop inside my pocket for easy access. Ex Officio pants and skirts already have the internal loop, otherwise, I sew one in.

In the draft section of my webmail, I keep a list of important numbers in an encrypted form and photocopies of passport pages. I try to keep the list buried even there, just in case a hacker... We also carry printed copies of the numbers in our hidden pockets. And, we leave a copy at home with relatives. I've heard of some people putting the numbers on PDA's or flash cards, but that seems unsafe to me and you'd have to find a computer that can read your card and have your program to retrieve the info.

Even in non-budget hotels I would worry about leaving passport, money, credit cards etc in the room anywhere. We always travel together and carry different credit cards so that if one of us loses the cards, the other cards are still available while we work on canceling the lost ones. [As happened years ago, before our the pocket tricks, at an early morning go-out-and-give-alms-to-the-monks event in Thailand]

I hate to have to worry about leaving valuables in the room, but we travel for long times with loads of camera and electronic stuff. When we leave our camera bags in the room, we usually use a cable lock to attach them to some immoveable piece of furniture, or the rung in the closet, or use the cable lock to secure the armoire in which we put our valuables [an obvious clue that something is inside; but, hey, you've gotta' do what you've gotta' do]. My husband says to add that the cable locks are the lightweight ones that are usually sold in snownboard shops. They have a retractable cable and are quite compact for easy carrying. We have 3 of the same kind and they can be linked together to make a very big loop when we have to go all the way around a cabinet as we did in Pushkar.

I'd rather be safe than sorry and I'd rather think about all of this before traveling so that I can walk the streets without having to worry about pick-pockets and can leave the room without worrying about the hotel staff or whatever...

One last note, we learned from an old China hand after many trips there ourselves, do not use the safes in the rooms. The combination locks can fail and then you can't get your stuff out. Out of curiosity,I tested [with nothing in it] a safe at the Temple Bay Resort at Mahabalipuram. Sure enough, I followed the directions for setting the lock to my combination and yet when I tried to open the safe, it wouldn't work.

Anders

I use a Travelsafe and lock it to something solid in my room.

aivlysweetie

I was thinking of picking up one of those travel safes...it looks like a good idea. I did the usual photocopies and stick them everywhere in zip lock bags. Thank goodness i didn't have to resort to using them for anything! it's funny...now that i'm going back to india...i have this strange apprehensiveness about being pickpocketed. I guess it's cause i'm going with a 6'3" white guy instead of a bunch of indians!!!

hfot2

We actually bought one of the pacsafe mesh things for rolling luggage and returned it after testing it.

The pacsafe didn't meet our needs. We use Dakine OverUnder rolling bags.[Great bags by the way!]

The pacsafe was heavy, and really cumbersome; but mostly it just didn't fit our luggage securely enough to justify the extra weight and trouble, Once it's open, it's hard to fold up again to any reasonable size. The mesh was so coarse that a determined [or not so determined] thief could easily work his way between the strands of metal.

Perhaps for a backpack it's a different story, They had lots of different models; we had to look at the ones for rolling bags.

tacita

i used on of these on my trip to india in february and will use it again elsewhere. i took a bunch of US cash with me for some unimaginable emergency ($500). i also goofed on the math calculations when withdrawing rupees from an atm. i wound up with a huge number of 500-rupee notes, not my intent! obviously, i didn't want to walk around with a lot of cash, so i stashed it in this pacsafe with my passport (or copies, depending on where i was going and for how long) and locked it to something immoveable in the room. this was generally the closet rod if it was secure. hanging there among the clothes hangars, it wasn't visible unless you really looked for it.

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hfot2

So, if I went to the link in the first place and searched for Travelsafe and didn't just assume you meant the Pacsafe wire mesh thing that we bought, I wouldn't have gone on and on about how the pacsafe didn't work for us.

Sorry.
distaff half of hfot2

monkgonemad

i have:

scan and online
also saved to flash memory
photocopies (multiple)


carry all valuables at all times.

dani

I usually keep my valuables in the room, even in cheap places.
But I don't use the lock provided by the hotel, but my own one.
That way you know that the employees don't have unwanted access to your room with spare keys.

camelgirl

My 2 rupees worth.

I would never put anything of value in any pants pocket. Or any bag I'm carrying. As previously noted, pickpockets are everywhere in the world and they're quite good. I also wouldn't wear jeans (too hot and take a month to dry) though I do see lots of people wearing them.

I always wear a neck pouch for passport, cash, t-checks. I wear it crossways so it hangs under my arm and I can tuck it into a wasteband or not. My husband wears the kind that attaches to his belt and flips inside his pants. Called a "hidden pocket." Hard to visualize so here's a link to what it looks like. http://www.packinglight.net/plight/p...AAAAHCKJGNCINC

I often leave my important things in our room inside a part of my luggage I can lock. Even in a cheap place. I figure most theft is because it's easy. Slashing my bag to get into the locked part would be highly unusual. It's worked for me for many years.

Nick-H

That was always my approach too.

Spending money in an easily accessible pocket purse, anything else in a moneybelt.

If I go out these days with anything more than a few hundred (or coming home from the ATM) it will be in the zipped compartment of the purse. Just don't show off that you have a few thousand Rps.

Most people are honest, but even an honest person can be tempted on a bad day.

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seanchk

The pacsafe mesh works well if you have a rucksack and you buy the correct size pacsafe, they are supposed to be fitted so they are really tight over the pack. I've seen people with them so loose you could get your hand in and open zips and then possible remove things. The idea is when they are correctly fitted you cannot even sqeeze your fingers between the pack and the mesh. Of course it also assumes that your pack is stuffed full. They really don't work as well on rolling luggage, although it is possible to fit them again if you get the correct size.

They make more than just the pacsafe mesh though, the daysafe packs are awesome, they have a removable inner security shell which has steel wire mesh laminated into it, for day trips where you don't need or want to carry everything just lock stuff in the inner and leave it locked to a secure fixture. Here is a link I would never travel without one.