Intruders

  Don't tempt people with unlocked luggage. Never leave an unlocked suitcase in a hotel room. You can buy cable locks, which can be used to lock your luggage together and onto a piece of furniture. Keep in mind that room locks can be picked and hotels always have spares. If you return to find a hotel employee in your room, they will generally have a feeble excuse for being there, for instance, they might say that your room was already open and they were checking to see whether everything was OK. Do not leave items near open barred windows. You would be surprised at the number of petty items that can be swiped from ground floor windowsills: like a half used deodorant stick or a personal notebook full of incoherent musings - anything!

   Even in the better hotels, reception desks are frequently unattended. The room keys are typically kept in an drawer or on hooks. This can lead to opportunistic "borrowing" by strangers.

  Hotel thieves will hesitate to cut open suitcases, as when this happens it can prompt police action, whereas when they pick a lock, theft is harder to prove. Nobody will have the time to pick locks whilst you are travelling on a train or bus, but within the private confides of a hotel room, it’s a different matter. Combination locks are superior and take too long for thieves to fathom the code at random, even if it’s only three digits. Ordinary locks are less convenient than combinations as people are prone to losing the keys! This is probably one of those ‘teaching your granny to suck eggs’ things, but it’s worth mentioning to choose a number of personal significance, such as part of an address, birthday or phone number. This will prevent horrible memory blocks. Never use 1234.

  Some countries, like the U.S., require you to keep airline baggage unlocked or to use simple locks easily opened by security personnel. In this post 9/11 world they will have no qualms about busting open your case if it is sealed with a combination. If you are traveling from such a country, place a removable sticker next to the lock, which clearly states CODE: 3586, (whatever it is) or place duct tape over a combination lock to keep it from accidentally closing and your lock being smashed open by overzealous baggage inspectors.

  Try not to place your luggage on hotel floors. Pipes can break or leak, leaving floors an inch deep in water. During an exceptional monsoon storm, some areas can also get partially flooded or roofs might develop leaks.

  Furthermore, poisonous bugs might crawl into your baggage. Once in a Public Works Dept. room on North Andaman, I lifted a carelessly discarded shirt, and found, to my horror, a huge centipede napping beneath it. It was probably eight or nine inches long but at the time it appeared to be the size of a small snake - like something out of a horror movie. In an instant I threw the shirt back down again.

   A hundred scaly feet then scurried across the wooden floor towards the bathroom door, where it found a small place to lurk in a crack beneath a small doorstep. I chose to ignore it, as it seemed to be quite content to hide itself. I even went and had a shower.

  Back at Port Blair (South Andaman) my friend Jens and I visited a delightful restaurant called the China Room run by a Burmese couple. I happened to mention the monstrous centipede to the waiter - who doubled as the owner. He told me that if a black one bites your foot or hand, it will swell up to twice its normal size, but if a brown one bites you, you must immediately seek medical attention.

  I thought the creature was black but Jens -who also saw it- swore it was brown. Whatever its race, I realised that I should have forgone my morning ablutions: my bare foot having been but a few feet away from its venomous jaws.

  Aside from giant centipedes, other squatters in your baggage might include an Indian spider closely related to the black widow (Latrodectus hasseltii indicus) which has a neurotoxic poison, or scorpions - someone once compared the sting of a scorpion with the punch of a full-grown man giving it all he had. The smaller scorpions are the most venomous. 

  As an interesting aside, Jens told me that when he was in Borneo, he delved inside his backpack only to be viciously stung and bitten. He retrieved his hand to find a huge beetle-like bug attached to it! Again, this was probably the result of leaving his pack on the floor.