Laughing at the sillyness of Dereks story of the time he got arrested in China, I never belived it would ever happen to me!!

But it did.........

Several years before Derek met me he was in China doing a cycle tour...did I mention he also cycled across Canada in an epic journey lasting 5 months!! Wish I had been on the scene then and we could have gone tandem! Well following this he flew to Hong Kong and prepared for another epic trip which included cycling the great Wall. Whilst in Kanding Derek had inadvertently swore at a Police officer, and quickly found himself arrested and having to answer for himself in a rather grubby little police station...at least this is what he told me! Somehow this police officer had pissed Derek off and Derek learned to swear in fluent Mandarin, just to annoy him. Now there is a lot of police corruption in China and its not realy a very good idea to swear at a policeman, but non the less he did Derek had told him....
"Ne zha dabien!!! Ne zha zazhong!!"
Which loosly traslated means "you are a shit and a bastard!!".....emmm not a good idea Derek, so he was arrested but later that day was realesed without charge! Needless to say I always found this story very ammusing, when he told it to me one evening while playing Mah Jhong in the kitchen of the private live in, upstairs bit of the Wheatsheaf pub!
On our trip, and after a spiet of bad luck which included a bas crash on a mountain side, a guest house fire, my suffering aomebic Dysentry I dident realy think things could get much worse untill my passport was stolen on the Thai island Kho Samui. It was daft realy...Derek and had gone out for the day and I had foolishly left my money belt containing my passport under the pillow in our beach chalet. We had locked it with our own padlocks so I belived it would be safe!!! NOT!!!...The night before I was sat on our veranda getting mildly drunk when I had noticed a man creeping around other chalets trying the doors. It look creepy so I went in and told Derek who was lay splayed out on the bed reading! We both crept outside to watch this bloke, only for him to notice us and then he vanished. In the morning Derek and I dident even consider that this chap might come back to rob us, but he did. We returned from our day out to find my passport gone, along with the whole of my money belt!! Fortunatly I had, had no cash or travelers cheques in there as Derek was carrying it for me, it had just contained some loose change of various currencies, but on the black market my passport would have been like finding a bar of gold!!
To cut a long story short we had to catch the overnight, sleeper train back to Bangkok to get a replacement, which we did and stayed in Bangkok for another 3 nights while it was being processed. Chuffed to bits when I got my new passport from the British embassy I just happily stuffed it into my new money belt and off we went to book a train for the next stage of our journey which was crossing the border into Malaysia! It had been a stuffy, airless hot morning as the train we were on trundeld toward the border with what seemed endless carriages and about 2,000 passengers. At the border we pulled to a halt as customs people boarded our train to check everyones passports and travel documents. Derek had warned me that this could take some time...what he dident tell me was I would end up holding up a train with 2,000 very angry passengers!!
A very smartly uniformed Malaysian customs officer took my passport and studied it carefully and suddenly glared at me, while two of his colleagues hauled me up, roughly from my seat and practially dragged me off the train, reading me my rights in Malaysian!! Derek ran after me and started shouting "what the hells going on?? Thats my WIFE!!" I was taken to a tiny office on the platform where thankfully there was an interpreter lady but by this time I was just dumb struck into silence untill she curtly informed me, in broken English that I was arrested for overstaying my visa!!!!! WHAT!!!!!!! I was screaching in my head, and began to cry!! I was even threatened with handcuffs untill Derek demanded to see my passport and said to me in a panic "They stamped the wrong date in it!!" He calmly explained this to two customs officers, the whole story of my stolen and replacement passport and that someone in the British embassy had put the 6th in instead of the 26th!! It had all been a massive mistake!! It dident alter the fact I was still in floods of tears and getting frustraited at Dereks apparent calmness. My only comfort was the two beautiful spaniel sniffer dogs that took an emmence like to me! I wanted a ciggie and handed them around as in Asia this is seen as a welcome gift. Dereks calmness was down to travel ettiquette. When in Asia NEVER loose your temper, and always try to be polite whatever the situation is. So between this and me handing out cigarettes to all, it softened the customs officers attitude to me and they started smiling and began to make a sting of phone calls, presumabally to the British Embassy in Bangkok!! Eventually the head officer changed the visa date and made a note in Malaysian in my passport, and with a huge smile escorted us back to the waiting train and 2,000 or so not so happy fellow passengers!! I had been so exhausted by all this that I could hardly climb the 3 steps back up to the carriage and my backpack suddenly felt twice as heavy. Derek had to haul me on the last step up!
I was shacking like a leaf....but the ordeal was ended!
.....But!........you should have seen some of the killer dirty looks I was given, when we boarded again...nasty..
As we trundeled off down the track I chain-smoked out of the window to calm my nerves...AND kept a very low profile!