Phuket taxi driver praised after returning Louis Vuitton bag to tourist

A Phuket taxi driver is being praised after returning a 150,000 baht Louis Vuitton purse to a Chinese tourist. The Phuket Info Centre, operated by the Phuket office of the Ministry of Interior, posted about the incident.

According to Phuket News, the post was titled, “Good deeds must be admired.”

The Centre said the bag was returned to the tourist at the Phuket International Airport after the Chinese tourist had left the bag in the back seat of a taxi on Wednesday, March 8.

The tourist reported the missing bag to the Tourist Police, who then teamed with the Tourist Assistance Centre at the airport.

Officers tracked down the taxi and its driver by its licence plates. The driver then confirmed that the bag was left and promptly returned to the airport to give the bag back to the tourist.

The good deed was highly-praised, especially after Patong Police charged a tuk tuk driver with theft last Sunday. The tuk tuk driver allegedly tried to keep an iPhone, that was worth about 29,000 baht after a Swedish tourist accidentally left it behind in the tuk tuk.

She had taken the tuk tuk taxi earlier in the morning, coming home from Bangla Road to the Patong hotel she was staying in. However, when she arrived at the hotel, she realized that her iPhone 14 Pro Max was missing. She assumed that she must have dropped it or forgotten it in the tuk tuk taxi home.

The Patong Police sprang into action, using a phone tracking mobile app to locate where the iPhone was. They discovered that the mobile phone was on Taweewong Road in Patong and, when they went to the location, police found the tuk tuk taxi parked there.

The driver of the tuk tuk arrived at the police waiting for him. Upon searching the tuk tuk taxi, the police found the phone stashed behind the driver’s seat. The driver confessed that he found the dropped iPhone and hid it behind his seat.