No time to lose: Mexican tourist returns pricey watch after Bangkok airport mix-up

A Mexican woman on holiday with her family in Phuket agreed to return a luxury watch worth about 200,000 baht to a Thai woman, stating that she thought it belonged to a family member and mistakenly took it from Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok.

A 21 year old Thai woman, Rachawalee, filed a complaint with Don Mueang Police Station on Thursday, November 7, reporting that she lost her Rolex Oyster Perpetual watch at the airport on Wednesday, November 6. She believed she had taken it off at the X-ray scanning counter and forgotten it there.

Rachawalee explained that she visited the airport to travel to Chiang Mai but booked an urgent flight back to Bangkok the following day to search for her watch.

Police requested to check the security camera footage at the X-ray scanning area and identified a foreign woman, travelling with two family members, as the suspect. The family reportedly took a flight from Bangkok to Phuket.

Officers later identified the family as Mexican nationals who had checked into a hotel in the Kathu district of Phuket. Police visited the hotel and met the woman in question, 39 year old Leslie, who admitted to taking the watch.

Leslie explained that she took the watch, believing it belonged to a family member. She expressed her willingness to return the watch to its rightful owner. No legal charges were issued against her or her family.

Rachawalee visited the police station yesterday, November 10, to retrieve her luxury watch and expressed her gratitude to the officers, saying she didn’t expect to recover the valuable item.

According to Rachawalee, the monetary value of the watch does not matter to her, but its sentimental value does. She said her mother had given her the watch, and she wanted to keep it forever. She was very pleased to have it back.

In a similar story, a Laotian man in Chon Buri province returned a gold necklace to a Thai woman, explaining that he had taken it home, mistakenly thinking it was a gift from the gold shop.

The Laotian man insisted that he had visited the shop on the same day as the Thai woman to buy a gold necklace and a Buddhist amulet. Her gold necklace was in a package, so he did not realise it was not his and took it home.