Our trip to Southeast Asia included a few days in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), in Vietnam.  We had already been caught in a flash flood in Thailand and dropped off on the wrong boat in Cambodia—we figured we had already experienced all our wild adventures.  My husband and I were walking down a sunny street in the middle of the day, on our way to one of the larger markets in the city.  Coming up from behind us, a petite middle-aged couple (they were 5ft tall at most) leapt onto our backs and started shouting in Vietnamese and waving magazines in our faces.  Were they trying to sell us something?  Doubtful. 

Since Paul and I are from New York, we pride ourselves on being generally suspicious and can usually handle this kind of thing.  Following our friends’ instructions, I had been carrying most of our money beneath my shirt in a moneybelt.  Paul had a wallet that was securely buttoned into his pants.  We picked up the pace.  They stayed with us, still waving their papers and chattering at top speed.  They tried to push us closer together as we hurried down the street, and we broke into a run.  No sooner had we broken free of them but we slowed down.  Surely they had gotten the idea by now and would stay back.  But that was a foolish thought, and they were persistent.  They rushed toward us again, and we started off, but soon after they fell away on their own.  We were thrown and a bit confused.  My hand rested unconsciously on the unharmed moneybelt.  Paul checked his wallet, and then the digital camera—it was gone.  Not wasting a second, Paul spun around to find the couple as he told me, “They took the camera.”  Now, I should preface this by saying we had just gotten the camera, and could care less about losing that investment.  But we had taken priceless pictures throughout our weeks in Thailand and Cambodia, and saving those pictures was imperative.  For Paul it seemed no decision at all.  He moved so fast in his discovery that the couple had only traveled about 2 yards.  We leapt back on them; I grabbed the man, Paul the woman, and we yelled for our camera.  We started to draw attention.  The man shook his head and pointed at the woman.  I turned, still holding onto him (I wasn’t going to let him go until we had that camera), and Paul was patting down her pockets, looking confused… she didn’t have the camera on her.  But as my eyes made contact with the woman’s, she signaled to me.  Almost unmoving, she glanced towards a large bag resting on the street.  A bag that belonged to a different woman, a streetwoman who had been sitting by the side of the road.  I turned to Paul. “Look in that bag.  I think she’s telling us she dropped it in that bag.”  Sure enough, Paul pulled the camera out, without a scratch on it.  Immediately, the couple burst into cackling laughter—they wanted the onlookers to think it was a joke.  They weren’t stealing the camera!  We’re all friends!!  Stunned, we steered ourselves away from the crowd, numb with shock but happily clutching the camera’s memorycard in our hands.