Last year, while we were getting ready for the adventure we are currently on, I realized that the small handbag with the busted zipper I was carting around probably wouldn’t cut it for international travel. St. John’s is the sort of city where you can use your wallet as a placeholder at the bar when you go to the bathroom, but that is certainly not true of everywhere!
Mike was a dear, and presented me with a travel handbag from PacSafe last year for my birthday. This one to be precise:
It was love at first use! The thing is the perfect size – it fits a bottle of water, my wallet, keys and phone, a Chinese-English dictionary and notebook/travel journal, with room to spare. It is made of a durable material, and the security features has meant peace of mind when walking through crowded areas like (night) markets and bus stations. The purse has a zipper pull clip to make sure that it cannot easily be zipped open, and wires and metal mesh in the strap and bag to prevent the slash-and-grab. The strap also has a clip at one end so that you can thread the strap around an object (like your chair) while you’re eating or trying to sleep on that overnight bus… say, from Koh Samui to Bangkok! It is a truly great little bag.
Imagine my dismay when, in the midst of my trek across the border from Thailand to Cambodia, the clip at the end of the strap snapped in half! I was crestfallen, but we worked out a way to use the clip to get the strap attached again for the rest of the trip. It wasn’t perfect – the strap had to be twisted and it wouldn’t lie flat on my back, but you take what you can when you’re on the go!
Without the receipt and not being back in Canada, I wasn’t sure if I’d have any luck with the warranty, but I decided to email the good people at PacSafe when we returned to Taiwan. A few days later, a wonderful agent worked out an arrangement with their distributor in Taiwan. Although they didn’t carry the colour I originally had, they were receiving a new shipment in a few days, and could mail me a new one in one of three other colours when they arrived. All I had to do was mail the broken one to Taipei! So, for $65 NT (~ $2.20 CAD), I mailed my bag in last Tuesday, and last Thursday morning a brand new plum coloured bag was delivered to my door. Fantastic!
So, now I’m out and about every day with my PacSafe just like before. The PacSafe agents (Thuha and Orange) were very helpful, efficient, and polite. PacSafe sure does know how to make a traveller happy! Their products are great and their service is too. I would definitely recommend PacSafe to anyone needing a travel bag!