How I Lost My Passport and Found It – A Happy and Stressful Tale

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At the beginning of November, I realized one random morning that my passport was gone! Gone like completely vanish from planet earth.But let’s rewind a bit…

Towards the end of October, I decided to book a ticket to Tokyo, Japan and 2 days later, I was gone. I was stressing the entire week if to go or not go since tickets were so cheap and I was invited by the Park Tokyo Hotel to come to Tokyo. So of course, I went! Everything was so last minute, I didn’t even fully realize I was going to Tokyo until 2hrs into the flight.

park hotel tokyo view - vanilla sky dreaming
Park Hotel Tokyo – First night

From the moment I landed in Tokyo, it was a non-stop rollercoaster of madness. My flight landed and I was so eager to not miss a moment in Tokyo. So much so, that I booked the Robot Restaurant Show for 9:45pm and my flight landed at 6pm, with an hour long line to immigration and another hour plus to the actual city center. Let’s not also forget, it takes time to get out of the plane, find transportation and get some currency. I got to my hotel and only had 15mins to change my clothes and freshen up after check-in and head over to the show. I still don’t understand how I managed to do it with such lack of sleep or a tight time frame.

I couldn’t sleep all night from excitement and had a crazy day ahead of me with an insane amount of things to do and see, which was how the rest of the trip went. I almost missed my flight back home because I was still busy exploring and trying to get in as much as I possibly could. I did actually miss my bus to the airport, which I had already paid for and later got stuck in the rain trying to find the fastest way to the airport during traffic hour, which was the express train. Not fun.

how i lost and found my passport
Robot Restaurant in Tokyo

I literally walked between 8-11 miles a day with little sleep. I slept every night 3hrs because I was so scared I wouldn’t wake up on time to see Tokyo. Did I mention I also suffer from insomnia since I was a kid? Well, now you know. 😉

To top it all off, I didn’t eat much in Tokyo, although from looking at my photos it seemed as though I was eating my way through Tokyo, which in fact was a lie. Being a vegetarian in Tokyo is worse than being allergic to carbs in Italy. Everyone speaks VERY little to no English in Tokyo and everything is written in Japanese AND everything has fish or fish broth in it. This meant I was basically living off of junk food and the truffle mash potatoes at my hotel. I’m also allergic to dairy, so I couldn’t eat much at the hotel, otherwise I’d get sick and I clearly, didn’t want that.

So basically for a week straight, I had no food, no sleep and basically running a marathon in Japan.

This made me come home beyond exhausted. I slept for almost 2 days straight and felt so sick and disoriented when I got home. That I couldn’t even remember how I got home and if Tokyo was maybe all a dream.

Since I love Halloween more than my own birthday (which means a lot), I didn’t want to miss Halloween and planned to be home 2 days before.

I was stuck on being Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad for over 2 months, but since everything in my world is always so last minute, most of the costume accessories were sold out. So I had to get creative and make a lot of the things on my own.

I stayed at one of my best friend’s houses for those 2 days, while recovering.

Then I decided on October 30th around 6pm that I needed to get my costume together, a day before Halloween, so I went to a million stores to buy all the things I needed and started working on my costume. I needed to buy hair dye, make my necklace, make the jacket and the writing on the back. I also had to buy a bat and write on it, cut my shirt up, sew my bottoms and find blue and red eyeshadow. With a million and one bags from my shopping and luggage all over my house, I forgot all about my passport, which I normally hide in the same place in my house for almost 2 years, the moment I get back from a trip to avoid what just happened…losing my passport AKA my life, my career and my world.

Harley Quinn - Halloween Costume
Harley Quinn – Halloween Costume

I was trying to catch up on my 2 stressful days before and after Halloween and catching up on life and running errands. It didn’t dawn on me until the beginning week of November that my passport was nowhere to be found. I checked everywhere! Literally. I checked in places that didn’t even make sense and I checked about 100 times.

I thought for sure I might have thrown it away with all my bags I had from making my costume or that someone stole it from my purse on Halloween since I left it in the car. My friend also checked his house and couldn’t find it. I just couldn’t remember anything or even visualize my passport because of my stress from Halloween and Tokyo. I couldn’t even remember what my entry stamp in my passport looked like and I always check to see where it was stamped.

I called the airport police department, customs, another police department at the airport and nothing.

I literally cried for 3 days straight because whatever was in my passport case was worth $700 plus all my stamps! AHHHH tragic!

I was scared to tell my parents because my dad would probably yell at me and tell me how irresponsible I am…awe parents 😉

But somewhere in my heart, I felt like I would find it somewhere so obvious. So I waited…I waited for almost 7 WEEKS!!! While still searching and hoping for a miracle.

Earlier this week, I realized to myself that New Years is just around the corner and I still don’t have my passport and honestly couldn’t take it any longer. So Thursday, I booked an appointment at the Israeli Embassy of Los Angeles, which was only step one, but the cheapest step. My appointment was for Monday, December 19th at 10am, that would be today.

This weekend went by so fast and I was super busy all day yesterday redesigning my house and buying things from IKEA and having lunch at Malibu. Only at about 11pm did I ask my friend, wait, what day is it tomorrow and he said “Monday” and I was like “Holy crap! I forgot to do my new passport photo and print out the forms for the new passport”.

So I decided to pull another all-nighter, with a nap of 2hrs so that I don’t miss my appointment because I’m definitely not a morning person and have missed flights and other important things, due to it and this was clearly important. Not only that but I found out that it takes a few weeks to get a new passport. Maybe the idea was foreign to me since I made my last passport in London on the spot. However, I guess that was a different situation. (Related Post: Trouble In Paradise — Passport Issues to Budapest)

I had already given up on the idea of celebrating New Years in a foreign country on Sunday night and woke up from nap Monday morning checking to see where I could celebrate New Years Eve in America.

So the plan was to be awake at 7am, take a shower, do my hair, put on makeup, go get new passport photos, wait for my apartments leasing office to be opened so that I can print out the documents I needed for the passport and go to the Israeli embassy to get a new passport at 10am.

After taking a shower, I sat on my couch at 8:20am and thought to myself, where else can the passport be. I realized that there was another small luggage in my car that had things in it, which is where my hair straighter was and maybe, just maybe, it might be in that bag. So I headed over to my car to look. For some ODD reason, I sat in the passenger seat and said to myself, maybe I should just look everywhere in my car too because I never did that. I never thought it would be in my car because I haven’t really used my car that much in the last few weeks. So I said to myself, girl seriously look everywhere, even look under the carpets.

My dad recently bought me a car and there was still all these paperwork from AAA and the DMV in it. I lifted up a AAA folder and said maybe it’s in there. It wasn’t. Then I saw a few random pieces of paper between the chair and the middle divider and said it’s not there, but it was also dark. So I decided to turn on my iPhone’s light to check better and THERE IT WAS!!!

My tan Michael Kors passport case peeking at me with my life in it! I scream “OH MY G*D!” as dramatically and slow as possible. I felt like I had just found a lottery ticket to my freedom. For the next few minutes on repeat, I kept saying “OH MY G*D! OH MY G*D!”, I was shocked! I was seriously 2 seconds away from getting a brand new passport. I literally hugged and kissed my passport. I was at an awe.

I went up stairs feeling like the luckiest girl in the world!

I canceled my appointment at the Embassy after calling my family and friends and telling them that G*d is amazing!

and well there you have it…a sweet and bitter tale on how a travel blogger lost her passport.

LESSON LEARNED!

Now let the fun begin as a start planning my 2017 plans!

 

 

 

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3 Responses to How I Lost My Passport and Found It – A Happy and Stressful Tale

  1. I’m surprised that you don’t use a Passport holder that you can wear around your neck and tuck discreetly underneath your shirt. That’s what I usually do when I travel. Then when I get home, I know to put my Passport away for safe keeping in the same place that I always do. Glad you were able to find yours after two months of searching!

    • lol I’m not 2 years old haha I would never wear one of those.
      The problem is when I arrive back to my home city I normally don’t go home for usually 2 days, which is how I lost it in the first place.
      But thank you! So happy I found it too

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