51. PHOTOGRAPHY. TRAVELS USA. The Ah Ha Moment. Breaking into a tour coach after midnight in the USA.

TRAVEL STORY - The 'Ah Ha' Moment. by Dr Sing Kong Yuen.

23 October 2013. New Jersey, USA. My tour group from Singapore saw a police car when we went to the our coach after breakfast. The coach had been broken into overnight. How did the burglar do it?

The thief stole food, drinks and the driver's sunglasses, but not the camera. The police concluded that he could be a 'hungry homeless man' who had duplicate keys or picked the lock to open the coach door.

A sunny morning. The ladies looked forward to spending a day at the Factory Outlet. As the coach turned the bend of the road, the rectangular safety vent of the coach lifted up and disappeared, leaving a big gap on the roof of the coach.

The was the 'Ah Ha' moment. The 'Ah Ha' moment is a moment of sudden realization, inspiration, insight, recognition, or comprehension.

The thief had broken into the coach via the safety vent! With the fresh air swirling into the coach's roof top vent, all of us scanned both sides of the road to look for the vent. The driver spotted it after back tracking. Our tour manager Andy and he left the coach to retrieve it.

The lesson learnt is never to leave valuables inside the coach overnight or any time. There had been another case of the luggages of all packaged tourists stolen from a parked coach somewhere in Europe.

As for the tour manager, he had asked for voluntary donations for the driver to buy a replacement sun glass. He stressed it was voluntary. Unfortunately, one of the group provided in the feedback form that he should not have done this!

TRAVELS USA - The ‘Ah Ha’ Moment by Dr Sing Kong Yuen: 11 Sep 2023

UPDATE AT:
https://photographysingkongyuen.blogspot.com/2023/09/51-photography-travels-usa-breaking.html

PHOTOS AT:
https://www.instagram.com/toapayohvets

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Some images with text are used to narrate the story.

EVIDENCE

The police looked for evidence to solve a crime. In this case, a tourist coach was locked and parked in the hotel car park overnight. The next morning, the coach driver discovered the doors were unlocked and his sunglasses and some water bottles were stolen.

The police came to investigate (Images of police car and police woman)

The packaged tourists left the hotel, thinking that the burglar must have used duplicate keys to enter the coach. The police had not let us know how the burglar did it.

After a few minutes of driving, the safety vent on the roof of the coach flew off!

The tourists scanned the expressway for the safety vent. The coach driver retrieved the vent from the road. This was the "evidence" for the crime scene investigation.

In conclusion, the burglar had entered via the safety vent on the top of the coach by unscrewing it. Then he exited the same way and replaced the vent back in place without screwing it. After several minutes of driving, the vent was blown off, exposing the evidence of how the burglar did it.

It was a memorable trip as the group participated in looking for the vent with the coach driver. The lesson learnt is to take all your precious belongings with you whenever you leave the coach to stay overnight in the hotel.

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IMAGE QUALITY UPDATE ON 10 SEP 2023

Images were captured in 23 Oct 2013