The Stolen Bag

Don't even disillusion yourself, your bag will get stolen if you're traveling for a while. Luckily I knew this even before I started traveling but it doesn't stop the sting when it happens right under your nose.
I've had a million conversations of why cant they just leave my journal and my memory card or the umbrella or the ID these things (I assume) are useless to a thief. That said a rained on thief is not a happy thief so maybe they could use the umbrella.
Then there's the hassle of spending a full day in a beautiful city running all over it looking for the cop shop, explaining what happened (in my case a one litre glass of beer distracted me with its beauty as my bag grew legs under the table and ran away with someone that promised it a better life than I was giving it).
Then the fun of explaining the same story to the insurance company from an expensive payphone and believe me they're teamed up with the masked ninja like bag transporters. 'Receipts' is their favourite word I think I heard them say it so many times it started to not sound like a real word, in fact at one stage i got so distracted by the hypnotism of the repetitive word I missed what the woman was saying.
The only plus side to the saga is being able to go out and buy new things (that's if you kept a backup credit card in your other bag, a good tip), a really big novelty to a poor backpacker you feel like a misplaced grubby handed unkempt kid in a giant candy store with no money.
Put simply don't get distracted by beautiful things, but if you do look at the bright side they'll have to deal with your budget camera that the batteries die in 15minutes if you dont caress the side of it properly, the story in your journal about 'that time in that hostel', and the screw falls out of the left arm of your scratched Raybans every 3days if you don't tighten it. So if I saw the sneaky, arrogant feline-mongoose, I would laugh and say 'Good luck'