I live in a gated mooban, the same one I have been living in for the past 23 years. It’s a pretty big village and I’m not going to lie, this place is full of big houses with big cars and big haired ladies. But judging from the zip code, it is nowhere near what you would call a city center. Around the mooban are jungles, klongs, and not much else.
With the recession going on worldwide and all it should come as no surprise to see that the crime rate would go up to. The thing is that, I never thought that the crime would be happening in my secured, gated community.
This week alone, two houses on my block have already been burgled, and one of them is literally our next door neighbor whom we share a wall with.
Mind you, crime almost never happened here. When it did, it was either a maid or someone from the inside. We never had any reasons to barb wire our walls or lock bathroom windows. And that’s exactly what happened to the house next to ours. The burglar came through the toilet window.
Despite the community being gated, meaning outsiders, even taxi drivers, have to trade in their ID cards and gets their license plate logged each time they enter, there’s still a loophole–the klong–which cuts right through the village. The idea of klong buffers would have worked great if we were still living in Ayuthaya period when they didn’t have motorboats or global warming to dry up the klongs to just the waist level. And guess what? My other wall is right next to a klong, so is the neighbor’s.
We do have those sharp pointy wires along the walls near the klong but what we forgot are the trees with branches reaching out. According to the security, that’s how the burglar managed to get inside the perimeter.
And one thing we all realized is that, they’re no longer interested in TVs, stereos or money anymore. Besides the obvious of jewelry, they’re now stealing mobile phones, MP3 players and laptops.
They’re aiming for MY things.
My room has no valuables except my laptop, my iPhone and credit cards which are not the objects of their desire. I don’t wear jewelry or expensive watches and even if I did, it wouldn’t devastate me as much if I had lost my gadgets. I would die if I woke up and see my Macbook or iPhone missing.
But then again, if they managed to get into my room to steal my things, I probably wouldn’t be alive or whole enough to rant about it afterwards.
So from not ever locking my bedroom door or windows, I am now doing that for the first time in 23 years.
