The keys that should have been lost

I had it all planned in detail. I was driving from Sandakan to Kota Kinabalu in the Malaysian state of Sabah in Borneo. On the way I was visiting Kinabalu park, a national park of montane rainforest and had a few hours to spend there.

I left the park in good time before I was supposed to continue driving and drop of the car at Kota Kinabalu airport. Al was well, or at least that was what I thought. When I reached the car though, I realized that the car keys were missing. In a situation like that you have three options. The first is to drop to ground, cry and hope that a higher power somehow saves the situation. The second is to leave the car and run around and try to cath a lift, litteraly leaving the rental car as a problem for later. The third is to against all odds try to find a solution there and then. I chose the latter approach.

I started thinking… How do you even loose a set of car keys? They don’t jump out of a pocket by themselves, so I must have dropped them when I was digging through the same pocket for something else. Could it have been the rain poncho? Where was I when it started raining? I checked the map, ran to the information desk and explained the situation. Eventually I had summoned as many as five forest rangers and a Jeep. It is important to notice that they of course looked at me as if I was the most naive fellow they had ever met - you don’t find missing black car keys in a rainforest! But Malaysians are polite and very helpful, so they helped.

I pointed out the probable location and we formed two teams. One team was walking along a stream from the north and the other (including myself) walked from the south. When we eventually met in the middle, one of the guys in the other group held up the car keys.

The story didn’t end there though. The rain had broken the alarm remote, so I spent half an hour on the phone with Toyota international to get the alarm disabled, assisted by a very helpful and cheerful receptionist. Eventually the car started and I drove like a car thief passed Mount Kinabalu and down to Kota Kinabalu airport. There I dropped of the car two hours late, but with no questions asked. I left the airport on foot, thinking I had just experienced something that should be impossible.