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It was good until it wasn't.

Things went badly for a Singaporean family vacationing in Phuket, Thailand on the last day of their one-week trip, after their villa was burgled of over S$20,300 worth of valuables.

Lost two Louis Vuitton crossbody bags

One of the family members, Richard Ter, 34, uploaded a video of the incident's aftermath on TikTok, showing the villa with a smashed door and a toilet window left ajar.

Speaking to Mothership, Ter said he and his family were visiting the Thai beach destination from Jan. 22 to 29, 2023.

Ter and his seven family members moved into a different accommodation, a private seven-bedroom villa from AirBnB for the last three days of their holiday.

All was well and good until the final morning of the vacation on Jan. 29, when Ter's family realised that two of their Louis Vuitton crossbody bags had vanished.

Ter and his family, all of whom were in the villa during the incident, combed the accommodation for the two missing bags but came up empty-handed.

Suspected housekeepers

Looking back at the incident, Ter said he suspected that the villa's housekeepers had something to do with the bags' disappearance.

According to him, the villa came with routine housekeeping services, and a housekeeper would swing by between 10am to 4pm daily to tidy and clean.

On the day of the incident, however, the female housekeeper appeared earlier than usual at around 9am with another housekeeper in tow.

Ter, who said he was not informed about this beforehand, asked the housekeeper why there was another person with her.

The housekeeper replied that she needed help to clean the villa.

Villa's owner apparently said things like this happen commonly

Perhaps sensing that something was amiss, Ter and his family monitored the pair from afar and said: "From what we saw, both of them walked around the villa without doing any housekeeping and left."

Ter's suspicions grew when both housekeepers left abruptly at 12pm, four hours earlier than the usual time.

This was when the family decided to check for their belongings and realised that two of their bags had gone missing.

Ter said he contacted the housekeeper and the villa's owner to ask them to come to the villa, but the owner rejected him, saying that he was not going to do so as it was a Sunday.

The owner relented eventually after Ter made multiple requests. When the owner got to the villa, he was apparently dismissive and not empathetic to the situation.

According to Ter, the owner told him and his family that it is common for things like this to happen before he promptly took his leave.

Bags reappeared in villa sans Rolex and cash

Not long later, both housekeepers returned to the villa.

Ter said: "We found the bags [and their contents] scattered [in the villa's outdoor area] within five minutes after the housekeepers came back."

This puzzled the family as they did not see the bags there when they searched that area previously.

After taking stock of what was left, they realised that the bags' contents were mostly left untouched, save for the cash and a Rolex Datejust watch, both of which amounted to losses of over S$20,300.

Putting two and two together, Ter, who claimed that the bags only appeared after both housekeepers returned, confronted the pair.

However, the duo denied any wrongdoings, according to Ter who recalled that the housekeeper was not only not surprised, but remained surprisingly calm throughout the whole situation.

"All she said was she did not do it," Ter said.

Called police

The Thai police arrived to investigate shortly afterwards.

The police, as well as the two housekeepers, can be seen in Ter's TikTok video.

By the time a photographer came to take photos of the scene, Ter claimed that the crime scene had been cleared.

Ter's family subsequently lodged a report at the police station, and the Thai authorities said they will contact them if they have any new findings.

However, Ter remains dismal about recovering his losses, saying he was not sure how the Thai police will nab the culprit since the crime scene has been cleared and there was no CCTV installed.

He added that the police officers also did not check the bags for fingerprints or take the housekeepers' fingerprints.

Not the first time villa was burgled

However, the police officers said something during the investigation process that stuck with Ter.

He said the police told him that this was not the first time that the villa has been burgled.

The police also said that the owner has been told to bring the housekeepers to the police station for their fingerprints to be taken, but has failed to do so.

In hindsight, Ter said he can "sort of understand" why the owner was so calm about the situation.

Despite the shock from the incident and the financial losses, Ter said he was thankful nothing happened to his family members, which includes his seven-year-old son and a 13-month-old toddler.

He also shouldered the blame for his family's predicament, saying that they lost their belongings because they were not alert.

Experience to serve as a cautionary tale for other similar travellers

Ter's video has gone viral on TikTok, with a fair number of individuals commenting that the family should not have brought their valuables for their overseas holiday.

In response, Ter said he had expected such remarks to come his way when he was deliberating over whether to share his experience or not.

He ultimately went ahead and posted the video as he felt it was important for other travellers like him, who often bring their valuables overseas, to learn from his experiences.

"I hope that my video will allow others to think twice before bringing their expensive valuables overseas," Ter said.

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Top image screenshot from @richierter/TikTok.