Tourist drops bank card, driver licence & hotel key card at Bras Basah, thankful to meet Good Samaritans

While out enjoying the Singapore Night Festival, an Australian tourist discovered, to her dismay, that she had dropped all her cards.

These included her bank cards, driver's license, hotel key card, and other cards she regularly carried.

Speaking to Mothership, Katherine Doyle had spent more than three hours on Sep. 5 wandering around the Singapore Night Festival, taking in all the various installations and even visiting several museums.

She was at Bras Basah, surrounded by people, when she noticed her phone felt different.

Doyle looked inside her phone case and saw that all her bank cards, driver's licence, travel card, hotel key card and other cards she carried were gone.

Lost her cards at Bras Basah

Doyle immediately began retracing her steps and scanning the floor for any sign of her dropped cards.

She also asked the security guards on duty and the festival performers if anyone had handed them anything.

While they offered helpful suggestions, there wasn't a specific place for lost items.

So Doyle continued her search for another 20 minutes in the crowded festival.

"Do I retrace my steps even further back? Do I ask the main stage to make an announcement? Do I try and find the police station? Do I cancel my credit card yet?"

At one point, she walked past two young men who seemed to be looking down at a phone or a map.

Lucky to meet Good Samaritans

One of them looked up, and they caught each other's eye.

The man then did a double take, and Doyle noticed he was holding a pile of cards.

He asked if her name was Katherine, confirming that they had picked up her items.

"I think I said "oh my goodness" three to four times as I couldn’t believe we’d had the good fortune of crossing paths in the crowd," said Doyle.

"I think I took them by surprise when I threw my arms around them, thanking them over and over again. I explained that I was a tourist, and that I had been starting to panic as I’d lost everything."

The two men told Doyle they found her cards and were on their way to her hotel after identifying the hotel key card in the stack.

When she asked how she could repay them, the two men simply replied: "Don't worry about it".

"I had always heard that Singapore was an incredibly safe place, and that Singaporeans were known for their honesty and kindness.

These two young men could have simply handed the cards in somewhere and gone on with their evening. Instead, they took the time to work out where I was staying and were making their way to return them to me personally. I was incredibly grateful."

Doyle added that it was a "perfect ending to an already wonderful night" and "a lovely reminder of why tourists hold Singapore and its people in such high regard".

The kindness the two young men displayed will be what she remembers most about Singapore.