A tourist from Australia in Bali asks for help when a cable tie comes out of his bag.
A woman from Australia was confused when she got to Bali and saw that her bag was tied to something she didn't know why.
After a flight from Sydney to Bali, a woman from Australia couldn't figure out why her luggage had an orange cable tied to one of the handles.
The woman, who was on a Jetstar flight, asked the 312,000 members of the Facebook group Bali Bogans if they knew what was going on.
"Does anyone know what this cable tie means that's on our bags? One bag took a little longer and had this tag when it came out last night. I'm guessing it was checked, right?" she wrote with a picture of her bag with the cable tie attached.
Many people were also confused by the orange cable, and others said they had the same thing happen to them.
"I had the same thing on my bag, and when customs checked it, they took my alcohol," wrote one person.
"I had a tag, but they didn't check me, even though it was full of cheese and salami," said someone else.
A third person said, "I've had different tags before, and they looked through my bag."
But the passenger said she didn't get stopped by customs. When others told her she was "lucky" because their bags were searched because of the cable, she said she wasn't.
Some people said that when they got to Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport in Denpasar, they found green cable ties on their bags.
"I was picked up in 2019. Mine was green, and they stopped me, searched me, and charged me $300 AUD because of it. I had Bluetooth speakers with me to give as gifts to my friends. "They gave me the choice of leaving it at the airport and picking it up on the way home," said a traveler.
"I just paid, and I was pissed off. I had to sign something, but I didn't know what it was!"
Another person said that chalk was once used in Bali to mark certain bags after an X-ray, and that the baggage ties "just mean you have something in your luggage they think you shouldn't have."
Angus Kidman, a travel expert at Finder, told news.com.au that your luggage usually means one of two things if it has markings or ties you didn't expect.
"Either the airline checked its contents while it was in transit, or customs officials want to check it more when you go through border control," he said.
"In the past, Bali has sometimes used chalk to mark bags that could be trouble because they might contain illegal goods or things that will cost more in duties and taxes. "It looks like cable ties are now part of the mix," he said.
"In the same way, Australian border security agents can mark your arrivals card to show that your bags need to be checked more closely."
Martin Engeler, the Managing Director of Airline Tactical Solutions, an aviation security consulting firm based in Brisbane, told Yahoo 7 that the orange cable tie on the suitcase in the picture has nothing to do with airlines and is more of a "Bali thing."
"Before bags leave the airport, they are checked... It tells customs to check that bag," he told the newspaper.
"It's for people who try to bring things like electronics into the country."