The couple, who have not been named, believe they were being set up for a phony arrest at Suvarnabhumi or Phuket airport on drug smuggling charges, followed by a demand for large amounts of money.
They were on their way to Phuket and had reached Bangkok. In the capital they left their bags in the storage space of a hotel that was not named, before going for a walk around Bangkok.
“Georgia” explained to 3AW, a local radio station in their home town, Melbourne, that at the airport they were told their bags were overweight. Checking the bags to see what they might jettison to get the weight down, they saw that one of Georgia's bags had a lock missing, while on her boyfriend’s bag a hasp had been cut through.
By now suspicious, they took the bags to the Novotel Suvarnabhumi and checked them thoroughly. That's when they found marijuana in a small pocket inside Georgia’s suitcase.
Georgia said they called the Australian embassy who advised them to throw the bags away and to change their travel plans. Embassy officials warned them that there might be people following them, too.
So, instead of getting on the plane as scheduled, she said, “We spent two days in Bangkok washing all our clothes and changing our suitcases just to make sure we didn’t have any more marijuana on us,” Georgia said.
She told 3AW that she suspects she and her boyfriend were intended to be victims of a scam by “fake police or customs officers” to extract large amounts of money from them.
“I do think it’s about money more than anything else,” Georgia said.
“We’re just very lucky we didn’t board that flight because who knows what could have happened to us if we had?”