A Close Call … Or how I almost spent 10 days learning Korean and eating kimchee.

If there’s one basic travel rule I have preached and tried to follow over the years, it’s to establish a routine … and stick to it no matter what! The specifics of the routine itself don’t matter so much; it’s whatever works best for you. But when you get distracted or start deviating from that routine, you’re asking for trouble.

To prove my point, let me tell you how I lost my passport in the Seoul Airport. Yes, I really did!

I was going through a security check after arriving on my Korean Airlines flight from Shanghai, but became distracted by a impatient, non-English-speaking uniformed guard. I had already given him my passport, but he kept demanding a boarding pass for my continuing flight. I didn’t have one because I’d be getting it from the Hawaiian Airlines counter before boarding my flight to Honolulu, but I finally dug out my stub from the Shanghai-Seoul boarding pass and that seemed to satisfy him. By then, however, I was painfully aware that I had been holding up a long line of passengers. And I forgot to get my passport back.

I wandered around the airport for a while, changed my Chinese money and some euros back into U.S. dollars, and had a bite to eat. When I got to the gate where my Hawaiian Airlines flight would be boarding — it was in a completely different terminal — I found a comfortable out-of-the-way seat and read for a couple of hours.

With less then two hours to go before boarding, something made me reach for my passport where I always keep it: in a special zippered slot in my small carry-on bag. It wasn’t there. I quickly went through my pockets. Nothing. Next I carefully went through my bag, removing all the contents and checking every little compartment. I can tell you that when I fully realized that my passport was missing, it was a very, very bad feeling. After all, I was a “transit” passenger with no Korean visa, of course, and could easily see myself sleeping on hard plastic airport seats for a week while some clerk in the local U.S. Embassy put through the paperwork for a replacement.

Trying to remain calm, I went to the nearest Information desk and explained my problem to a very nice, very professional woman. She spent the next ten minutes making phone calls, did a lot of chattering in Korean, slowly and carefully pronouncing then spelling my name. Then, abruptly and triumphantly, she announced that the Main Security Office was holding my passport. Ten minutes later, a young man in a black suit — there was a wire coming out of his shirt collar and a black button in his ear — literally came jogging up and handed over my precious passport. I must say they were very efficient and very matter-of-fact about it all, but it had been a very tense 20 minutes for me. I had made a stupid rookie mistake and was damn lucky that it all turned out well.

So when you travel next, remember to stick to your routine and – most important — do as I say, and not as I did in the Seoul airport.