BootsnAll Travel Community

Hi,

hope this is the right forum for this question...

Fellow climbers; I have anxiety about my chalk bag.

Does anyone else worry about taking a little bag of white powder through customs??!! I am heading off to S E Asia soon and am wondering how to deal with this.
Am I being silly?
I can't help having visions of mility style police searching my bag... discovering a bag of white powder... and its all Schapelle Corby from there.
I mean, I know that obviously they'd test it and find it was harmless, but still, thats not really something I want to put myself through.

Has anyone else had these thoughts?

In the unlikely event that anybody looks at your luggage, it will quickly be determined that you are carrying talc.

(I always carry talcum powder when I travel and nobody has ever mentioned it, though once a Indonesian Customs guy started to roll up a bill and went looking for a mirror)

climbing chalk is gym chalk/magnesium carbonate, not talc.

haven't thought of that issue..but well, i'll be taking my chalk bag to argentina...crap. But well, there are a lot of climbers there, so I don't think I'll be too worried. Plus I can explain the story in Spanish. My boyfriend though..well..I guess I'll see how it goes (he doesn't know any Spanish and will be arriving separately)! Now on my flight back..I'm pretty sure that I'll get grilled by the US agents, since I apparently pull up a red flag in their computer nowadays...they must think I'm an international drug smuggler

Chalk is...well. Chalky not the same appearance or texture at all I highly doubt if security would test it any more than they would test the handicapped ladies hand bag. (They love to do that). The most they would do is a quick bag swab and a oh ya the cavity search

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'm hoping they'd either believe me or have a quick taste to find out that it's a little to dry to be narcotic.

I'm still wondering if I should take a clean bag and buy chalk over there, probably a lot cheaper.

When will you be leaving and where are you going? I'll be around and looking for climbing partners from September onwards.

I'll be in Sierra La Vigilancia, Argentina from Aug 2 - 9?, if anyone's in the area.

quote:

When will you be leaving and where are you going? I'll be around and looking for climbing partners from September onwards

Bummer, I leave SEA mid sept!
Will be there until the 15th (??) (I'd better check my flights, I keep forgetting when I leave!)

However, if you get in before that, by that stage I'll probably be making my way slowly through the south of Thailand. I fly out of Singapore, and am intending to mosey on down from where ever I am to get there by the 13th, just to be on the safe side.

if oyu are around would def be keen to hang out ('scuse pun!!) but i warn you, I'm a bit of a rookie...

Just to play it safe, I emptied my chalk bag and then brought a few sealed bags (for re-sale as well as personal use) of loose chalk. The chalk was in 5 half-pound bags in my checked luggage.

A bunch of us once drove across the border for a bouldering competition and they stopped our van and did a full search. There was chalk all over the place but they didn't even seem to notice it. It's not like we'd have coke or anything spilled all over the back of the van I guess.

Oh, and the reason I brought [Metolius Super] chalk with me was that I'd heard so many complaints about how bad the chalk is there. If it hadn't been for the post-tsunami lack of climbers, it would have apparently been easy to unload it at a bit of a premium.

I take my chalk bag everywhere! It´s with me now in Iceland and I just got back from Crete with it. Don´t sweat the small stuff... Nobody is gonna care about chalk, and as mentioned previously, if they do, it won´t be hard to quickly correct their ignorance and prove your innocence. Chalk it up!

quote:

Originally posted by Lucky Luke:

if oyu are around would def be keen to hang out ('scuse pun!!) but i warn you, I'm a bit of a rookie...

We'll be arriving in Bangkok on the 4th and heading Pattaya then Cambodia way first, shame.


Thanks for the tip on crap chalk, didn't even cross my mind. Got help me if the bag bursts

marisa
aka int'l drug smuggler.
girl, you so cute all you have to do is smile and any customs official will let you in!'zopa

zopa girl, pretty much any customs agents except for US ones!!! I never had any problems entering a country except my own