In Reply to: An airport chalk mark story............. posted by Balifever on Monday, 24. July 2006 at 13:45 Bali Time:
further to your story...We took excess alcohol in with us last year and, as we were meeting up with friends, took extra wine. I know wine is readily purchased in Bali but we prefer to take our faves. I have tasted some pretty rank wines in Bali and we just prefer to take our own and pay the duty in need. I really can't be bothered finding a particular store that may, or may not have a wine I like. From memory we had four bottles and two casks. We also had a bottle of spirits in our hand luggage.
Fortunately we had declared the extra alcohol as we had the chalk marks on the suitcases (which had two bottles/1 cask in each). I did not put any of the bottles in the children's cases. The spirits were in our hand luggage.
My partner was asked to go into the 'little room' to pay a fine.
We were prepared for that and he had a $20 in one pocket and $10 in the other. The idea was that he would pull out the $20 and say that was all he had on him. He was a bit flustered and pulled out the $10 by mistake and that was declared not enough by the official. So the $20 had to be produced and of course he had to hand over the $10 as well.
The next time we went I put one bottle of wine in each of the four suitcases and again we had one bottle of spirits in our carry on luggage. We made no declaration this time and no chalk marks on the bags.
I imagine the x-ray can pick up the shape of the bottles and when mutliple bottles are spotted, the particular bag is marked with chalk to altert the authorities further down the line.
I don't know that I would be brave enough to rub the chalk off as some others have suggested in the past. I think I would just be prepared to cough up the cash if caught.