Pack a spare set of clothes in your hand-carry luggage. Some airlines might choose to offload your baggage from your connecting flight. It is more common if your journey involves domestic connecting flights. If it happens, you will have a spare set of clothes and undergarments to last for two or three days before the baggage arrive.
The chances of this happening if you take a foreign airline (non-American based) flying from outside of United States directly to LAX is almost zero, but it is always a good practice to pack a spare set of clothes in your hand-carry luggage.
If you are travelling to and fro the States, you cannot lock
your bag as the TSA officers need to inspect your bag if needed. Even if they
don’t plan to inspect your bag, but when they see that you bag is locked, they
will definitely cut the locks and your bag might damage.
If you want to lock your bag, the only way is to get TSA lock.
TSA lock is a special lock whether TSA will have the master key to the lock.
Always check TSA website in case they change the regulations and you don’t want
to see your bag being opened and something is missing. Fortunately, they don’t
steal (not that I have heard of but still be wary). We have no idea how to get
one in Malaysia but most of us never use it and we have never lost anything.
Just keep valuable items with you all the time.
You can shrink-wrap your bag too to protect it from being opened
and damaged. If they want to inspect the bag, they will just cut through the
wrap, which should not damage your bag. Kai Sheng has done that every time he
flew from Penang. Most Malaysian airports should have this service and it costs
RM5-10 each.
