I'm alive...

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Hey, just a quick message to update you on my trip to Laos.

Crossed the border fine with no swine flu! and it's been pretty rainy. Luckily I've met some great people to travel with and at the moment I'm in LuangNam Tha.

Done a bit of walking/trekking in the area, but today was a bit hair-raising...

A bunch of us booked a kayak day trip on the river and to cut a long story short, out of the 13 of us, 9 of us called it quits after being in the canoe for a total of no more than 5 minutes. The rapids were fast and we all (including the guides) ended up in the water, being dragged down with the current. I spent maybe 5 minutes in the water being dragged through the trees and rocks with all the others.

Fortunately, it smoothed off and everyone is...ok.

I have a lovely bruised, scratched etc arm and leg, (with some more probably cropping up on my back and bum) and I have a nice bloody and cut elbow. .. whilst one guy might have a broken finger and theres a few people who've got pretty sore knees and are limping a good bit.
We ended up losing our kayaks etc, but I think the guides have recovered them all and the paddles, etc...but our biggest worry (other than our lives of course!) was our belongings in our supposedly waterproof bags. Luckily only one guy's camera is wrecked and we were lucky to get all our passports, wallets etc etc back.

SO! It's been an interesting day where we then had to climb up a muddy landslide hill to get to the road and get picked up whilst 4 (and in my opinion very stupid)people decided to continue with the guides who had no idea how difficult the rapids are...we'll have to see how they got on after most of us called it quits, got vback and drank some strong alcohol to kill anything in the water we'd just swallowed and neutralise the pains...

Anyway, I'm off tomo with 3 French Canadian/UK guys I met here/kayaked with and we're heading East to Udomxai and muang ngoi/nong khiaow. So hopefully we'll be ok after our eventful day...


I'll keep you posted as much as i can (net is a bit slow) and I'm ok, just a bit sore, bruised and battered.
I'll post some photos of my injuries later...

with lots of love....K.xx

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