So the past week has involved a few tears; first it started when we came back (home) to Saigon and our favourite Thai restaurant had run out of our favourite curry. The week ended when we made it to Bangkok in one piece and had our first Macdonald’s in 3 months, yes that is worth tears of joy!

We went with a friend to Phu Quoc island for the weekend. This is the island situated 2km south of Cambodia, though officially still Vietnam. The first day we arrived it was beautiful and sunny with crystal clear waters. The next few days were a little overcast so our original plan of sitting on the beach sunbathing with a few gin and tonics altered slightly.
On the third day our friend Caoimhe suggested we hire some motorbikes to explore the island. A great idea, the whole way down the country we had hired them as they are the best way to see the real unaltered Vietnam.

On our way to the most northern point of the island 30km from our hotel on a deserted country road we hit a large pot hole, resulting in us falling off and arriving a few meters down the road on the opposite side of the road. Luckily we did have Caoimhe and we were wearing helmets so there was no real damage. Although Cara realised she had a rather large hole in her knee (about a penny wide and cm deep – all the way down to the gooey fatty centre!) Luckily for us a fish truck came down the road, scooped us off and took us to the nearest local “hospital,’ and towed our bike for us, very charitable (or so we thought!)

At the ‘hospital’ we were greeted by a doctor who was ‘very busy doing paperwork and would be with us when he had finished’ so we waited 15 mins (with a big hole) whilst drawing a crowd of about 20 villagers who thought it was great entertainment.

We were helped out by a local student, Bang, who’s English was pretty good, luckily for us again, who negotiated an ambulance to ship us back to the hotel with instructions to go to another hospital the next day. This ambulance was really a white van with a red cross painted on it which needed a push to start it. The one good thing that came out of the experience was that we gave a ride to a very sick woman who was in the hospital when we arrived and would’ve been stuck there as she couldn’t afford the ride to the main hospital on the island. Everyone involved in the ‘excitement’ was given a payout, from the fish truck driver, to Bang’s uncle who towed the bike.
The next day back in Ho Chi Minh we visited an international hospital and were checked out thoroughly. It took over 40 mins and over 2 litres of saline to remove the original bandages from our grazed skin. Our favorite nurse was a Phillipino lady called Therase and she couldn’t believe what the local doctor had done to patch us up. Three days later Cara had a couple of stitches in her knee as it wasn’t clean enough to stitch before, they weren’t cheap at $20/stitch! Sophie is icing herself as we speak to relieve her blood clots caused by the impact of falling off the bike (and from Cara falling on top of her!)

We are fine now 5 days on, with grazes that require redressing everyday. We will definitely never get on a bike ever again and have been advising every traveler we’ve met not to either. The doctor (and Sophie’s mum) advised us not to get in dirty water and Cara can’t bend her knee so the elephant trip has been pushed back to the 10th of December where everything should hopefully be healed up.

We are now in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand so are planning to travel around the area and onto Northern Laos before coming back to the elephant conservation centre.
This afternoon we took it easy and went and watched 2012 in the cinema, at the beginning of the showing the audience leapt to its feet when the national anthem and patriotic images of their King were shown on the screen. We pondered whether Queen Elizabeth II would get the same reception in an English cinema!

Sophie finally got her new SLR camera so expect some snazzy shots to come soon, Cara got a free disposable waterproof camera so don’t expect anything snazzy from her! (The pictures of babies from the centre our friend Sarah took with hers) Tonight we are going to see some Thai Boxing maybe people will think we are tough boxers with all our bandages!

Both the Vietnamese and Thai don’t seem to empathise with our war wounds and either laugh when they find out it was a motorcycle accident or assure us that they (on their bike/tuktuk) won’t crash if we took a ride with them!

Sophie spent two days at the centre before we flew to Bangkok, Cara unfortunately could only do an afternoon. But all the kids are still great and all a lot bigger with the exception of little Mai in the first photo (above left) who isn't too well at the moment. We are waiting on Gokky's (Ngoc) sponsorship to get that moving.

Hope everyone is still good back home (and still in one piece). Congratulations on new auntie Sarah and happy birthday to Holly Acarnley today.

S & C xx