Nico and Jo’s Excellent Adventure

I couldn’t contain my relief as the bus got into Vientienne. Nico and I were tired, hungry and ready for a meal and a nice long rest at our hotel.

But, as all backpackers know…things don’t always turn out the way you plan…

Minutes after we had unloaded our packs, we found a tuk tuk that drove travellers to the center of town where the majority of the guesthouses are located. The driver loaded our packs and we stepped in. Nico went to retrieve our travel book from his pack and within minutes, had fallen. Not just backwards, but also caught his leg between the iron grates of the back step of the tuk tuk. After realizing that Nico could have a broken leg, I yelled for the driver to help me pick Nico up and get is leg out of the grate. Nico, upson looking at his injuries, went into mini shock but managed to get up on the tuk tuk and elevate his leg.

Ryan and Ayumi were getting on the same tuk tuk. Ryan immediately started examining Nico’s leg as I made sure Nico could open his eyes and talk to us about the pain he was feeling. I talked to the tuk tuk driver to try and get him to take us to the hospital but he just said “Yes, city center.”

Frustrated and on the verge of tears, I went back to Nico and gave him water to cool him off so he could open his eyes and talk. Ryan was carefully touching places of Nico’s shinbone to ask him if he felt pain at different points. From the position Nico had fallen, he could have snapped his shinbone in two. Ayumi looked up Vientienne’s hospoitals and located the ones that took trauma and accidents.

It was one of the ladyboys who came up to me and asked if I wanted to go to the hospital and then translated to the driver. By then,Nic was started in to recover from the mini shock and started saying he didn’t think his leg was broken. I told him that that was up to the doctors and the Xray to decide. He just groaned and closed his eyes again.

Another American backpacker on the tuk tuk with us looked at Nico’s leg and said that she thought that though it didn’t look broken, we should get an Xray. We re-met her and it turns out she is a nurse.

We got to the hospital and unloaded our packs. Nico (fully out of mini shock and back to his stubborn self) actually tried to carry his own pack. I told him to go ahead into the emergency room and I would take care of the packs. He grumbled but finally agreed. (But not without first stopping and asking the orderly at the door to help me with our packs)

My thoughts at the emergency room:

– Eddy and Valerie are gonna KILL me.

– My mom will say “I TOLD you guys to just go to the Carribbean and stay at a resort instead of traipsing around some Third World country!”

Twenty minutes and 60,000 kip ($6) later, Nico had been examined and Xrayed. No broken bones, no hairline fractures…just some deep cuts, bad bruising…and a story to tell. (And maybe a bruised ego to boot)

PS: In Nico’s version, he will have been jumping from the tuk tuk to the bus platform to save:

Choose one:
– A small boy/girl
– A kitten/puppy
– An elderly man/woman.

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