Slowly, the shock wore off and we realized that while we were lucky that nothing is broken, we still had an accident. For me, it was realizing where all my bruises were while for Flo…well, all we had really was an x-ray image. Our medically-inclined friends all agreed that the injury could still be bad even if nothing is broken and that we should have another (English-speaking) doctor have a look.

For this to happen, we would probably have to go to Thailand. None of the medical facilities in Laos was up there in the diagnostic’s department. Also, we had been on our way out and the Thai border is only about 190km away. Another day’s ride on the bike. If only Flo could ride.

So we decided to contact our insurance. We had done so yesterday already to claim back our transport expanses to even get to Luang Namtha. Now, the question was if they would pay for us to go to Bangkok. Seemed like a good choice as Bangkok is known for its western hospital and health care and also because we could fly us and the bike out in case something is seriously wrong.

That’s a big thing to ask of your health insurance which is why they scheduled a phone call with one of their own doctors in the Denmark to evaluate the situation. Basically, in health insurance terms, what we asked for was an “evacuation”. The phone call went well. The doctor agreed that it would be best if another doctor would have a look but his approach to the situation included flying Flo out to Chiang Mai for a diagnosis rather than transport both of us AND the bike to Thailand. Not really happy with this suggestion we settled on waiting two more days to see if the arm got substantially better. During this time, we would ask around about our transport option and come back to him with a price for our preferred way out.

That’s how we ended the day: Flo talked to the lovely owner of our guest house who spoke English so well if he could get information about transport options for us.