Typical Home in Kratie

Typical Home in Kratie
Originally uploaded by Asia Trip2007.

I took the bus to Kratie ("kra -chay") on the 9th of February from Banlung. The bus was in tatters and half way to stung treng (half way point on the journey) we approached a horrific single car accident. One person on the bus happened to see a man crawling along the ground covered in blood, and yelled out to stop the bus. Those who were concerned about the accident went running to the scene (including myself). From what we could peace together from the few words, was that the male driver was intoxicated and possibly fell asleep at the wheel, at which point he veered off the road and hit a huge tree head on. He was okay besides major scrapes on his face but the two other young women in the car weren't doing well. One had a enormas laceration above her eye that was spurting blood at an alarming rate. She was going in and out of consciousness and the man had managed to pull her from the vehicle. It seemed that no one knew what to do as far as first aid, so I took over and told the man how to position her so she doesn't choke on her own vomit. I then used my neck cooling wrap that mom had given me to apply tension to the gushing wound (by this point it looked like she was wearing red facepaint, as she was completely covered) I used someones donated shirt to wipe away the excess and see if I tied it off tight enough, but no more blood was seeping out so I moved on to the next lady. She also had a serious gash on her head that was bleeding heavily but not the gushing of the other one, but I used my other scarf to tie her head off to, then she started throwing up huge clots of blood, so I got a passerby to call the emergency and helped to load the injured into the vehicles of locals who wanted to help. The nearest clinic was at least an hour away, and that is just a clinic, not a hospital. We were rushed to get back on the bus to complete the schedule, but the image was imprinted on my mind for the rest of the journey and I couldn't help thinking about if they were okay. When the bus arrived in Kratie, I hopped off glad to be there alive and well and stayed a unusual guesthouse called the "Star guesthouse". My room here was only 3 bucks a night (but the bed was really uncomfortable, oh well, what do you expect for 3 bucks?) I relaxed for an hour then went to see the endangered Irrawady river dolphins, just 30 minutes north (as the moto rides). This photo was taken on the way there.