The early hours of Saturday morning were a little bit more scary. I woke with bad abdominal pains – what felt like an old familiar but unwelcome pain of kidney stones.

Now the pain is one thing, an unhealthy dose of standard painkillers was applied in an attempt to ride out the pain.

The hard thing is what to decide about using the local hospital – when does it become necessary? Importantly too I figured that the local hospital in Siem Reap, Cambodia, was not going to be in a position to do ultrasonic blasting or keyhole surgery if needed. My two previous visits to hospital in Australia for this ailment consisted of an ultrasound and drugs varying between placebo and morphine.

So, what to do, try to sit out the pain and wait for the stone to make its way clear or get off to hospital? We were also due to fly to Thailand in 3 days’ time – what would we do with that flight?

Luckily Adventurer’s backup team (Wanderer) was busy checking our insurance cover and a quick call to Australia (thanks Skype!) confirmed we were all good if cover was needed. I think the backup team even included a Scottish member back in Yeppoon!

In the end the pain broke after about 5 hours or so, no hospital visits this time. This was however followed by around 36 hours of sleep, and a few days of residual kidney and stomach pains.

Travel is great and I do love it. But it’s not all cheap beer and cocktails, especially when things go wrong. Lesson two for the week was to be glad that our travel insurance was in place if needs be.

We also made that flight and are now relaxing in Chiang Mai, Thailand, before our next few weeks working with the dog rescue at Elephant Nature Park.

Onwards we go…

Adventurer!