Despite the speed and the increasingly rougher rapids, credits must be given to our boat-man as he handled the boat very professionally. We were not splashed with any of the river water at all. He was very steady - kept a good speed and moved very fast through narrow an fast rapids. Our tour guide praised him for the good work and told us the boatman was a good navigator who knew the river well. He spoke too fast for soon after that the boatman drove the boat onto a sand-bar which was not supposed to be in the middle of the river. Being quite fast, we had slid quite far and deep in the middle of the sand bar.
It was quite far away from any village or town and of course there was no telecommunication signal. The three men on the boat jumped out and started shaking the boat loose. We managed to turn the boat to face downstream hoping to slide it back into water. The boat turned out to be quite heavy.
We next started digging out the sand from the side of the boat - pakdokter using the boat's paddle and the other two gentlemen using their hands. We did not make much progress and the boat-man was sighing helplessly and regretfully more and more. Credit to him he was calm and never lost his temper despite the palpable agitation. He must be 'cursing' in his heart.
Lucky for us after about an hour a boat came by from upstream carrying a group of Chinese tourists. The boat-man and his adolescent son stopped their boat and came over to help us out. The four of us moved the boat side to side thus creating a deep valley in the sand bar where our boat was stranded. Water started to trickle in to the created depression slowly floating our boat enabling us to push it forward back to the river.
What a relief.
Pakdokter could not help notice that the able-bodied Chinese men ( toruists) did not mke any effort to get out of the boat to help us out. But thanks to them anyway for letting their boat-men help us out.
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