FIVE THAI tourists returning to Chiang Rai after a holiday in Laos and China’s Yunnan province died yesterday (July 27) after an 18-wheel trailer truck slammed into their van on R3A road just a hundred metres from the border, Naewna newspaper said today.
Upon being contacted by the Laotian Red Cross, Siam Ruamjai Foundation rescuers went to the 4th bridge over the Mekong river at Chiang Khong district to collect the dead and the injured. The five dead bodies were taken to Chiang Khong and Chiang Rai Prachanukroh hospitals for autopsy while three injured tourists were taken to Chiang Khong Crown Prince Hospital.
Altogether 20 tourists from Chiang Rai’s Wiang Pa Pao district had crossed over to Houayxay town in Laos’ Bokeo province on July 23. After that they went to Boten town, in Laos’ Luang Namtha province on the Laotian-Chinese border, where they took a high-speed train to Kunming, the capital of China’s Yunnan province.
Yesterday they crossed back to Laos where they hired two Laotian vans to bring them back to Chiang Rai. However after the two vans reached Bokeo subdistrict and was about a 100 kilometres from the Thai-Laotian border at Chiang Khong district, the 18-wheel trailer truck suddenly crossed over to their side of the two-lane road and violently slammed into front of the rear van throwing it to the side of the mountainous road.
Aside from the five Thai tourists, the Laotian van driver too died in this accident.
The five dead Thai tourists were all from Chiang Rai’s Wiang Pa Pao district including a two women, one 59 years old the other 68, from Ban Pong subdistrict while a 68-year-old man and two other women, aged 64 and 66, were from Pa Ngio subdistrict.
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Top and Front Page: Scenes of the accident in Laos in which five Thai tourists died. Photos: Naewna
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