Welcome to Laos!

Te busqué/Debajo de las piedras y no te encontré/En la mañana fría y en la noche /Te busqué/Hasta enloquecer…

(I searched for you/Under the stones and I couldn’t find you/In the cold morning and during the night I searched/Until I was going crazy)

Nelly Furtado kept on repeating this song in my head and indeed I felt like going crazy. I knew I wasn’t and also I wasn’t the only one who was feeling weird – out of balance, disoriented – but mostly just weird, like being drugged or something. My sister Loes was only a little light in the head but the other Loes was feeling much worse. I guess I was somewhere in between.
It wasn’t until one of us three mentioned the malaria pills we were taking that we related them to the symptoms we were suffering from. We should have started to take these three weeks before entering Laos; one pill a week. But since we didn’t know exactly when we were going to Laos, we decided to take the other option: take the pills for three days in a row. The first day was fine and the second day we didn’t have any problems, but that third one was maybe too much.

…mefloquine can cause psychiatric side effects such as mood or behaviour changes, anxiety, depression, feelings of persecution, crying, aggression, forgetfulness, agitation, confusion or hallucinations. In 75 per cent of cases such side effects appear by the third dose if they are going to affect you…

Anyway, let’s try not to think too much about it and hope the effects will fade away. We’re feeling better already. We’re still in Luang Prabang and this morning we went to see the waterfalls of Kuangsi. We’re very lucky that the sun is shining here because it’s rain season. Let’s see it as a sign...