News Forum - Europeans lost in Koh Pha Ngan forest found by tourist police

[Thaiger]

An emergency rescue party managed to find two missing tourists lost in a Koh Phan Gan forest after receiving an emergency call last night. Koh Pha Ngan Tourist Police received a call on their 1155 emergency hotline at about 8pm last night from a Spanish man and a Belarussian woman saying they were lost and couldn’t find a way back to their resort. The couple, 25 year old Jaime Iabaig Nunez from Spain, and 22 year old Darya Pankova from Belarus got lost while investigating a mountain near Moo 5 village in tambon. Koh Phangan Tourist Police patrol officers, Koh […]

The story Europeans lost in Koh Pha Ngan forest found by tourist police as seen on Thaiger News.

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[Guest1]

Charge them the cost for the search! Minimum.

Looking at the picture, no shirt, assumingly in flip flops?

And still always again the question:

They have minimum one phone, since they could call the police. No one in that age has "no smartphone". Why cant they tell them the location, reading it from google maps?

And no, you don't need internet, to get longitude/latitude 

You need internet, to put a map under the data, but the phone (maps) gets you the position GPS data without.

Why are so many people just using tech, but not knowing anything about it?

[Giltee]

2 hours ago, Thaiger said:

An emergency rescue party managed to find two missing tourists lost in a Koh Phan Gan forest after receiving an emergency call last night. Koh Pha Ngan Tourist Police received a call on their 1155 emergency hotline at about 8pm last night from a Spanish man and a Belarussian woman saying they were lost and couldn’t find a way back to their resort. The couple, 25 year old Jaime Iabaig Nunez from Spain, and 22 year old Darya Pankova from Belarus got lost while investigating a mountain near Moo 5 village in tambon. Koh Phangan Tourist Police patrol officers, Koh […]

The story Europeans lost in Koh Pha Ngan forest found by tourist police as seen on Thaiger News.

Read the full story

A happy ending to what could’ve been a tragedy. Well done to the rescuers 

[Chatogaster]

1 hour ago, Guest1 said:

Charge them the cost for the search! Minimum.

Looking at the picture, no shirt, assumingly in flip flops?

And still always again the question:

They have minimum one phone, since they could call the police. No one in that age has "no smartphone". Why cant they tell them the location, reading it from google maps?

And no, you don't need internet, to get longitude/latitude 

You need internet, to put a map under the data, but the phone (maps) gets you the position GPS data without.

Why are so many people just using tech, but not knowing anything about it?

 

You're right on all accounts, except the assumption that technical illiteracy played the role you think it did.

One of the sources, Innews (last paragraph), mentions that WhatsApp was used to communicate the co-ordinates (and it then explains that the search was difficult nevertheless because of the terrain and darkness).

Perhaps the police/the volunteers should just have send a drone to the coordinates received - to deliver a bottle of water and some mosquito spray - and then check in the morning to see if the problem has resolved itself. 

PS: I only consider that approach reasonable for cases like this one, and in particular not for demented wanderers or for people complaining about things like broken legs.

 

[Guest1]

30 minutes ago, Chatogaster said:

You're right on all accounts, except the assumption that technical illiteracy played the role you think it did.

One of the sources, Innews (last paragraph), mentions that WhatsApp was used to communicate the co-ordinates (and it then explains that the search was difficult nevertheless because of the terrain and darkness).

Perhaps the police/the volunteers should just have send a drone to the coordinates received - to deliver a bottle of water and some mosquito spray - and then check in the morning to see if the problem has resolved itself. 

PS: I only consider that approach reasonable for cases like this one, and in particular not for demented wanderers or for people complaining about things like broken legs.

Oh yeah, you are right, in the pic on the source he is even wearing trainers.

I am sorry, but I will never get really used to this kind of "running news", where you always have to follow to the sources, to get the full picture.

Demented wanderers should not walk alone, methinks, and broken legs are specific cases.

Good to read, that the rescue guys thought about whats app locationing, this time. An improvement, methinks.

 

[ThaiFoodGuy]

On my first trip to Thailand in 2007, two friends came along for the trip, one of which was very much the "free spirit" type, extremely naive but insisted everything is wonderful if you just follow your heart and live spontaneously. Definitely the type to wander into the jungle shirtless to explore with a pretty girl he just met who is seduced by the lack of any tethering to reality.

Anyway, within the first few days he meets this girl while we're hanging out on Khao San Road. They instantly start talking about all the things they'd love to do and places they'd love to go, and Bali is among the places they mutually said they'd love to see. Well WHADDAYA KNOW!? The next day they booked a flight over to Indonesia so they could live their dreams. He left 90% of his luggage and belongings with us and only brought a toothbrush and two outfits, saying he'll be back in 5 days.

We didn't hear from him for the 5 days, then 7, then 10. We were very, very worried, but being who he was, we figured he just had his head in the clouds and was having a fun time with this new girl.

After 2 weeks, I got an email from him, he was home in Canada.

When they landed in Indonesia, first thing out of the airport they asked a cab driver to take them to the most beautiful but least known beach so they could have it all to themselves. The driver took them somewhere, they had absolutely no idea where they were. They went and sat on this beach and after about an hour, a group of men appeared on the beach but sat far away, set up a tent and made themselves lunch. After a while the men came over and started talking with them and offered them food and some drinks. He said he didn't remember the conversation but it was innocuous and they accepted the drinks. The drinks were spiked.

He regained consciousness in the tent, the girl was gone, and he had bruises all over his head and his arms. It was daylight so he thought not much time had passed. He wandered off the beach and found a street, waved someone down and asked for help, and they took him to a hospital. At the hospital they had a police officer come and take his report and his information. This is also when he realized it was the next day, he was out for at least 18-20 hours. He stayed at the hospital for 2 days so they could observe him, but they confirmed he was drugged. The police officer actually didn't believe his story and accused him of taking drugs voluntarily, but didn't arrest or charge him for anything.

3 or 4 days later he got an email from the girl. They had raped her repeatedly and beat her pretty badly. She was okay but she was on her way home, but said she wished she'd never met him, and that he needed to be more responsible and grow up. He left the hospital and stayed in a hostel for a few days, then flew home. We shipped his luggage back home after seeing his email.

He's never been the same since. Became quite a hermit, never traveled again, never even really talked any further about what happened. He's married and has a family now.

All this to say - I wish there was some requirement that travelers must have a certain level of awareness or maturity to know you shouldn't do stupid shit like wander into the jungle shirtless or accept strange drinks from strange men on a strange beach because you're living it up on vacation.

[Noble_Design]

53 minutes ago, ThaiFoodGuy said:

On my first trip to Thailand in 2007, two friends came along for the trip, one of which was very much the "free spirit" type, extremely naive but insisted everything is wonderful if you just follow your heart and live spontaneously. Definitely the type to wander into the jungle shirtless to explore with a pretty girl he just met who is seduced by the lack of any tethering to reality.

Anyway, within the first few days he meets this girl while we're hanging out on Khao San Road. They instantly start talking about all the things they'd love to do and places they'd love to go, and Bali is among the places they mutually said they'd love to see. Well WHADDAYA KNOW!? The next day they booked a flight over to Indonesia so they could live their dreams. He left 90% of his luggage and belongings with us and only brought a toothbrush and two outfits, saying he'll be back in 5 days.

We didn't hear from him for the 5 days, then 7, then 10. We were very, very worried, but being who he was, we figured he just had his head in the clouds and was having a fun time with this new girl.

After 2 weeks, I got an email from him, he was home in Canada.

When they landed in Indonesia, first thing out of the airport they asked a cab driver to take them to the most beautiful but least known beach so they could have it all to themselves. The driver took them somewhere, they had absolutely no idea where they were. They went and sat on this beach and after about an hour, a group of men appeared on the beach but sat far away, set up a tent and made themselves lunch. After a while the men came over and started talking with them and offered them food and some drinks. He said he didn't remember the conversation but it was innocuous and they accepted the drinks. The drinks were spiked.

He regained consciousness in the tent, the girl was gone, and he had bruises all over his head and his arms. It was daylight so he thought not much time had passed. He wandered off the beach and found a street, waved someone down and asked for help, and they took him to a hospital. At the hospital they had a police officer come and take his report and his information. This is also when he realized it was the next day, he was out for at least 18-20 hours. He stayed at the hospital for 2 days so they could observe him, but they confirmed he was drugged. The police officer actually didn't believe his story and accused him of taking drugs voluntarily, but didn't arrest or charge him for anything.

3 or 4 days later he got an email from the girl. They had raped her repeatedly and beat her pretty badly. She was okay but she was on her way home, but said she wished she'd never met him, and that he needed to be more responsible and grow up. He left the hospital and stayed in a hostel for a few days, then flew home. We shipped his luggage back home after seeing his email.

He's never been the same since. Became quite a hermit, never traveled again, never even really talked any further about what happened. He's married and has a family now.

All this to say - I wish there was some requirement that travelers must have a certain level of awareness or maturity to know you shouldn't do stupid shit like wander into the jungle shirtless or accept strange drinks from strange men on a strange beach because you're living it up on vacation.

Long story but a good story.

Problem is there are too many people living the YOLO life.

[Chatogaster]

1 hour ago, Guest1 said:

Oh yeah, you are right, in the pic on the source he is even wearing trainers.

I am sorry, but I will never get really used to this kind of "running news", where you always have to follow to the sources, to get the full picture.

Demented wanderers should not walk alone, methinks, and broken legs are specific cases.

Good to read, that the rescue guys thought about whats app locationing, this time. An improvement, methinks.

 

I'm really having difficulty understanding your reply, and the first sentence baffles me the most. You seem to invoke the wearing of trainers as some kind of confirmation ("you are right"), even though neither of us mentioned trainers before and it's very much unrelated to what I'm right about.

You do seem to have recognized my key message though, namely that a single source isn't enough to form an opinion let alone draw conclusions (in your words: "get a full picture"). I'm sorry about that too (i.e., that there's a general lack of easily-accessible "full pictures", and also that most people ignore that fact).

This is a light forum, so I'll leave my ruminations at that. Fact remains that I agree with almost everything you wrote in your original post, that the one thing that was untrue/misleading could easily have been true in another case, and that I liked your explanation of GPS vs IP. In short: my original reply is a clarification, not a criticism.

 

[Guest1]

27 minutes ago, Chatogaster said:

even though neither of us mentioned trainers before

Yeah, thats because I thought/wrote he could wander even with flipflops. (My bad, judging by topless, comparing it with the many topless young man, hiking up to big buddha on Phuket, in the past years ;-)

My answer was, now in longer, yes, you are right.

In the source are so many more information about this, just Thaiger did not bother to copy/paste that parts, too.

Thats what I am not getting used to. Not that it wasn't available, no, they just did not copy it.

[Marc26]

4 hours ago, Guest1 said:

Charge them the cost for the search! Minimum.

Looking at the picture, no shirt, assumingly in flip flops?

And still always again the question:

They have minimum one phone, since they could call the police. No one in that age has "no smartphone". Why cant they tell them the location, reading it from google maps?

And no, you don't need internet, to get longitude/latitude 

You need internet, to put a map under the data, but the phone (maps) gets you the position GPS data without.

Why are so many people just using tech, but not knowing anything about it?

You aren't allowed to take off your shirt when hiking in the forest????

 

And they got lost, and the Tourist Police went and helped Tourists! It's in their job description

 

 

[SSimpson]

That'll learn them, investigating a mountain.....