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Borderline

The morning is mild but grey, the route along the Arun to the Millstream quiet apart from six Magpies squabbling territorially on the path.

Rain has swollen what is already one of the fastest-flowing rivers in England and detritus picked up at high tide is now careering towards the sea. Among it is a matted mass of reeds, a Moorhen perching incongruously on the vegetation probing for food. Watching it, I recall standing by a different river a decade ago.

It’s 28 December 2007, a bright, crisp day in northern Thailand, and hosts of waders are feeding on a small chain of sandbars along the Mekong River. There are Long-billed Plovers and Temminck’s Stints, Spotted Redshanks and Small Pratincoles, but the River Lapwings are the real prize. This is a new species for me.

What’s more the side of the river I’m standing on is the border between Thailand and Laos, meaning the birds are in Laos. The 14 species noted on the sandbars form my list for a country I’ve still not set foot in. A lifer and a new country list, what could be better?

The birding is interrupted as a dead animal floats past, too decomposed to identify. Peter, the Swedish guy I’m birding with, tells me he once saw an elephant carcass heaving down the river. Others have seen human bodies, he adds. We are close to the Golden Triangle where Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet, a place where gambling camps and drug traffickers take advantage of porous borders.

I return to the present, watching the Moorhen and its raft of reeds swirl down the river. I’ve only seen one animal carcass floating down the Arun, what appeared to be a pig that presumably lost its footing when water levels were high. And I’ve never seen a human body floating down the river, yet.

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