As smoke streamed from the bonnet, they were extricated and taken to the hospital just in time.

All survived by dint of chance - the outcome could have been graver had the van hit a tree or a house, or else exploded.

I was one of the nine victims.

The crash brought home the realisation that mishaps, when they occur, swoop in suddenly, randomly and unexpectedly - and they are not uncommon.

Just last month, another group of nine Singaporeans were also on a minibus that crashed - this time in New Zealand. The van careened off the highway and plunged down an embankment. Two passengers were airlifted to hospital.

There have been other, fatal cases. With Singaporeans making more trips abroad, the chances of everyone staying safe all of the time can be less likely.

This is not a call to stay at home. But before leaving, precautions that can prevent a bad situation from slipping into a worse one should be taken:

Travel insurance
The cost of this is negligible considering that medical and hospitalisation bills can run into the thousands, as it was for myself and some of my fellow passengers.

Getting the best treatment available - a key consideration when one is hurt in places with widely uneven levels of medical care - costs. Insurance offers  peace of mind. Keep the contact number of the insurer and the insurance policy number on your body.

Embassy contacts
If you are hapless and distressed in a foreign land, it makes sense to let the nearest consular authorities know - they have the experience of helping many Singaporeans before you.

After the crash, my friends and I were taken to different village hospitals. The Singapore Embassy in Bangkok helped us circumvent the language barrier by calling the hospital staff on our behalf to find out how everyone was doing.

Later on, they linked us up with Silkair so we could depart on short notice upon being discharged from hospital.

So keep the phone number of the nearest Singapore diplomatic office with you - and register with the Foreign Affairs Ministry before leaving home.

Other measures one can take include:
* Noting the local emergency services numbers.

* If language can be a barrier, having the contacts of locals in the country who can converse in your language and theirs can come in useful.

* Keeping a spare phone, extra mobile phone batteries or a mobile phone charger on you. In the chaos that follows a mishap, it may take a while before you find a power point. In any case, a power socket is useless if one has been separated from the charger and travel adaptor in the luggage. This was the case for my friends and I.

Here or abroad, life is full of what-ifs, so it is impossible to create an exhaustive list of everything that can be done should things go wrong.

But if they do - and when they do - a mastery of what we can control can mitigate the fall-out of what we can't.

But among the strangers in Singapore who shared her family’s grief in the week leading up to her funeral last Thursday were a handful who - perhaps more than others - felt a deeper sense of pain.

They had been victims of terrorist attacks before.

One of them was a woman who on May 12, 2003, was ensnared in a Saudi Arabian gated compound when terrorists swamped it, bombed it and shot at residents.

News reports then said suicide bombers in booby-trapped cars filled with explosives drove into three housing compounds that night. The attack - attributed to Al-Qaeda - killed 26 people and hurt over 160.

She survived after she took refuge in a swimming pool before clambering out to hide in one of the villas in the compound. Help came later.

Now 46, the Singaporean kept mum about the incident until August, when she spoke to Berita Harian. She opened up to The Straits Times again last week after the Mumbai attacks.

To hear her say it, it is not the physical injuries that plague one in the aftermath of a terrorist attack - though she lost 30 per cent of her hearing after a bomb exploded near her.

It is the lingering mental trauma.

“That’s the thing about terrorism: they kidnap your mind for life,” she said.

In the aftermath of the Saudi Arabian attacks, she remembers ducking while sitting in cars, checking every corner of the building she enters imagining what terrorists could do and refusing to stay out after dark.

This is the real effect terrorists can create in their targeted population. A climate of fear. A cult of paranoia.

Five years on, she has become calmer, but she retains “heightened senses” towards anything suspicious.

Some degree of alertness is a trait she wishes more Singaporeans could share as they go about their lives.

“Singaporeans are into their own lives, you feel that it (terrorism) is not so real for them,” she said.

Referring to the rationale behind MRT station announcements that warn the public to look out for suspicious packages, she said: “But for me, it’s real.”

By their very design, terrorist attacks are unexpected. Because of that, the threat can never be too far away from Singaporeans, who are venturing to all corners of the globe by the millions.

It could happen here too.

Responding to a question last Friday on whether Singapore could face a terrorist attack like the one in Mumbai, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said: “It can happen. We take this possibility very seriously.”

While security precautions were taken at major events, also needed was “a secure environment in the region, good cooperation among neighbours and good intelligence, depending also on our neighbours”.

Security agencies are working together on this. Meanwhile, individuals can do no worse than to “keep their antennae up”, the survivor said.

Another survivor, a 40-year-old male victim of the Aug 2003 JW Marriot Hotel bombing in Jakarta, said the incident has made him more aware of his surroundings when he travels.

He was one of four Singaporeans hurt.

“And everyone should be more careful too. It doesn't matter who you are, or where you come from, what nationality, race, or religion...you take precautionary steps. It’s about readiness...you never know,” he said.

The victims speak with the pain of experience - one that is best learnt second-hand.

Read also: Tips on how to stay safe

When some residents living alongside the Tampines Expressway woke up on Monday morning, the highway outside their block had morphed into a runway. 

ST Photo: Ong Chee Seng

At around 1am that morning, a Boeing 737-300 plane was nosing its way along the road and towards a pedestrian overhead bridge.

It was not scheduled for take-off though.

What they were witnessing was a rare sight: a plane "taking off" from Seletar Airport - via land - to a new stop, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore's training ground in Changi.

For about an hour, it became the centre of attention. Residents and passing motorists gawked and took photos.

But the onlookers soon changed from spectators to speculators. The question on everyones lips was whether the 5.2m-tall plane-laden trailer would be able to fit under the overhead bridge.

Stripped of its wings and tailfin, tied to and being towed by the long trailer, the ‘sausage-shaped’ fuselage looked like it simply would not fit under.

It did.

The transport company that undertook the complex operation claimed there was a clearance of least 20cm.

The bridge clearance was 5.3m, 10cm more than the laden trailer, claimed Mr Alan Tan, the general manager of Wyn2000, the company in charge of the towing operation.

To create an additional buffer of 10cm, the 22 tyres were deflated at the scene.

Only when this was done did the trailer budge, inching slowly under the overhead bridge.

While Mr Tan said the plane did not as much as scrape the bridge, for good measure, Land Transport Authority (LTA) engineers checked the overhead roadway and declared it to be structurally sound.

Actually, over-height vehicles hitting overhead structures is not unheard of on Singapore roads.

Statistics given to The Straits Times by LTA record 127 such incidents from 2000 to date.

But a plane getting stuck would surely have been a ‘first’.

In two out of three such incidents, drivers of lorry cranes had simply failed to retract the cranes before driving under the overhead structures.

Most of them had “forgotten” to do so.

The LTA onemotoring website describes accidents in which a vehicle hits a road structure as much more than a visual spectacle. They point out how it is "potentially dangerous and costly" because it can kill road-users and damage vehicles and structures. 

It is a punishable offence under the law too.

So, the authorities are keen to apply the brakes on what they regard as an unnecessary spectacle. Some measures have included the screening of videos to learner drivers and information packages.

Future drivers - or land-based ‘pilots’ - who feel the sky’s the limit may need to remember the height limit as well.