I was the sole survivor of a plane crash. This is what I learned in eight days alone in the jungle

‘If you accept what’s not there, then you see what is there’ … Annette Herfkens in The Hague, Netherlands. Photograph: Judith Jockel/The Guardian

Annette Herfkens and her fiance, Willem van der Pas, had been together for 13 years when he booked them on to a flight from Ho Chi Minh City to the Vietnamese coast. After six months of working in different countries, it was meant to be a romantic break. Van der Pas was a banker, Herfkens a trader. The plane was tiny, just 25 passengers and six crew. Being claustrophobic, Herfkens initially refused to board. To placate her, Van der Pas – “Pasje” as he was to her – fibbed that it was only a 20-minute flight. But 40 minutes had gone by when the plane dropped sharply. Van der Pas looked at her. “This I don’t like,” he said nervously. The plane dropped again. He grabbed her hand – and everything went black.

When Herfkens came to, the sounds of the Vietnamese jungle were coming through a jagged hole in the fuselage. The plane had crashed into a mountain ridge. A stranger lay dead upon her. Pasje, a little way off, lay back in his seat, also dead, a smile upon his lips.