After 2 weeks covering the entire length of the Mahakam river, I have arrived in Thailand. The journey up river was long, relaxing with little more than rice to eat for the two weeks, I’m glad to be back in civilization where I can sit down and have a good (spicy) meal.  While up river I was able to meet with a Dyak elder and do some shooting. I’ll be posting the shots in a month or so when I’m back on Canadian soil.

In the mean time, I’m on the southern part of the island of Phuket for the next few weeks shooting Muay Thai fighters. Before I head back to Saigon to do some shots of Vietnamese footballers.

Monday morning I set off for Phan Thiet, about 200km away from Saigon. I have to say that driving here in South East Asia is pure insanity, no one obeys any type of rule or law, it’s a mass free for all. I’ve seen several accidents in my first few days, including a few bikes get ploughed over by buses and trucks. My mission en route? not die.

With in 20 minutes I was failing miserably. As I was making my escape from Saigon I took a right turn and as I rounded the bend someone stepped out in front of me, I grabbed a fist full of front break and the wheel washed out and we went sliding across the intersection. With a little less skin and a whole lot more adrenaline I pick up the bike and proceed to get out of town. Maps and directions here are like a tanning oil in the winter, more or less useless not many people have seen a map or do they know where to direct you, this was a lesson learned after ending up on the wrong ferry to the wrong place and several more attempts make my way to the coast.

Finally after accidentally getting on to the right road I made my way through the country side where I ended up staying for a few days hoping from beach hut to beach hut, doing a little stock shooting and some exploring I decided to make the trip back in a straight shot. About 30 mins outside of Phan Thiet the Top Gear 125 sputtered several times and died. I pushed it to the nearest place that resembled a garage and in my best sign language tried to explain that the bike was not amongst the living. The older Vietnamese man quickly got to work, cleaning out the carb, replacing a fuel line and getting the bike up and running. After about an hour of work the bike was working again and he refused to take any sort of payment.

One thing I find about travelling is that regardless to all the negative media and the paranoia out there, people in the world are inherently good, they want to help others and share their knowledge and experiences. Whether they give you the wrong directions, unintentionally serve you a bowl of an animal you’d otherwise never eat or fix your motorcycle for free, they all just want to help.

This is a typical example of an intersection here in Saigon. On a scale of 1 to 10 on the crazy factor, this is about a 6. It gets much worse.