I'm activating this blog again and good god, it's been a year since I last posted on this blog. I thought about what I want to post up and I realised I actually have tons, really it's tons ( I weighed em) that has so far not seen the light of day, well not publicly anyways.
Main reason for that is of course I'm too obtuse to figure out how to bloody edit my vids. I mean, I tried but damn what I have in mind and the output was heaven and earth la. Unfortunately I don't possess the necessary skills nor brain matter to figure out all these editing and to make the vids come out in the way I imagined.
However I've decided to finally suck it up and just post vids up to the best of my ability and hopefully with practice improve from then on. So now there's the issue of which vid shall i post up 1st and from my 2mths tour of Indochina I'm pretty sure in terms of experience level this particular one wins. It's actually a clip of my crash in Vietnam.
Now before we go any further I just want to stress that this crash was entirely my fault. Ok let's proceed with a bit of background. We were riding in a group making our way to Hanoi from Halong Bay and due to differing speeds we always find ourselves in small pockets of 2 or 3 bikes. About 50km into the journey myself and another guy(let's call him Bob)* noticed that our sweeper was taking too long. We stopped at an intersection and called, he answered with the dreaded words "aku jatuh" (I fell). So Bob went back while I called and texted the group in front. Took me about 15minutes before I managed to reach em by which time they were actually about 40km ahead of us, and trust me in Vietnam 40km is about an hour or maybe more. So after I had managed to do so, I then made my way back to the crash site alone and yes of course of all the times this is when I "chose" to crash haha.
Let's watch the video now shall we then we can continue:
This is like 1 of the worst things that could happen to you when you are riding in a foreign country, to crash into someone while alone. Bear in mind that this is my 1st overlanding experience having just bought the bike 3 mths before.
This clip is both horrifying and comedic, well trust me while all this happened my balls were in my throat la, the comedic part came much much muchhhhh later. If you notice, when I was trapped under the bike the first guy I asked to help actually waved at me thinking I waved....hahaha.
You know, what went through my mind at that time was to GET THE FUCK OUT OF HEREEEEE! but I couldnt find Neutral. I'm not proud of it but I was alone, surrounded by Vietnamese after just grazing (or hitting if you like) an old man. I don't know about you but i was pretty sure that I wasn't Mr. Popular at that time. So the natural instict is fight or flight, unfortunately my flight attempt was thwarted by my inability to find the Fucking Neutral!
I was fortunate that the crowd didn't get violent, I guess it was entertainment for them as well but you can never be sure. It cost me 200,000 VND which is about RM35 to settle, so I was lucky there.
Anyways, remember I wrote this crash is my fault. Well, you can see a series of events lead to me crashing but why it's ultimately my fault is because I failed to adjust my speed according to my surrounding. When you are traveling with mixed speed traffic, always, always always adjust your speed towards the slower traffic. I can say it was the bus' fault for overtaking forcing me to move to the shoulder or the old man for moving to my path and whatnots but this is their country and that's how they do it over there. Don't think you can take the concept of right of way that we're used to over there.
Also, if I may add another learning experience from the above it would be NEVER NEVER EVER let the authorities get involved. It'll be messier. If you hit someone, something, some animal, make sure you settle it there and then and get out of there.
*I don't name other rider's names for privacy reasons. It is up to them to reveal themselves.
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