Video: Dien Bien Phu Encounter

Just wear one, OK?

It's a little more than ten kilometres as the crow flies from Dien Bien Phu to Muong Phang but it's almost thirty by road, which gives you some idea of the tortuous route a road must take through the mountains of north-west Vietnam.

Giang had brought me to Muong Phang on the back of his motorbike. We'd come to see the bunkered command post and jungle headquarters General Vo Nguyen Giap used to coordinate the Vietnamese Army's crushing defeat of the French Expeditionary Corps at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

Giang had proved to be a proficient rider and the lack of traffic and sense of freedom engendered by not wearing a helmet found me in ready acquiescence to his suggestion that we dispense with them until we regained the outskirts of town. Wearing helmets is compulsory for motorbike riders in Vietnam, but there's many who don't observe the rule. Especially out here in the mountains where income is low - a helmet costs about twenty US dollars.

Amber had decided to stay at our hotel in Dien Bien as she wasn't feeling 100% and was also extremely wary of being a pillion passenger on a motorbike in the chaotic streets of the town. I thought I'd grab a little video on the still camera to show her what the ride was like. I rested the camera on my knee and began shooting as we approached a bend. I swapped it to my other knee to grab what I thought would be a drive-by of the group of villagers gathered by the roadside just around the corner. Maybe it was the sudden unfolding of events - I don't know, it was completely unlike me - but when Giang pulled up I didn't turn it off...

By the way: The alien appearing in the sky in the fourth scene cleared up my misapprehension about compact digital cameras never suffering from crap on their sensors. I've since noticed these miscreant microants emerging from my laptop keyboard too!