So there we were, sitting back in the longtail boat, enjoying the cool breeze in our hair and preparing to enjoy the cruise on the Mekong.
The camera equipment which would shoot the Virtual Reality footage had been set up – six GoPros mounted on a rig which Morris Sim (CEO of Brand Karma) had tied onto the front of the boat.
All set up and ready to shoot
“Will it be calm like this the whole time?” he asked as he sat down to enjoy his first cruise on the Mekong.
“It may get a bit bumpy,” answered Chananya Phataraprasit (Asian Oasis) who had arranged the day’s outing for us.
Five minutes later, Morris uttered an “Oh oh oh” and we all watched askance as the GoPro rig swayed and toppled into the river. I think Morris may have thought at the time, “Should I jump in?” but I am glad he didn’t because the Mekong, in case you don’t know, is the world’s 12th longest river and the seventh longest in Asia.
The mighty Mekong River
Helplessly, we watched as the GoPro sailed past us and then disappeared.
There was silence on the boat as reality sank in. “It’s gone, there’s no way we can find it,” said Morris. His next question, to Christopher, his assistant crew, “Have we downloaded everything?” Relief all round as they had downloaded the footage shot over the last two days in Lanjia Lodge and its surroundings.
At the back of the boat, a conversation was going on in Thai between Chananya and the boatman and while we were digesting what had just happened, she asked in a small, matter-of-fact, voice, “Do you want it back? They say they can find it.”
We looked around us, at the vast expanse of water. I had lost orientation and could not even figure out where it had gone down, how could they possibly find it? It’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
“Can they?” asked Morris in disbelief but with, dare I say, a little hope in his voice.
“They say they can ask the fishermen,” replied Chananya. “They have nets.”
And so we turned our boat around to the fishing village nearby. Morris sent an image of the equipment pro-dunking to our guide via LINE who then showed it to the fisherman. He nodded, got on his boat and he and a fellow fisherman motored out to the area where the dunking had happened.
Basically, the fishermen in this area circle huge nets in the river to catch fish and whatever else happens to get caught in the nets. And their thinking was, the equipment could get snared in the net.
The trawl begins
As we watched them, we calculated the odds in our heads. I said 50:50. Morris was quietly confident, his logic was the Go Pro had legs. Chananya was also quietly confident until we were told the river was 3m deep at this point and the nets were 1m high.
That’s how she and I are different. She’s logical. I just thought, “This is a really big river.”
Less than 10 minutes later, one of them hauled something up. They had found it. You should have heard our cheers, I think we nearly overturned the boat.
Rescue and recovery
On the banks, the fisherman, cool as a cucumber, untangled the equipment from his net and handed it back to Morris who was also trying to act cucumber-like but failing.
Morris reunited with his rig
The next question was whether the Go Pros would work after that dunking. That night, we put them in rice. The next morning, one of them worked.
Lessons I learnt from this adventure: One, what seems impossible is possible if you trust the locals. Two, virtual reality is the next big thing in content but nothing beats real reality when it comes to travel experiences.
Watch our adventure on video here
