Last week I was riding home on my AX-1. I currently call home Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I drove my usual rise home, through half the city and over the bridge that leads out of town and then, after the bridge turned a hairpin left onto dirt under the bridge and followed the dirt road paralell to the river towards my house. Now, recently they have dug massive holes at strange places in the road without marking them - but if one lives there one knows the holes. So I am doing maybe 70km on a sandy/gravelly road at one am and I am maybe 60m from one of the aforementioned holes and - as I come close to it I think I see something - so I hit the full beams and see it's a 100cc Daelim moped pulling a home-made trailer. I'm too close to avoid him totally, so I swerve lest and the right side of his bike (bars, pegs & passenger pegs) gives me a nasty scraping & I my bars get caught in the tow pin for his trailer. It's strange that I didn't get stalled or fall down - though my throttle side was caught in his hitch - tearing the throttle cables and switches from my bars and I broke my right hand headlamo, the cowl around them, damaging the lower fairing on both sides of the tank as a consequence and dinging the tank slightly. I also bent the speedo/headlamp mount badly. I was not ATGATT. In fact, I was wearing a pair of trainers, shorts and a t-shirt but, luckily, I only cut a finger, gave myself a touch of dead leg from his bars on my thigh and an exhaust burn from hisd exhaust as we tried to unstick our bikes from each other. I've had much worse. But I was damn lucky . . .
No, no lights at all on his bike, no reflectors and both his bike and trailer were the red dirt colour of the road. In fact, I have helped the same guy push his trailer out of a hole while it was full of offal on the same road but a different day. I always knew the lights on my bike lacked focus - but it's only since I had this little tip and began driving the DR at night that I realised just how poor they are. In fact, on the broken lamp, after the crash I saw that somebody had at one point sprayed the bulb surrounds with silver paint so they would work better, I guess - but it's had the opposite effect.
Note to self: Cancel riding trip to Cambodia. Sorry to hear man. I see videos and read stories like this of riding conditions in Asia and I wonder how anybody survives.
