It was a windy evening in Phuket, Thailand.
Biking alongside 2 friends, we went to the Big Buddha Statue for sightseeing. I took out my Mavic Drone to film the magnificently enormous sculpture.
15 minutes into the flight, multiple gusts of wind heading north took over the atmosphere. It then occurred to me, that forces of the wind is stronger than the forward thrusting power of the drone - the drone was being dragged into the opposite direction I was controlling, drifting another 400m up North.
The battery of the drone has drained down to 40%. In a desperate attempt to rescue the drone, I turned on "SPORTS" mode function and managed to overpower the the wind and head down south.
"Ahh, I saved my drone with quick thinking" or so I thought, never did I knew it was unfortunately it's final flight. The battery drained to 20% really fast and forced itself out of "SPORTS" mode to intelligently(also foolishly) save it's battery.
Within minutes, the drone dropped in the middle of the woods 1200m away from our location.
Smart as the drone is, it pinpointed it's last location before running out of battery as it had not landed back to it's original place where it took off. A friend offered to take me on his bike to track down the drone in the middle of the woods.
Together, we set off to Thailand woods and found ourselves surrounded by exotic animals - birds, insects, snakes? When we reached the location the drone pointed us to, we could not find it.
On closer look on the ground to find the drone. We realized the snakes we were seeing were centipedes around 1.2m long.
"BARK, BARK", a distant sound was getting louder by the second. 2 wild dogs were closing in onto us fast. My friend and I immediately sense the threat and hopped into the bike. As we took of, 1 of the dog jumped and managed to bit my right shoe. It held onto me for a couple of seconds as the other dog closely trialed it's buddy. I reacted by flicking my leg behind, dog flew up 1m above ground and landed behind us. The 2 stopped giving chase as the other dog tended to it's injured buddy (I'm sowwie doggo).
If I ever avoided your large intemidating dog, know that it could be PTSD from this overwhelming shocking experience.
The force of nature was not one to mess with. The woods is sacred to wild animals, not for human beings to venture into. If I hadn't learnt anything from this, the next time it could be a tiger hunting me down from the woods, outpacing my bike.
I thank God I'm still alive and well, I could have been a good night snack.