"Let's see." I took out my camera and handed it to him. He turned it over, examining it critically. "You're not gonna broadcast with this, are you?" he demanded.

"Sure," I said stupidly. "why not?"

"It's a piece-a'-shit camera. Home video use only. Let's see your tape. Sony. That's what I thought." He dropped the cartridge as though it were contaminated. "The dropout on this stuff's terrible. You should've taken Fuji. That's what I've got."

He systematically inspected my equipment, denigrating filters and wrinkling his nose at my battery packs and their connecting cables. "I," he finally said, "charge my camera with the engine of my motorbike." It sounded like a good idea.

He was a Canadian producer, filming a documentary about the ancient Mandarin Way. He had planned to buy a bike in Thailand, follow it through Cambodia, up Vietnam's coastal highway and into China. As luck would have it, the recent tourist deaths in Cambodia had temporarily closed the overland border and the immigration officials had turned him away. He had been forced to sell his bike at a loss in Thailand and take a plane to Saigon. Now he was short on cash and seeking a companion to share a motorcycle for the journey north.

A cameraman! I took a second look at him. We could film for each other. I could pick up some pointers to augment my shaky skills. I momentarily ignored his shape, which resembled an overfed Syrian Golden Hamster, and invited him north with me. By bike.

He was not overwhelmed by my generosity. "Is it a good bike?" he asked suspiciously. "Not a piece of Vietnamese-Russian shit?"

I thought of my old Chinese clunker. Not Vietnamese, I said. And almost as good as my camera.

"Speaking of cameras," he said. "You got any desiccant? It rained on my bag. Camera's on the blink. Just needs to dry out."

My camera, I noted, was waterproof. And working.

"Yeah, right," he said and scratched his belly.