Mad 5 Dirt Ride: Risky Pete

The contents of this blog post would normally be about the hard jungle riding we have been doing on our bikes but lets be honest if you don't ride bikes it is boring as hell to read.

So this post will be in the form of an email that I will be sending to the Risk Manager at my work, his name is Peter Roberts but we all call him Risky Pete, Risky Pete's job is to eliminate risk in the office.

Risky Pete is a great bloke but shit if he see's a wire sticking out of a power board he nearly has a heart attack, taking him for dumpling's in China town is extreme for this bloke so I think my email will get him fuming.

Hey Risky Pete

How is life going in the office? Have you stopped any risks today!!

We are having a small issue over here in Thailand & I was hoping you could help us out with your expertise?

At the moment myself & 4 mates are riding through the jungle in Thailand on our motorbikes & we have a couple of risk's that may be of concern, your input on these matters would be appreciated.

Risk concerns for the Mad 5 Dirt Ride

When we arrived in Thailand and hired Dirt Bikes from a Thai shop & handed over our passports. The bike shop didn't give our passports back to us, they said they needed them until we returned - do you think this is a concern?

There seems to be little road rules in Thailand and we don't have international licences - could this be a risk?

We have been eating a lot of the local foods that come from stalls on the sides of the roads, they don't seem to have a refrigertor but the chicken does taste good - is this recommended?

Yesterday we where deep in the jungle and a friend of ours Travis went off a cliff on his bike but lucky I held on to him before he fell off - any tips to stop this from occurring again?

Last night we stayed in a remote forestry hut on the river between Burma and Thailand (I think there was a civil war going on in Burma a while back because we saw a lot of guns). We had to cook our own food & the hut had minimal cooking utensils. I had to use a big Knife that was made from sprigs from a car, it was not very clean and I didn't see a dishwashing machine anywhere - Do you think bacteria could come from this?

While eating dinner in the forestry hut a drunken Thai man walked in and started yelling at us and we could not understand him, he came back 15 minutes later with a AK47 (it was a big gun), I used my broken Thai and asked if we could play with it. The Thai man said to me (My thai is average so I could be wrong) "yes you have gun if Sang Som mine (thai whisky)" I said no problem. I think there is an OHS issue here, do you think us coming to Australia with this AK47 could be an OHS issue?

My last and major concern we have is a bit more of a private issue, I hope you can keep this to your self but would love your feed back, there seems to be no toilet paper at any of the toilets we are using. There is a small hose with a trigger on it, I think you are meant to spray your behind with it but I could be wrong. 3 of the gentleman I am riding with have started using this instead of toilet paper. I heard them talking bout it yesterday & they said they loved it - from a risk management perspective could this be a concern, should I be confronting these 3 & get together a risk committee to discuss it?