They say the best-laid plans are most often the ones that go awry. When we decided to film a ship port on the Mekong River, what better way than to use a drone?

Video from above would be ideal to illustrate the scale of Chiang Saen port at Chiang Rai in Thailand, on the banks of one of Asia’s biggest and most important waterways. Chiang Saen is operated as a partnership between four nations: China, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar, whose boats carry goods backwards and forwards. On a river where often there are "neighborly disputes" between the countries it flows through, Chiang Saen is a great example of Mekong water diplomacy at its best. 

But our visit coincided with some of the worst weather of the year. Hour after hour the rain poured down. Drones are powered by batteries… and electrics and water don’t mix – the motor could stop and the drone plunge from the sky. We sat watching and waiting as the skies got darker and darker, and the rain continued to fall.

Eventually – after a day and a half - we did get our pictures, as the skies finally cleared for the briefest window of time… we couldn’t film everything we’d hoped for but we were able to show something of this great artery, known by some as "the mother of rivers."