The Mandalay Express is a sequel to last year’s more expansive 10,000 Kilometers, which was a train ride through two continents’ worth of skate spots. Mandalay is confined to the southeastern quadrant of Asia, near where the previous video left off, and covers four countries: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar, via “78 hours of buses” in 30 days. The crew for the trip consists of Casey Rigney, Kenny Reed, Denny Pham, Geng Jakkarin, Laurence Keefe, John Tanner, TF personality / nose manual mastermind Dan Zvereff, and the video’s creator, Patrik Wallner.
Travel videos are made to tap into our instinctual fascination with new skate spots, even if we experience them on a vicarious level. Patrik could make this same video another eight times in regions that have experienced a similar lack-of-interest from mainstream skateboarding (for example, non-Brazilian South America, or even Africa, though probably not the Middle East), and it would be just as interesting. Watching it, we could only imagine what sort of skateable things exist outside of major cities on this planet, as one of the video’s most amazing architectural discoveries is a bust-free, half-completed religious theme resort in the middle of Myanmar, which is described as looking akin to a mini golf course.