Political turmoil and protests didn't affect Yukon cyclist Zach Bell's first international road race in Thailand.

The Watson Lake native and his U.S.-based team finished in top spot in the standings, while Bell himself raced to a solid showing of second place in the points competition.

The team did all this while protests escalated in the country's capital city Bangkok.

Thankfully, the competition was held primarily in Thailand's northern provinces, so Bell and the team were no where near the conflict.

Since early April, anti-government protesters have been gathering and calling on Thailand prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to step down from office. Protests have been held in the streets, causing delays in traffic.

Bell said he was happy with the result in his first trip to Thailand.

"Everybody on the team is pretty excited that we're at this stage in the season and we are riding well already," he said. "A lot of times you go into races like that at the beginning of the year and no matter how fit you are it's still different racing. You have to kind of get yourself into it a bit."

Bell, who was in Thailand until April 13, said the political situation developed throughout the two weeks he was there.

Other than seeing updates on T.V., Bell said he didn't know too much about what was going on, but added the team wasn't concerned about it during the race because they knew it was happening in Bangkok.

"We were so far away from what was going on," he said.

"The only thing we were nervous about was if the airport were to get closed down and then we would just be stuck there, but there was no indication that the groups doing the protesting were aggressive towards foreigners. All of their energy was really focused on the prime minister."

Bell said the protests were a little harder to put out of his mind after the race was over, especially because the team had to fly back to Bangkok on April 10.

"That was kind of the hard period, because we flew back to Bangkok, and we were like what do we do? Do we hang out in the city here for a while?"

Bell and some of his other teammates ended up travelling on about an hour and half flight out of Bangkok, where they stayed for the remainder of the time.

Bell said despite enjoying his time in Thailand, he was glad to get back to Vancouver.

"I had been on the road for a month and I am always glad to get home," he said.

"Home's always better than away. It's funny I'm enjoying the racing more, but probably enjoying the travel less."

He said he will stay in Vancouver for a couple weeks to focus on training and recovering from the jet lag before going to a series of road races in the U.S.

A week before travelling to Thailand, Bell rode his way to an incredible second place at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Pruszkow, Poland. He finished second overall in the omnium race, a five event series that awards points based on the finishing positions in each stage.

Australian Leigh Howard narrowly beat out Bell for gold, winning by two points.

Bell, who has had success before in the Omnium, would have won gold had he finished one position higher or Howard one position lower in any one of the five events.

Bell also won a silver medal in the omnium race at the Pan American Championship in 2008.

"We (my coach and I) knew going into it that it would be a pretty good opportunity for me just because I tend to be pretty well rounded," Bell said about the omnium race.