Coup d'état ... ?

Less than a week after the Prime Minister of Thailand was denied access to parliament, the military coup has become an amusement park.

CN Tower, seen from Centre Island

Swedish advertising

Advertising in Sweden can be quite entertaining and much more risqué than Canada.




Last winter, Lindex, a Swedish ladies undergarment company, had an advertising slogan: 'We love boobs!'. Although despite the very liberal culture, people did complain and within a week it was dropped - only the text, not the ads or the bra.










And then a Swedish tampon company had this ad:

The literal translation of "Gör det bekvämt för din mus" is "Makes it comfortable for your mouse", where mus is a well-known euphemism for ... you can figure it out.

There was also an interesting ad campaign by Posten, the state postal service. Apparently, if you have a one night stand, Posten is encouraging you to write a letter about it and send it to someone who cares:



Here are more of them, can you figure them all out?

Is someone trying to tell me something?

In addition to the recent change in visa rules, a Canadian teacher was killed by a bomb at a Thai department store over the weekend, and now there is more bad news coming out of Thailand in the form of a military coup:

In Thailand's first military coup in 15 years, a faction of the armed forces seized control of the capital on Tuesday night, suspended the Constitution and declared martial law, effective immediately.

I am not sure what to think of all this yet, but I still intend to fly to Thailand next week as scheduled. I don't know much about Thai politics at the moment, but it doesn't seem like there is a risk of civil war.

Yummy

This market in Beijing seemed to go on for miles, yet we did not see a single person eat anything except squid or fruit. Then upon finding foreigners, we pretended we ate those baby scorpians just to get them to follow the 'when in Rome' mantra, but they weren't buying it. And I don't blame them.


^How does one eat a starfish, exactly?


^And those black adult scorpians are huge, how do you eat that body armour?

How to travel to North Korea

Since posting the slide show video of North Korea, quite a few people have asked how one can travel there.

The first thing to note is that it is true that you cannot simply show up at the border or a North Korean embassy and ask for a visa. The only way to visit North Korea is to pre-book a tour through the state agency located in Beijing. Unless you are fluent in Korean or Mandarin, it is difficult to communicate with them directly so there are at least six (Refer to Lonely Planet Korea guidebook) agencies that do everything for you and offer 3-, 5- or 7-day packages. The largest company is Beijing-based Koryo Tours, however we went with Netherlands-based VNC Asia Travel.

Once we contacted VNC, they asked each of us to fill out the following form:

Surname:
Given names:
Sex:
Nationality: *
Passport number:
Date of issue:
Place of issue:
Date of expiry:
Date of birth:
Place of birth:
Occupation: **
Name of company:
Type of company:
Address of work:
Work Telephone no.:
Home address:
Home Telephone no.:

* there are (at least) two Nationalities which are automatically rejected: South Korean and American (However, I believe that as of this year, Americans can travel to North Korea during the Arirang Mass Games)

** you will likely be rejected if you list an occupation that has anything to do with journalism

After you submit this information your fate is up to the whims of the North Korean authorities, who are completely unpredictable. We actually applied as a group of five:

Nationality  Occupation  Result
-----------  ----------  ----------------------
Canada       unemployed  accepted
Netherlands  student     accepted
Finland      student     accepted
Austria      student     accepted, then refused
Mexico       student     accepted, then refused

Will anyone who lists 'unemployed' as an occupation be accepted? I doubt it. Why one national from the EU was refused while two others were accepted, is beyond me. It took weeks for us to stop wondering why they changed their minds about two people in our group.

Once you are accepted, you agree on the start/end dates of the tour and then the tour company tells you when to visit the North Korean embassy to pick up your visa, which costs 30 euro.

Train vs plane? That is the question. To elaborate a little more, your choices are:

24+ hour ride between Beijing and Pyongyang in a decently comfortable train cabin
-or-
2 hour flight on an old soviet plane that experiences "more turbulance than a rubber duckie in a jacuzzi" (the last part is in quotes because that person had first-hand experience, while I do not)

There is no obvious answer. We took the train in and out but if I were to go again, I would fly in and rail out (you are not so tired when you arrive and get to experience both). Whatever you do, a train ride on either leg is a MUST. It's your only chance to see what life is like for most North Koreans and be able to take photos freely (just don't be foolish about it).

Finally, should one even go there and effectively support such an oppressive state? That is a personal decision and if rebuked, I would not be able to defend myself.

It is worth asking however, how will your money be used? Well, for the visa and the tour we each paid 1040euro. That gets you transport in/out of Pyongyang and for five straight days: decent hotel room, 3 meals, 2 full-time 'well-taught' guides, 1 full-time driver, and a dedicated vehicle that whisks you from one spot to another. The tour company gets a cut and there is administration expenses. On the face of it, it doesn't seem like there is much left to go to the regime. But that sentiment is probably false. It also represents a pretty weak justification regardless. I have no idea where the profit goes but I am certain it does not go to the people who need it most.

If I have any credibility regarding this, may I insist that you do not buy any type of ginseng there. It is the most expensive thing they sell and all of it is farmed by prison camp labourers. Most of whom are guilty of being related to someone guilty of thinking too loud. Please read "The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag" by Kang Chol-Hwan.

"Respect mah authoritah!"

I didn't expect my first Thailand post to be about this ...

As of October 1st, it will no longer be possible to extend 30-day tourist visas indefinitely.

"Tourists who stayed for 90 days must leave the kingdom for at least 90 days before being permitted to re-enter Thailand."

Right now this topic is bustling with activity over at Thorn Tree.

It is my intention to get a good job and a legitimate working visa, but I liked having the fallback option of working informally for many months if I need to. But I guess the worst case scenario is either teaching someplace else for a few months (like Malaysia), or to just continue travelling in cheap countries. Not too bad.

Review of Microsoft Photo Story 3.0

I just finished making a slide show using Photo Story 3.0 (can't seem to locate the latest version, 3.1). There are plenty of online tutorials out there, so I will focus on the pro's/con's after using the program extensively.

The program has major drawbacks, such as:
- You cannot select a group of slides to shift the order, or apply settings
- You cannot change any default settings. So it is a pain to change the font and duration time for each and every slide
- Font settings are very limited. You can only choose among 16 colours and you cannot add a shadow to the text. The latter is a big problem when you want to have a consistent colour and text position on all your slides.
- Export to Windows Media Video (.wmv) format only and limited resolution settings. It would be nice to export video in a higher resolution than 1024*768 for sharper full-screen mode, or at 425*350 to match youtube.com.

However, all of this was worth it for the one major benefit of Photo Story: the ease of creating slide motions. This feature allows you to zoom in/out of each slide, pan from one side of the other, or any combination. The result is a far more dynamic and interesting way of presenting photos.


< This produces a slide motion from bottom-left to top-right. Each box can easily be enlarged, reduced, or moved to add life to your photos. Pinnacle Studio or Mac iPhoto can do the same thing, but their interfaces are awkward and less intuitive.

Oddly, I also found that the built-in red-eye remover tool worked better here than the one in the Adobe Photoshop CS2 toolbox.

Slide show of trip to North Korea

Make sure to turn on the sound!

I'm not an Italian leather shoes man, I'm a flip-flops man

When I first came to Stockholm six years ago, I saw someone reading a book at the City Hall (Stadshuset, where the Nobel prize dinner/dance takes place) and remember thinking: 'That is what I would do if I lived here' (I had no idea at the time that I actually would live there). But, in the four years I lived in Stockholm, I never read a book there!

So a month ago, I returned to Stockholm to attend a wedding and while I was there I finally read a book at the Stadshuset. It felt good. So good in fact that I couldn't hide the dumb smile on face for a natural looking photo ...




The interesting thing about this is that it was not actually the idea of returning to Stockholm that motivated me to fulfill a wish made long ago, but rather the book I read en route to Stockholm which I bought at the airport in Toronto. The fateful book, which I am holding above and highly recommend, is 'Getting Stoned With Savages', by Maarten Troost.

He lived in Kiribati for a few years before working for the World Bank in Washington DC. The book starts off by juxtapositioning the two lifestyles as he describes arriving to work late one morning for an important meeting. He wrote that while Washington (or it could be any metropolitan city really) had every luxury available, such as chocolate, few of us big city people ever enjoy them. Or if you work 40 hours a week, when was the last time you not a only saw a sunset, but actually watched the sun set?!

It was the perfect timing for me to be reminded of this message, and for the remainder of my journey to Stockholm, I thought about every way I could truly experience and appreciate this charming city I once called home -- which included reading a book for a whole sunny afternoon at the Stadshuset!

I just started reading his first book 'The Sex Lives of Cannibals', which describes life in Vanuatu/Fiji and is even better according to the reviews posted on Amazon. I wonder if I will like his second book better since I read it first?! Life is often like that.

One for the road

Today, the New York Times has an article about travel adventures outside of Dubai. The first of which is hiking in the Jebel Hajar (translated as 'Stone Mountains' from Arabic) of the Oman Promontory.

I did that a few years ago ...

We were a group of six in two SUV's, a Land Cruiser and a Cherokee (I believe) which I was in. The 'narrow ravine path alongside the Wadi Bih riverbed' referred to in the article was in fact a pretty scary experience. Our driver was riding the brakes, which is a big no-no since they overheat and fail. That's exactly what happened to us. We were lucky, however, that the path flattened out quite a bit before the next sharp turn and he was calm at applying the emergency hand brake. I appeared calm as long as you didn't look at my left hand grabbing on to the 'holy shit' handles for dear life. No harm, no foul, we made it to the beach okay. I forgot how many crashed vehicles we counted in the ditches, but I would guess now it was around six.

In the evening a group of UAE families camping nearby invited us over to talk. The first thing that surprised me was how much alcohol they had - and how much they had drunk already. They were very generous at ensuring we caught up to them. More evidence that ...

When it comes to alcohol and sex, religion goes down the toilet - Anonymous

After a few hours we got our cameras out to get photos taken with our new friends. When the photos were developed a few weeks later, there was another surprising observation: Not a single bottle of alcohol or beer can was visible on the blanket or in their hands. We were drinking like crazy, loud, and acting silly, yet they all had the presence of mind to hide the alcohol behind their backs for every photo. I wished I had noticed that while it was going on.

Before we departed for our tents, one of the guys was interested in hiking with me so we agreed to meet early the next morning. At 9am, I met him wearing a dishdasha, sandals (with straps only on the foot, not the heel), and a can of Foster's in his hand. It was his second for breakfast.

'Umm, are you sure you can hike in those sandals? If you don't have shoes you can borrow from my friend.'

'No, no. No problem. Let's go'

'Umm, are you sure you can hike in your clothing? You might step on it as you hike."

'No problem. Let's go'

'Sure? Have you hiked like this before?'

'Yeah, yeah, no problem. Many times. Let's go'

'Oookay ... but it's hot, you'll need to bring water. Do you have some? If not, we have extra.'

He held up his beer, 'Right here ... LET'S GO!'

'Alright, let's go then'

To make a long story short, he didn't last 30 minutes. We had to stop every five minutes so he could heave for oxygen. Soon he felt embarrassed that I was not heaving along side with him, so he insisted that I keep going. At one point, I thought he was motioning to me that he was going down, so I gave him a 'roger that' thumps-up then continued to the top on my own. It turns out that he was trying to tell me that his sandal straps broke. He wanted me to come down, to tell him he could come down, so he could do so (with me perhaps) and save face. I made a major error in this regard and I later had to go up the mountain a second time to find him.

As soon as I saw him, I rushed to him while outstretching a bottle of water so he could hydrate as soon as possible, but he looked disappointed: 'No beer?'. At least I knew he took the whole thing humourously. I was a bit worried after the lecture I got, deservedly, from my friends.

Unfortunately, due to my indecisiveness earlier in the week, I did not buy my digital camera until after we returned from camping in Oman. I have no idea where the film photos are, so here are some of my favourite shots from the last half of the trip:


^First photo taken with my Canon 300D

^Camel crossing

^Maybe they are referring to the mountains?!

^Their light displays are so TACKY!

Winter wonderland in Heinämaa, Finland

The house and separate sauna where I lived in Finland.

Tossing out an anchor before going out for a swim

In a few weeks, I will be going to Thailand to live there for about 6 months.

So earlier this summer I bought a condo, which should be ready for occupancy in the summer of 2007. It is located at Yonge and Eglinton, which is a very happening neighbourhood with many restaurants, bars, and biking trails.

Gamla Stan (old town), Stockholm

Hey Peko, do you want to go for a walk?

^Everyone loves his jumps!

Maligne Lake in Alberta, Canada

Chill out, dickwad (ref)

On April 29th, Sonja (a very good friend of mine from Finland), Matthijs (friend from the Netherlands), and myself were waiting to be picked up from the Jade International Youth Hostel in Beijing, China.

It's 3:15pm. He's 15 minutes late. 'Maybe he won't show up and we can just relax in Beijing', I thought. Since the person we were waiting for was about to take us to North Korea. Don't get me wrong, I was excited to go somewhere certainly off the beaten track, but there was definitely some last minute anxiety. Anxiety that would morph into a near panic in less than two hours.

3:21, our ride arrives. Yes! Finally! ... or is it 'Damn!'?! Either way, we all pile into the van as the overly friendly staff insist on handling all our bags for us. There is a driver and our sort of guide, whose name is forever lost so I will name him "Smiles". He did that a lot.

I try to engage in small talk to get my mind off things but the more we continue, the more I feel stupid for being so paranoid. Everything is going smoothly. We effortlessly get through airport-type security at the train station, we are able (probably because we were the only foreigners around) to wait in the 1st class lounge even though we had 2nd class tickets, and we felt comfortable leaving our bags with Smiles while we ran across the street to pick up some food.

At a little over 5:10pm, we head for the train. We pass through a hallway with stairways leading to the platforms, but ours is the only one guarded by men in very dark green military uniforms, which are obviously not Chinese. On the platform, there are plenty more men in similar uniforms. Anxiety starts to creep in again, but we follow Smiles as he leads us on the train and to our cabin.

It is probably 5:15 as Smiles, gleaming with pride, hands me a little booklet of papers: "Here are [sic?] your train ticket(s)".

I flip to the first page, which clearly indicates train passage from Beijing to Pyongyang. So I flip through the other pages. Now I can't remember what the other pages were for, but I vividly remember not seeing a return ticket for Pyongyang back to Beijing.

"Where is the return ticket back to Beijing?", I ask.

Suddenly, Smiles looks like I should have named him "Bewilderment". A long pause. "You buy it in Pyongyang".

The three of us look at each other, all of us had the deer-in-the-headlights look. We change focus to Smiles.
"The return ticket is included in the package price!"
"How are we supposed to get money in Pyongyang to pay for train tickets?"
"What if there are no seats available when we try to buy tickets? Our visa says we must leave in a week."
If questions were bullets, Smiles would look like Swiss cheese.

Suddenly he whips out his cell phone to get a definite answer, I guess. I have never heard Mandarin spoken so quickly. Sweat is oozing out of his forehead and face. I didn't know this at the time, but he had told Sonja and Matthijs earlier that he started this job only a week ago.

He ended the call, turned to us, and said: "Maybe ... maybe you pick them up in Pyongyang."

"No, no, no. No maybes", I responded. More questions rapidly started firing in my head:
"After all that talk on the phone, all you can tell us is maybe?"
"Where the hell are we supposed to pick up the tickets in Pyongyang?"

Instead of asking them, I checked my watch, 5:21, then as Smiles made another call, I turned to Sonja: "The train leaves in less than 10 minutes. No matter what he says, there is no way we are going to have return tickets in our hands before this train leaves."

"I am NOT going to North Korea without a return ticket.", she replied.

I took a peak at our friend Smiles. For the second time in one day, I have never heard Mandarin spoken so quickly.

Sonja and I got up to get off the train. Matthijs threw his head back with his hands up to his face. At the time I thought he felt bad and responsible for the mess since he organized the whole trip. But I think he might have thought we were over-reacting. From my perspective, Sonja's concern was unquestionably reasonable so my instinct as a friend was to support her.

We attempted to exit the train the way we entered, but when we got to the door it was locked! We searched around for a latch or something to open it, but there was nothing. It appeared to be locked from the outside or with a removable handle. We hoped for the former, so we starting knocking on the window to get the attention of the people still on the platform. They noticed, but no one dared to approach the door.

I looked again at my watch, 5:26. We kept banging harder but, even in that panicked moment, I couldn't help but think: "This is cool! It's like we are Sarah Conner being chased by the Terminator. How can I fix the problem at hand while taking a moment to appreciate this real-life movie moment?!" (I love movies). However, my moment was interrupted when we suddenly saw fucking Smiles on the platform waving bon voyage as if everything was OK.

Sonja was pissed. "Ohhh, what the fuck is going on heeeeere!?!"

"Calm down Sonja." I said, worried about the North Korean men in military uniform we were bumping into as we ran through the train car to exit from the other side.

Somehow, Matthijs was already out there, but now he was prepared with a solution: "Before we enter North Korea, we stop at the border town Dandong in China for two hours. Once we are there, we can call the agency to find out about our return tickets before we enter North Korea."

Sonja and I were satisfied with this, so we returned to our train cabin. A few minutes later, the train started rolling and I decided to be a smart ass: "Oh look, we just passed the PNR."

Sonja, puzzled, looked out the window and just saw the same bland platform we were just standing on. "What's PNR?"

Matthijs, smiling, answered for me, "Point of No Return".

Sonja turned to me, "oh, fuck you". That was also a reasonable reaction :)


^Our train cabin, which was shared with a nice Chinese couple, who shared one tiny mattress.

Favourite indoor photos of Peko

i miss him ...


^he looks calm, but he REALLY wants to go for a walk

^when the poor guy got his balls chopped off

^he's not sleepy, he just really loved to lie in the warm sunshine, I wonder where he got that from?! :)

^dark and mysterious model pose

^"What do you mean 'Dogs don't eat eggs for breakfast'?!"

sexy haseyo? ...

... is "strike a pose" in South Korea ;)

Day zero

The upgrades that Blogger has recently added
are awesome and I am finally satisfied with a
place to present my many photos, which would
hardly ever be seen otherwise (including by me).

I speak English, Greek, Swedish, French, and a little Thai.

The content principles of this blog are:
large thumbnails, which link to high-res images,
quality over quantity, and interesting stories
over diary entries.

My name is Dino.