category archive: Miscellaneous

Nice perk for expats

Monday, 12 Feb 2007 | Miscellaneous

We all know the concept of tax-free shopping in the airport. Not everyone is aware of tax-free shopping in the country you are visiting. It is pretty much the same thing, but instead of buying it at overpriced airport shops you get your new toys anywhere you want. When leaving the country, you go to the tax-refund desk at the airport and ask for the added sales tax, VAT, BTW or whatever applies in that country. In countries like the Netherlands, something like that can be as much as 19%. In other countries however, like Hong Kong (not a country, I know), the sales tax is 0% and so you get nothing.

The good thing for people who travel a lot is that they can do this every time they fly on an international flight, except when leaving their passport country. Actually, even then you can shop tax-free, but only at those overpriced airport shops. Which of course is very good news for me, because I live far away from my passport country and will be flying quite a lot this year. So things that are expensive enough to make that hassle worth while, such as a new laptop computer, become a little cheaper just because you are not living in your passport country.

Mind you, there are certain conditions for getting this refund. They differ for each country. But if you’re planning on getting something nice and the sales tax in that country makes it worth while: research it!

Could you do it?

Wednesday, 7 Feb 2007 | Miscellaneous

In preparing this move, countless people have said they would love to do what I was doing. And everybody has their own, often very valid, reasons to not put the wheels in motion and actually do it. But I still feel it is a matter of making the decision to do it, after you make that decision the rest will fall into place as is so often the case with big decisions.

But there are ofcourse some prerequisites. Or rather, you need to or should meet some basic requirements to make such a move. While browsing the web the other day, I found this article I feel offers a great summary of those basic requirements. Moreover, it also has a test you can all take to see if you ‘could do it’. My score was 39, a perfect score is 45. So I got an 8.7 on my ‘international admittance test’.

What do you score? And don’t cheat!

A small act of goodness

Saturday, 3 Feb 2007 | Miscellaneous

Philip Greenspun is computer science teacher and more importantly just a guy I simply don’t know. He tried to do something good for Christmas 2006 and wanted to buy a poor family in Asia a water buffalo to help them farm their land more effectively. A respected aid company said they would. But then he went ahead and read the fine print, the stuff nobody ever bothers to read, and found out that what he wanted to do was actually not really happening and his money would just ‘disappear’ into a big bucket which would then be used to fund the projects as the organization saw fit.

Robert Thompson is a violinist and more importantly another guy I don’t know. He doesn’t know Philip Greenspun either, but read his blog and on it found the article about that water buffalo story. He was taking a break from touring and living in Yunnan, China in which he was surrounded by farmers who perceived a water buffalo to be the best gift they could ever get. Robert told Philip and Philip asked him if he could really do what for the aid company was just marketing talk. Robert said he could, did and made a video about it which is very much worth watching.

Jason Kottke is a guy who builds websites and is also a well-known American blogger and again someone I don’t know. He doesn’t know Robert Thompson or Philip Greenspun either. He saw the movie Robert made and briefly wrote about this on his blog, which I read.

A lot of farmers in the northeast region of Thailand use a water buffalo to help take care of their land too. While I think the average annual income here is a little higher than the approximate US$500 mentioned in the video, the animals are of the same importance to the survival of small farmers here.

I know people make these small gestures that mean a world of difference to someone else. My mom for instance is trying to help stray dogs in Bosnia. I guess I was touched by this video because it feels closer to me. I wanted to share it with you and I hope you watch it, see the high quality version if you can.

Flying from Amsterdam to Bangkok

Thursday, 7 Sep 2006 | Miscellaneous

Years ago I used to write restaurant reviews on the internet. Something I loved doing. A couple of months ago, I thought it would be nice to repeat that on my blog. But in order to keep it linked to Asia, I decided it would be all the countries I’d fly over on my way to Bangkok. I would find a restaurant in Holland that serves the cuisine of that particular country, visit it and write about it. It never came to fruition. Perhaps due to time constraints, but mostly because I just didn’t know and could never find a globe where I could plot out the route the airplane would most likely take.

So, in the spirit of utterly useless information (and perhaps for future reference), here is the list of countries I flew over on EVA Airways flight BR76 from Amsterdam to Bangkok:

• Netherlands
• Germany
• Czech Republic
• Slovakia
• Hungary
• Romania
• Bulgaria
• (Black Sea)
• Georgia
• Azerbaijan
• (Caspian Sea)
• Turkmenistan
• Afghanistan
• Pakistan
• India
• Myanmar (Burma)
• Thailand

I had to jot down some city names and look up some of the countries on the web this morning, because the map on the flight information system in the plane was horribly outdated and I think it used USSR-era maps. I was surprised to see I didn’t fly over Turkey and Iraq. In my memory I did.

Penalty for smoking

Tuesday, 5 Sep 2006 | Miscellaneous

As I was just walking to see the stewardess for another cup of coffee, I passed the toilets where a little crowd had gathered. The (another) stewardess standing there was talking to some dutch guy. She was telling him it was a very serious matter and that she would notify the captain. I wondered what was going on, until I smelled cigarette smoke. Why would anyone do that, we all know there are smoke detectors in the toilets!

I just gave him ‘a disapproving glare’ (I’m sure he was not very intimidated by it) and shook my head when he was making macho remarks in dutch about the stewardess.

It made me wonder - will he get fined for it? Does anybody know?

Videoclips of Thailand

Thursday, 10 Aug 2006 | Miscellaneous

When my harddisk crashed in December of last year, I lost all photos I took in Thailand during my trip in June & July of 2005. Yes, it really sucks when something like this happens. So I went out and got myself a harddisk to back up to. Do I do it? Nope. Well, sometimes I do. Some people have asked me for photos, and usually I’d just point them to Flickr and tell them to search for Bangkok. And the same can ofcourse be done for YouTube!

So here are 4 clips I found on YouTube, that should give you some sort of a quick introduction to Thailand. Countless more can be found on the site, simply search for Bangkok. Why am I putting this on my site? For no reason, other than entertainment.

Read the rest of this article

This clip shows a beautiful collection of photos made in Thailand. Many of them of temples and buildings, but also beaches and ‘life’. I especially like the choice of music, it makes you (or well, me) get all melodramatic about how amazing and beautiful Thailand is.

This clip was made by some people who visited Thailand this year. It shows life a whole lot better than the above. It’s a great clip and shows I think the tourist experience of Thailand. Remember, I never really went outside of Bangkok so I don’t really know what the rest of Thailand is like and thus can’t really tell you. Yet. This is my favorite of the bunch though!

A lot less polished, this is a clip some guy took from his taxi window while driving to his hotel. I put it up here because it shows what the streets of Bangkok look like. I love how (what I think is his) guide is chatting and he doesn’t really seem to care.

And ofcourse, this one had to be in here. I’ve known this video for a while and I think it is a great clip of the endless stream of traffic in Bangkok. Bangkok is ofcourse notorious for it’s traffic, what you’re viewing in the clip is really just an average (or perhaps one might even call it quiet) afternoon in Bangkok.

The grip of the sandwich

Saturday, 22 Jul 2006 | Miscellaneous

Food in Thailand is obviously a lot different than it is here. I’m looking forward to indulging in the seemingly endless stream of Thai dishes. I actually already spend a lot of money on Thai food in Amsterdam, my favorite still being Krua Thai on the Spuistraat.

There is one thing about Dutch food I will certainly miss when in Bangkok, which is bread. Sure, there is bread in Bangkok … but the bread there is similar to six-month-shelf-life bread found on the bottom shelf in Dutch supermarkets. I’m sure there are expensive fresh bread options in Bangkok. So far, the only good bread I’ve had there was at Subway.

The role of bread in Dutch breakfast and lunch is really unbelievable. Our typical breakfast consists of a few sandwiches and a glass of milk. Well, according to Simone “they should be called slices of bread with a slice of cheese on them, they’re not sandwiches”, but whatever. And Dutch lunch? Some more sandwiches, maybe an apple or some soup plus some more milk. Pretty boring when you think of it!

And thats why for the past week I’ve been trying to look for other things to eat for lunch. I’ve been mildly succesful in getting lunch sized dishes to eat, basically similar to dinner plates but just smaller in size. A quiche is a good thing to eat, sushi once, salads are a nice lunch dish. But all in all, it’s just been weird to have to realize how ‘unnatural’ it feels to me to eat something that is not a sandwich for lunch.

And now I’m off to lunch with a friend. Bagels, in case you’re wondering.

When to visit Thailand

Friday, 7 Jul 2006 | Miscellaneous

A lot of people are telling me they will come to visit me in Thailand. I hope they do. A question I regularly get asked is when is the best time to come. So I decided to write a little article about that, sitting in B&S’ garden at the start of what looks to be another beautiful Amsterdam summer day.

Thailand does not have the seasons that we’re used to in the west. There is no winter and summer. Instead, there is the mild, rainy and hot season. I’ve also seen these referred to as the hot, very hot and the very, very hot season.

Season	Period	Avg. highs
Mild	March - May	34C/93F
Rain	June - October	32C/90F
Hot	November - February	31C/88F

I personally think the mild season is the best time to visit Thailand. It combines relatively mild temperatures (especially the evenings I think can be very nice, they certainly were in November last year) with fairly low humidity in the air. It brings the best time of year to actually see the sights and touring the cities without feeling like you need to take a shower every hour.

The rainy season is not as bad as it sounds though. It doesn’t mean there will be constant rain like the west can sometimes see in the fall for instance. Instead, the rainy season typically sees torrential rains that last 30 minutes to 2 hours before the skies clear and the sun comes back out. It typically rains at the end of the afternoon and is a daily occurrence. But it will sometimes not rain for a week at a time. I certainly hope this will be the case in September, I’m going for a beach holiday at the peak of the rainy season soon! The good thing apparently is that there is little tourism, so prices are good.

There are two peaks in tourism. One is around the Christmas holiday, when a lot of people I guess escape the cold for a few weeks of sunshine. This lingers on well into February and is the main tourism season for Thailand. The other peak is at Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year , in the middle of the hot season. Songkran means party time. I can’t wait to experience it.

The worst time to visit Thailand, I’m told, is May & June. It’s when the hot season changes to the rainy season. It combines heat with humidity and that is just about the worst combination to be had.

Where exactly is Thailand?

Saturday, 17 Jun 2006 | Miscellaneous

Last week I was talking to Natalie about how some people can’t even point out their own country on a world map. I remember years ago there was a show on Dutch television where they would every week visit a popular holiday destination and ask the people there to point out the Netherlands on a map. Most couldn’t. Or would with full conviction point to places like Africa -which is not correct, but ofcourse you already knew that.

So where is Thailand exactly?

Thailand is in Asia, but I’m sure you all knew that. Asia is a pretty big place though, covering an area from Turkey to Japan. So to narrow it down a bit: it’s in an area commonly referred to as South East Asia (SEA), close to places such as Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and the Phillipines. It’s pretty close to the equator.

Bangkok is a little over 9000 kilometers (almost 6000 miles) from Amsterdam. By comparison, thats about 26 times as far as London is from Amsterdam. Or for my family, it’s about 85 times as far as Amsterdam is from Eindhoven. The flight from Amsterdam to Bangkok takes 12 hours non-stop and you’ll fly over countries such as Turkey, Iraq and India. Flying from Los Angeles is a 15.5 hour flight, New York a whopping 17 hour non-stop (!) flight. No direct flight from Toronto, Nat. Sucks, eh?

You’ll fly across many timezones, Thailand is 5 hours ahead of Amsterdam time in the summer. In the winter, the time difference is 6 hours because Thailand has no daylight savings time. It’s 11 (or 12) hours ahead of eastern time.

Some Thailand Trivia

The name “Thailand” means ‘land of the free’, the capital Krung Thep (which westerners refer to as Bangkok) means ‘city of angels’.

Thailand is about 12 times the size of the Netherlands, but it has only 4 times the number of people living in it - almost 65 million people. It’s about half the size of Ontario. Bangkok officially has about 8 million inhabitants, roughly the same as places like New York, London and Hong Kong. Countless people live there without being registered though, a more realistic number is perhaps 10 million.

Read the rest of this article

Bangkok has been deemed the ‘hottest city in the world’ by the World Meteorological Organization. Not because it has the highest temperature of any city in the world, but because it has the highest average year-round temperature. It doesn’t really cool down during the night, perhaps only a few degrees. I don’t know why not, perhaps because of the smog? Thailand does sort of have seasons, which I guess could be defined as hot, really hot and really, really hot. The mildest is in December/January with lows of 25 degrees (77F), the hottest in April. Especially in the rainy season, the air is very humid so I guess it feels even hotter than it actually is. I’ve been told that Chiang Mai (in the north) does have real seasons, where you actually have to wear some sort of a coat in the winter.

Thailand by standards of the European Union is still a developing country, but that is not the same as a ‘third world country’. I bet you didn’t know that! Bangkok is a very modern city with everything a spoiled westerner could ever dream of needing, but in rural areas life is a lot different from the big city. A lot of people live in little rice farms (a very common way of making money), without electricity or running water.

The average wage of people in Thailand is about 150 euro per month, people in the big cities perhaps make a little more. Japan is by far Thailands’ biggest trading partner, which explains why there is a fairly large Japanese community in Bangkok.

Food and transportation are relatively cheap. Appliances such as a computer cost about the same as they do in the west. Basically, if something involves manual labor and is not imported from abroad, the price will most likely be lower than they are in the west. An example of ‘how cheap labor is’ can be found by walking into any shopping mall, I’ve more than once seen staff sitting on the floor and chatting for hours. They have nothing else to do, because there are simply too many of them.

Have anything else you would like to know about Bangkok or Thailand? Send me an email, I’ll happily research it and let you know the results!

Smooth operations delayed vs. permanent chaos

Friday, 24 Mar 2006 | Miscellaneous

This morning I was traveling to a meeting by train, which was delayed because of a malfunction in the railroad security systems. It wasn’t just one train, but all trains going in and out of Utrecht (the countries’ main railroad hub) got either cancelled or delayed. The result: chaos.

I was going to chair that meeting, but was obviously unable to so I asked a team member to take over for me. I’ve learned to not care about these things, they happen and there is nothing I can do about them. So I was enjoying a cup of coffee as I was waiting to continue my journey. Looking around, I noticed countless people cursing the railroads and yelling at its employees. That made me wonder … is it better to have a system that runs smoothly and efficiently most of the time, but causes mayhem when things are disrupted, OR is it better for a society to be in a permanent state of chaos which everybody accepts as a given - much like I have found Bangkok to be?

Obviously, the benefits of an efficient system is time. One can plan a journey down to the minute and if everything works according to schedule, time of arrival is known before the journey has even started. People come to depend on the predictability and plan tight schedules around them, myself included. However, the benefit of having permanent chaos is that unpredictability is a given and so this too is something one can depend one when planning around a journey. The downside to efficiency ofcourse is the enormous impact disruptions have. The downside to permanent chaos I guess is the time spent on travels.

I think economically, an efficient system prevails. Although one could argue secondary aspects such as health issues due to elevated levels of stress during disruptions and creative planning of tasks or work for people using a permanent chaos (for example: ‘all my phonecalls are returned when I am in a taxi travelling from A to B, instead of at a desk’) make the difference smaller that one would expect at first hand.

But what does it mean for people and their well-being, how they feel? Do people in permanent chaos still get frustrated over a traffic jam every single time it happens? Is the level of frustration the same as those people I saw this morning, who had red heads and were hitting billboards?

I don’t know. But thats what I was wondering.

Cheap calls!

Thursday, 5 Jan 2006 | Miscellaneous

The continues drop of international call charges never stops amazing me! Until now I’ve been paying 13.5 cents (€) per minute to call Thailand using a call service. Which is really not all that expensive compared to the 122 cents KPN charges for direct calls! Today my UPC landline was installed and so I was researching what the cheapest rates are for my international calls. I’ve now found that rates at some other carriers have been dropping to a low of 5 cents per minute for calls to both landline and mobiles in Thailand!

Most of the calls I make are from my mobile, so I’m used to having high phonebills. It’s the price one has to (chooses to, rather) pay for being as chatty as I am sometimes. But not everyone feels the same way. And so because I want to keep in touch with my friends and family as much as possible, I researched and found Skype to be a good alternative. However, it requires an internet connection and using a pc to make those calls - not something all of us are comfortable with. But with these rates there really is no need to use Skype anymore. It’s going to be cheaper for people to call my Thai mobile than it is to call my Dutch mobile now! And even when comparing calling me in Thailand to calling my Dutch landline, the cost of calling me really doesn’t have to be a big deal. An hour on the phone to me will be €3,- instead of the €1,20 people pay now, hardly worth worrying about.

However, for me making outgoing calls it’s a whole other story. I’ve gathered that making international phonecalls FROM Thailand is actually rather expensive. And so while I no longer expect to have to force friends and family to use Skype to be able to stay in touch with me, I do think I will be using it for making my outgoing international calls.

Then again, it was never really the money that I expected to be an issue. It’s the time difference that will be the killer no doubt.

What other people have to say

Tuesday, 20 Dec 2005 | Miscellaneous

A lot of bloggers write on the subject of Asia. Although most of what I find are holiday reports and so of lesser interest to me, tonight I decided to point out two blogs to you that have recently written about their trip to Asia. These two were picked randomly, but I thought you might find it interesting to read about the observations of others. Their writings differ from mine in that they are more of the ‘this is what I have observed’ kind, which I also plan to do more of in the future but have not done much so far.

The person who in his enthusiasm on the subject of blogging inspired me to write this blog is David Weinberger. In his blog he recently pointed out some posts by Steven Johnson on his visit to Hong Kong. Steven wrote about his entrance to Hong Kong, it’s malls, the gathering of the maids, aqua (where I also dined) and he has a little ‘photo movie’ here.

One of the blogs I regularly read is kottke.org by Jason Kottke (blogging is actually his job). Jason recently visited Asia and wrote about his experiences extensively, which is a well worth reading if you ask me. He was actually in Hong Kong and Bangkok when I was there too recently!

Asian movies

Friday, 25 Nov 2005 | Miscellaneous

I’m flying back to Amsterdam as I’m writing this and have 5 movies to choose from. Although there are Hollywood productions playing that I have been meaning to see, instead I’ve decided to watch the Asian movies available - Peach Blossoming and The Gift. I find myself watching more and more Asian movies. I also regularly watch Asian Screen on MTV Europe, instead of the normal Hollywood movies that we all tune into on the weekends. Asian Screen is on every Friday and Saturday in the late evening, usually the movies are about gangs or other types of action movies.

“The Gift” (Japanese title: “Yokkakan no Kiseki”) by the way is worth watching. Directed by Kiyoshi Sasabe, one of Japan’s leading directors and starring big names of Japanese cinema it is every bit a major production. It is a beautiful story of sacrifice and reward. In the movie, there is a weird twist where a womans’ soul after a tragic accident enters the body of a child. But I’ve seen that in Asian movies before, weird things happen in otherwise completely ‘real’ movies. Once you just accept those as is (I mean, after all, how real is Star Wars?), it usually supports the story in some way or the other. In this case, it allows Mariko (the woman) to see how much she means to the world while she actually believed she was useless and to push Keisuke to persue his dream. The end is set to Dvorak’s “From the new world” symphony and are the final minutes of Mariko’s life. Keep the tissues close!

Asian movies are interesting for me personally, because they are a window to Asia. They are a lot less polished than Hollywood productions and depend on the story and the acting much more. Ofcourse there is a lot of garbage, but in general I find what I see to be really cool. Perhaps for reasons similar to why I want to move to Asia - it is different from what I am used to.

World nature art

Friday, 2 Sep 2005 | Miscellaneous

Today I visited the ‘world nature art’ exhibition in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, which attempts to shed some light on how a view of nature is dependent on the culture of the viewer. The exhibit shows nineteen different themes, each as viewed from four cultures: indigenous, Asian, Islamic and western. Natalie asked me which of the cultures I could identify with the most.

The indigenous view was to alien for me. It was an ancient look at nature, which put humans as part of nature. Not a big surprise ofcourse, considering the source. As a cityboy, I don’t really felt drawn to this one. The Islamic view of nature put to much emphasis on God, being an atheist I couldn’t quite identify with this ofcourse. The western view on the other end was something I felt I knew really well. Our view has over time changed from dominated by to dominating nature, as we gained more power over controlling nature. The Asian view however was the one I could identify with most. It is all about respect for and harmony between humans and nature.

I’m sure my move to Asia makes me more of a sucker for ‘all things Asian’, so perhaps it’s not surprising this was the outcome. I like to believe I am still capable of objectivity though.