Posted by Roger Keays, 30 July 2010, 10:41 PM Finding accommodation in Seoul was really hard - even worse than Tokyo. This is because there really aren't that many foreigners coming to Seoul for business or study. So while there is some pretty reasonable accommodation available it can be difficult or impossible to negotiate a deal because of the language barrier. I even had a Korean friend talk to the landlord of one place who still wouldn't take my money because I am a foreigner.
Anyway, hopefully this blog can help you find monthly or weekly rental accommodation. First, you want to know about the different options:
- officetel (studio apartments)
- yeogwan (budget hotels)
- guest houses
- hasukjib (student dorms)
- goshiwons (really small student dorms)
- jimjjilbangs (the ultimate backup option - public 24hr sauna/spas).
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Posted by Roger Keays, 17 June 2010, 6:19 PM Being an ankiphile (addicted to anki), I have been looking for a way to run anki on a mobile device for some time. But, being an appleophobe (scared of apples) I also wanted to find an alternative to running anki on an iPhone. Fortunately there is now a version of anki which runs on Android phones so that means there are many many more options for mobile anki.
In this blog I will compare a whole bunch of different smart phones to help you chose which one is best for you. I was primarily interested in a phone with the following features:
- 3G support (for Japan and Korea)
- 2G support (for Thailand, Vietnam and broader global access)
- A decent camera
- Good Unicode support and i18n input for studying languages
- Ability to run Anki and StarDict dictionaries
- Decent performance, RAM and storage
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Posted by Roger Keays, 30 May 2010, 7:56 PM Banks are such good businesses. Not only do they charge interest on money they don't own, but they also charge the people who own the money that they charge interest on. Yes... I'm talking about bank fees!
Here in Thailand the banks have caught on pretty fast that foreigners are kind of desperate when it comes to accessing their cash. I mean, who wouldn't pay a measly 150 Baht to access their cash when there are no alternatives? Well, I know someone who wouldn't. Me.
Actually, I'm not just being a cheapskate. Bank fees add up pretty quickly when you're overseas - especially when both your home bank and the foreign bank are charging for withdrawals. So, what to do? Well, in Thailand you can simply to use Aeon ATM machines. There is some confusion on Internet forums about which banks charge what fees. Some of the yellow Bank of Ayudhya ATMs have no fees, but use Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) on MasterCard transactions to set their own exchange rate.
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Posted by Roger Keays, 21 May 2010, 7:17 PM When I was leaving Vietnam, I wanted to change my Vietnamese Dong (VND) back to Thai Baht (THB) at the the Hanoi airport. When I checked the prices however, I was pretty surprised - the spread was like 50%. Thinking I would get a better deal in Thailand, I kept my VND.
Well, I never imagined a currency could be so unpopular. You almost cannot sell VND outside of Vietnam (now I know why you get such good prices for your foreign currency in Vietnam). Eventually I found SuperRich, at Ratchadamri (ราชดำรี) near the Chit Lom station (ขิดลม) where they will buy your Dong. The price was okay at about 580 VND for 1 THB and I was glad to get rid of my Dong.
Here is the map for SuperRich, from their website:
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Posted by Roger Keays, 11 May 2010, 9:04 PM If you're trying to book a flight on the Air China website and get a "430450: Not Authorised" error at the final step it may be because you cannot book flights outside of your home country. I was trying to book a flight for several weeks and had already harassed several Air China staff insisting that their website was broken before they rang "head office" and the situation was finally explained. The catch is:
- You cannot use an Australian credit card on the Thai website, and
- You cannot book on the Australian website from a computer in Thailand.
Which means the only thing you can do is ring a friend in your home country to make the booking for you.
Hooray for informative error messages, and hooray for Air China. I hope their planes work better than their website.
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Posted by Roger Keays, 28 April 2010, 12:02 AM Recently, my girlfriend and I took a romantic escape to Ko Kood, an island about 300km southeast of Bangkok, close to the Cambodian border. It is not too far from Ko Chang, but much less touristed.
In search of the perfect romantic setting, we spent a day visiting all the resorts in our area and checking out their rooms, restaurants and beaches. It was worth it, because we found what we were looking for at the Peter Pan Resort in one of their bungalows on the beach. The food was extraordinary, the beach was beautiful, the service was great and it didn't damage my wallet half as much as you would have expected.
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Posted by Roger Keays, 26 April 2010, 10:04 PM Here are some thoughts I posted to the Anki forum. Like everyone hooked on Anki, I'm trying to get something running on my phone. It looks like I'll be getting a new phone with Android to run ankidroid, but thought I would offer some simple ideas up here:
1. Most phones have camera/photo support. If it were possible to export your anki queue as jpg images you could copy them to your phone and review using the photo browser. Cards you answer correctly would be deleted as you go so you can easily re-review incorrectly answered cards. The export could include front and back of the cards on a single image (just cover the answer with your credit card), or separate them into to sequential images.
2. Many devices can read text files (even my ipod nano), so an export of your anki queue as single or multiple text files would be a lot better than no anki at all. You would have to scroll through the text document on your ipod/phone/camera to review.
If I don't get a new phone I may end up implementing these ideas, but for now my preference is for a better phone.
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