For my last weekend in Bali, I wanted to explore the infamous peninsula. I met up with my driver, Ketut, the same driver that showed me around the previous Saturday.
Bali Peninsula
Nusa Dua / Water Blow
We started the day by driving down to Nusa Dua / “Water Blow”, which is a beautiful natural beach area with patches of grass around. It’s surrounded by luxury resorts, however, local Balinese and Indonesian families still go there to relax over the weekend. It’s reminiscent of some of Juan Les Pins, Cannes, and other well-off beach towns along the French Riviera, in a way.
After the luxury area, we went down to Pandawa beach, a long beach nestled under beautiful cliffs, which gives it kind of a hidden feel.
We didn’t stay long, but the drive and the scenery were worth it. Seeing this makes me understand why people say that Bali is an ideal surfing spot —and I don’t even surf!
We stopped along the way to get a coffee (kopi), which gave me an opportunity to have my second ever cup of kopi luwak: the infamous Balinese coffee ranked as the best in the world.
It’s a truly unique process: the Lusaka is this little animal, a cross between a ferret and a little fox. It picks and eats the best coffee cherries, generally arabica. Later on, it poops it out, and the villagers collect the beans, remove the envelope, clean them in boiling water, roast the beans, and ground them — it sounds kind of weird, but the nutrients that envelop the beans give them a special flavor that adds to the quality of the coffee as a whole.
By the time they serve the coffee, it is a delicate, strong, and pure aroma!
In addition to this delicious cup, the workers at the roasters also get you to taste different varieties of local teas and coffees, including —but not limited to— coconut coffee, ginseng coffee, white and red ginger tea, lemon tea, lemongrass tea, mangosteen tea (my favorite), and a bunch of others!
Uluwatu
After the coffee stop, we headed down to the Temple of Uluwatu — infamous for being a beautiful and large temple on top of a cliff, overlooking the Indian Ocean. This was absolutely breathtaking, and I couldn’t quite help myself but shout wow! at each different side and areas of the temple!
After the temple, we switched it up for a bit: my driver, Ketut, offered to go to his brother’s, have lunch there, and spend the afternoon, before going to see a local football game with his family. I jumped on the occasion.
We drove about an hour north/east, to the small town of Sanur, and I got to meet his dad (65 years old), his brother (45 yo), his brother’s wife, and a few of their friends, kids, nephews…
They offered the local Nasi Goreng —fried rice with egg, chicken, and spices— a few cups of coffee, and we even got to play with one of the local Balinese kites —flying at 50 meters above in the sky—, play some guitar, and grab some home-made snacks.
All in all, it was very kind of them to welcome me in their home and allow me to join them, experiencing a side of local Balinese life that no tour guide could have booked on my behalf.
Finally, the day ended at the football game. For the price of 35,000 Indonesian Rupiahs, or about 1.7€, we got through the main supporter entrance and saw Bali United FC, the best team in Indonesia, play and win 5-1 over the team of Lampongan (a city based on the main island of Indonesia).
Coming from Europe, the level feels like a National second or third division down from the main professional team back home, and it certainly was frustrating to see players hesitate to shoot towards the goal, on a 1-on-1 against the keeper. But it was very good fun, and I loved the feeling of respect and unity that I experienced.
Another thing to note was that prior to the start of the game, it started raining pretty hard, so we got drenched almost instantly as soon as we got to our stands in the stadium. That being said, with a nice 20+ degree weather, we were nowhere close to catching a cold and, if anything, this allowed us to cool down a bit.
Managed to convince the girlfriend to see it at the theater next week (on bean bags) and I couldn’t be more excited!
It joins The Shining and Carrie as the best of the Stephen King horror adaptations — films that understand that King’s novels are never about surface-level scares, but about the countless ways in which individual small-time acts of evil coalesce into terrifying systems of violence
After spending an incredible week with my girlfriend, I've spent 3 weeks alone in Saigon, getting back to work, and exploring local spots with my Airbnb host Cong.
There’s only one thing I like about this report: a James Bond wedding! It raises so many questions I never though to ask. What does a man who constantly wears a tuxedo end up wearing to his own wedding—a fancier tuxedo? Would his best man be Felix Leiter or Q? Would Adele perform at the reception? Would he risk damaging his Aston Martin DB5 by tying a bunch of tin cans to the back?
Experiences money can’t buy in Bali: starting the day exploring with my driver, before he offered to visit his family and take me to see a football/soccer game!
Experiences money can’t buy in Bali: starting the day exploring with my driver, before he offered to visit his family and take me to see a football/soccer game!
Three of my favorite indie apps recently switched from the Paid Upfront model, over to a Subscription based model — similar to what web apps have been doing (the infamous “SaaS” idea — Software as a Service).
Day One is a journaling app that I’ve been using on and off since its launch on the Mac App Store back in 2011. Over the years, I’ve gotten back to it, frequently jotting down thoughts and big intimate moments of my life, from a heartbreak to a new job, to planning a trip. However, since March 2016, they’ve integrated with popular web service IFTTT, which made it more useful for me as a passive application.
Since then, I’ve been using DayOne to automatically save my blog posts, and other of my online activities, but I’m still longing for a change in my own habits so I can start using it again on a day to day, taking the time to write down my thoughts and what has happened on a given day.
I also have another project in mind — since they offer an option to print their digital journals, I’m working on one to document my current relationship with S. I still have plenty of things to write down and upload, but in the long run, I’d like to have a beautiful journal printed for the two of us.
DayOne’s move to subscription is really smart because it’s a really intimate and personal application that holds people’s secrets, dreams, fears, and desires, and thus it would make sense that as a paid customer, you’d want this beautifully designed and feature-rich application to run over the course of many more years to come.
1Password may as well have the title for most used and most vital app I’ve ever used. This is a solid password manager that allows you to store your ever-growing number of usernames and passwords.
With the introduction of their subscription model, last year, 1Password has turned its locked vault to a series of secured boxes that you can easily sync across devices, easily moving between a smartphone, a laptop, and even a web client if need be.
I’ve been meaning to write a post about this, but 1Password is the one app I would recommend to everyone around me. Do not store your passwords in your browser, do not store them in an excel spreadsheet. Use 1Password for the security, ease of use, and peace of mind.
Ulysses has been with me on and off for years until I decided to purchase the full version upon a major release about a year ago. Since then, it’s been my go to application of choice whenever I need to write a blog post, a report, a business proposal, and essentially, anytime I need to jot down my thoughts for anything longer than a note.
You can read co-founder Max Seeleman’s post on the economics and thought process behind this move — it’s a fascinating read for anyone interested in modern business and software development.
What happens when you change your business model...
Every single time software developers change their business models, customers get angry. A lot of people feel entitled to life-long software updates without realizing the cost and the amount of work that goes into app development. In addition, spending money on the App Store remains a hit-and-miss for developers generally. The thought process being: Why would I spend some money on your app when there is a perfectly fine alternative available for FREE?
The truth is that in most cases, Customers can absolutely find a free alternative, but whether you end up getting a worse experience due to the presence of ads, or you’re using a product that is likely to be acquired and then shut down (see Sunrise or Wunderlist).
If you’re worried about this, AND you want to reward “software artisans” who really value an experience of high quality, then supporting indie developers is the way to go. It even allows the industry to grow as a whole, instead of being left in the hand of a handful of companies with big enough budgets to offer a product for free and monetize another way. Remember: If you’re using a product for free, ask yourself if you’re not the product yourself.
Paying Upfront vs Ongoing Subscription
In the case of the macOS and iOS ecosystems, this has been a problem where, for a long time, the only way to go about this was to offer a Free-with-In-app-purchase approach, as consumers preferred a free alternative of lower quality.
However, recently, I’ve seen this trend change a little bit, especially when it comes to utilities and professional apps: more people seem ready to pay for tools on a recurring basis. This is especially true for independent app development studios that offer apps in a very niche market, something truly specific that people need and use regularly. These apps cost a bit more to create, but that’s due to the amazing level of details, quality, and work put into it.
And in order to sustain the ongoing development of these products, software developers have started offering these apps not as a “pay upfront” case, but rather on a subscription basis. This is easy and makes more sense to these companies over the long term. It allows them to better anticipate how much revenue is made, while also being able to provide existing customers with frequent updates, all the while knowing that development for the product is ongoing.
And since there’s no upgrade pricing available on the Mac or on iOS, it often means that you’ll have to get a new app and get your subscription as an in-app-purchase.
Future of software development
As a final word before wrapping this up, I just want to make a note towards customers who complain, sometimes rightfully, about these changes.
The coffee analogy is used very often in the tech world: “You’re willing to pay $5 for a coffee a few times a week but unwilling to pay $2-3 for an application.” And this is where this has led us. The future of Software development is in “software as a service” — using the subscription model to sustain a business.
It’s no longer about creating a product and launching it in the wild — 10 years after the introduction of the iPhone, the app development market is maturing: if you want to be successful, the hardest part isn’t to launch, but to last by ensuring a sustainable business over the next few years.
And the subscription model is here to stay. This is something I discovered during my time helping a software licensing SaaS platform to grow. Software developers have plenty of choices ahead of them as to how to integrate the subscription model:
They can use or build their own internal subscription system. This is a good way to be in control of everything. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to work outside the App Store on iOS, and for Android, it is highly recommended not to download apps from outside the Play Store. This is to ensure stability and safety, avoiding the potential for viruses, and other security breaches.
But for most software developers, modern operating systems now allow developers to handle, develop, deploy and manage their own subscription, the infrastructure is built in and a third-party solution will only appeal to developers who are outside these controlled sandboxed ecosystems. In this case, and for the majority of them, they can distribute their software via the baked-in stores of the ecosystems they’re building for (i.e. iOS App Store, Google Play Store, Microsoft Windows Store, etc.)
A few weeks ago, I spent some time visiting one of the few museums here in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City: the War Remnants Museum. This place is a reminder of the atrocities committed in the name of fear and freedom and colonialism. The museum is one of the Top 3 most visited spots in the city, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone coming here, even on a short trip.
I’ve been thinking about it a lot following my trip to the motherland, and I wanted to share my thoughts about it.
The first surreal thing that you see when you enter the museum’s plaza is the military vehicles parked outside: American helicopters, fighter jets, and tanks are displayed casually, and you are free to walk around and take pictures or read facts about these killing machines. What makes it surreal is roaming around these vehicles, along with dozens of tourists from all over the world, Asians and Westerners alike.
But this is only an introduction to what you’re about to experience. It’s hard to stay indifferent once you step inside the War Remnants museum.
The Vietnam War – the second one, the one between Vietnam and the USA– happened only 50 years ago.
Over the summer, there was a temporary exhibition about the battles of Hai Phong. It was —and still remains— an important harbor for the country, importing and exporting a lot of merchandise to this day. Back then, as soon as the war was over, they resumed commercial activity in order to try and get back on track.
Next to this temporary exhibition is a display of posters and photographs supporting Vietnam’s independence. You can see people gathering all around the world, from China to Cuba, to Mexico, to France, to Germany, and even to the US. Indeed, there were pictures, primary historical sources taken at the time, showing more people protesting in front of the capitol against the Vietnam war than during the last presidential inauguration back in January.
The War Crimes room showed the damages that the US army has done, including many stories and comments from primary sources such as American War Photographers on the ground, who took those cliches before the US GIs executed defenseless men, women, and children running from the fields, in cold blood.
Like other countries which were formerly under a colonial domination, Vietnam has paid a huge price for its independence. Whether it’s the 3 Million of Vietnamese people who were killed, among which 2 million were civilians or the infrastructure that was lost and had to be rebuilt, I can’t help but think how further along in its development the country would be today without these human and material casualties.
As I understand it, the US had two goals in mind when it came to the Vietnam War: preventing another country from swaying on the Communist side, while at the same time continuing to get resources from the country — in the case of Vietnam, a lot of tungsten. However what they did to try and keep this influence and these resources was reckless —and useless considering the outcome of the war:
The Napalm bombings exhibition was pretty shocking, with pictures of bodies, torn and shredded. It’s been well documented over the years, with the infamous image of the little girl running from the fields after being one of the numerous victim burned from napalm.
But worse yet, the Agent Orange exhibition was even more disturbing and hard to shake off my mind: it’s a clear case of the US Army using chemical weapons in a time of War. And seeing this part of the exhibition actually brought some memories from just 9 years ago.
9 years ago, during my first trip to Vietnam, with my family, we were taken to the countryside by our guide, who showed us some local villages. This was in 2008. And yet, it struck me when we met villagers who had been of the first, second, and third generations of Agent Orange casualties.
It is hard to describe the pain, the void, and the shock of realizing that this was not only a crime with monstrous immediate results, but that the impact and the legacy of the decision to use these chemical weapons has endured half a century later.
It’s hard to think about the use of these chemical weapons and not think of the current conflict in Syria. It’s hard to think about an unnecessary war, motivated by the USA’s fear and greed for more resources, and not think about the Iraq War of the early 2000s.
As an aside, while searching online, I noticed that a lot of people complained about how the museum only tells you about the point of view of the war from the Vietnamese side. Being in Vietnam, and considering Vietnam has won its war, I don’t really know what these tourists and online commentators were expecting. As they say: “The ones who win their wars are the ones (re-)writing History”.
It’s hard to think how often History has repeated itself, and yet, how much better we fare, Humanity as a whole, then in any previous time in History.
During the different trips to Vietnam that I’ve been lucky enough to take throughout the past few years, I’ve come to realise that Vietnamese people may be amongst the most hardworking and resilient people I’ve come across.
I want to say that it comes from History, from having so much pain and drama and results in the current state of the country, under a fairly liberal economy and a communist regime that is fairly lax when it comes to foreigners, but still rather authoritarian and restrictive when it comes to its own citizen.
In Saigon especially, I’ve noticed that a lot of the young people I was meeting were happy to discuss the current state of things with me, their disappointment in the current government’s practices and corruption. And at the end of the day, no matter where we come from, we all seem to have the same aspiration: live comfortably enough, and make sure that our children have a better quality of life than what we’ve had.
With rumours of SoundCloud’s upcoming demise, online creators are about to feel a big loss. The platform is notorious for its rap scenes and artists, as well as a place of choice to host podcasts and DJ Mixes. Thankfully, they managed to secure a last-minute deal and more VC money (about $170M), which should give them another 12 months of runway to hopefully turn things around.
As someone who’s played on the sideline of podcasting, beatmaking, and DJ-ing as a hobby over the past years — I’ve had the chance to test out a few platforms, and figured out some alternatives for online creatives. Read on!
Podcasters
For podcasters, the appeal of SoundCloud is clear: you can get started for free, with free hosting, and you already have a built-in community to help you grow.
However, SoundCloud is not predominantly a Podcast Hosting platform, and anyone serious enough about Podcasting, or willing to spend a little money, should consider other alternatives.
My first piece of advices is simple: in 2017 you need to own your own content and the platform on which you broadcast it. You can no longer lock your episodes on one single platform and hope for the best, especially if you’re not paying.
What I would suggest is that you create a dedicated blog or micro site where your followers can find all your episodes, in case whatever service or platforms shuts down. Hosting on a blog will give you an RSS feed to, which is how podcasting works anyways.
If you don’t have a lot of technical knowledge, you can even add an account with Feedpress to make managing anything RSS-related in a much simpler way.
Now, when it comes to the nitty-gritty of podcast-hosting, your best alternative is Simplecast.fm. I’ve been using them for about two years now — and even interviewed the original founder (since then the company has been acquired but remains independent of outside funding, as far as I know).
Simplecast is a fantastic platform that’s easy to setup, manage and broadcast, available for about $100/year. It has all the features you might want: support for artwork, show notes (in Markdown format, HTML, and Rich or Plain Text.)
Once you’ve taken care of the initial setup, uploading episodes is as easy as picking the audio file from your computer, adding your title, description and artwork, and you’re good to go.
What more, you can even tie it to your own domain, and even generate a dedicated micro-site to redirect web users and followers.
DJs
Online DJs and Radio Hosts are a different breed and require specific tools, however in this case there is already a solid platform available for everyone: Mixcloud.
Mixcloud came around the same time of SoundCloud but focuses on DJ sets and longer (it can also be used to host podcasts, but the core audience is DJs and online mixes.)
Mixcloud is available online via your Web Browser, and has different apps for your mobile devices or your Apple TV. They also have integrations in a couple of DJ mixing software so that you can easily upload to the platform.
The company is also solid as the executive team has bootstrapped it (meaning there is no outside funding or investors to answer to.) There’s no offline mode (you can thank the Major Music Labels for that), but aside from that it’s a really good platform and a solid product. These days I find myself listening to it more and more as I work or require focus without changing songs or albums every 10 minutes.
I’ve personally met the CEO a few years ago and I truly believe in their mission to allow anyone to upload their music, from existing worldstar DJs down to bedroom DJs and hobbyists like myself, and give them an opportunity to share their work, and even participate in competition to get to the next level.
Musicians, Artists, Rappers, Beatmakers
Unfortunately, I’m not the best person in the know about hosting platforms if you’re an artist/rapper.
Over the years, many platforms have come and gone, whether to host Mixtapes (), to allow artists to offer music downloads if you share your email address and follow them on SoundCloud and Spotify, or as a way to host remixes from the Hip-Hop scene. But none of them have ever had the traction and the cultural impact that SoundCloud has.
You have to keep in mind that Grammy Winner Chance The Rapper came up offering his mixtape so for free, on SoundCloud. To this day, his latest album/mixtape —the one he won a Grammy for— can be heard for free on the platform.
If you’re an artist with a small label, or an independent artist, you can rely on Bandcamp to offer music downloads. It’s a great company, with a philosophy and a sets of values that work in conjunction to the Indie Music scene.
Bandcamp is great if you want to sell/distribute your music, but from a listening experience, and from a community standpoint, it feels like it’s a different product, targeting a different niche than SoundCloud.
Before I wrap this up, I wanted to share a couple of thoughts about SoundCloud itself. Given that they’ve secured some additional investment and have a bit more runway, I want to be optimistic.
I’ve been a user of the platform for many years now, since around 2009-2010, first as a listener back when you could only find unknown producers, mashups and remixes. I continued listening regularly, starting to like and repost, up to now, with a community of almost 600 followers.
Since then I’ve been mixing things up, uploading my own beats, DJ sets, as a hobbyist, but also sharing my podcast, and engaging with the community. I loved the majority of the changes that the company brought over the years, the different redesigns, the modern look and feel of the current version of the app, and while there’s always something that can be improved, I’ve been mostly satisfied about it.
My grudges with SoundCloud aren’t with the platform itself, but with the major music labels who have always acted like a mafia, asking for money to be paid. This goes against the artists on so many levels, and against the current online climate of open-source, Creative Commons, and overall “open and free” mentality that make the web what it is today.
All in all — it’s sad because SoundCloud had a lot of impact on our modern internet culture. It will be hard to get same level of discovery from another platform, and no matter what happens to them next year, they clearly have shaped our modern internet culture and are directly responsible for putting on a lot of different artists from Chance to Lorde, to producers like Lido, Cashmere Cat, Kygo, Mura Masa, and many others.
Don’t blame Soundcloud for trying, they were essentially suffocated from the Majors! And I can personally feel that when some of my remixes or DJ sets get takedown, with my account being flagged and threatened to be taken down. #BlameTheLabels
Conclusion
SoundCloud isn’t dead yet, even if there are many concerns about how it’ll survive. I think Casey Newton of The Verge absolutely nailed it: the biggest challenge comes a majority of users who refuse to pay for content and access, plain and simple.
These are the same users who make music playlists on Youtube (a video platform that is arguably the most popular music streaming service around). I feel strongly about this, because we have seen time and time again the death of platforms like these due to a lack of financial from the community.
As I’m writing this down in Vietnam, I asked my Airbnb host and his friends what service they used to listen to music. Keep in mind that the LTE service here is cheaper than in the west, and, in my experience, almost faster than Wi-Fi. When I asked them, they replied that they didn’t see the point in paying for stuff, and they’d rather:
manually download tracks and transfer them to their mobile devices,
or use Youtube or SoundCloud.
This obviously made me a bit sad, because my hunch tells me this is the case for a lot of developing countries where access to the internet is cheap, but you can’t or won’t reward creators with a few bucks.
After securing the new funding, SoundCloud’s co-founder and CEO, Alexander Ljung, was pushed out of the company and, as I understand it, has agreed to step down, it’s not the same type of ruthless business and predator mentality that can be seen in pop-culture movies rendition of The Social Network or any movie about Steve Jobs an Apple.
I saw Alex Ljung speak on stage at LeWeb 2011, in Paris, and his vision for the future of not just music, but also sound and voice, was incredibly appealing to me. Listening to his keynote made me reconsider how I listen but also how I use sound in my day-to-day life. It’s when I started using voice dictation or voice messages in messenging app regularly.
And now, it sounds like the new SoundCloud CEO, Kerry Trainor has his job cut out for him.
He was the former CEO of Vimeo between 2012 and 2016, and was responsible for the platform’s change of positioning from yet-another-Youtube-competitor to a platform with focus on paid content, indie movies, documentaries, and a smart and simple VOD offering. It was a smart move, in retrospect, and one that paid off big time for them.
My hope(s) for SoundCloud is that through the guidance of the new CEO they can focus on what made the community special: a place where remixes, indie artists, and odd internet creators can thrive. But this won’t happen without more revenue, which can only go so far in terms of being ad-supported. I really hope the customers start realizing this as the company has bought itself some more life for another year.
Taking some time during my Vietnamese trip to share a little something I’ve read on Roads & Kingdoms, about visiting Saigon and experiencing a spicy beef stew (known as bò kho).
Like a lot of Vietnamese soups, the magic is in the broth. Star anise, curry paste, pepper, cumin, chopped onion, chive, and the national condiment, fish sauce, are just a part of what makes up a criminally under-celebrated dish.
Lighten the brawn with chili, hoisin, lemongrass, hefty squeezes of lime, and a bunch of cilantro, basil, and ngo om (rice paddy herb) and you’ve got yourself a most complex flavor. Order a baguette on the side to dunk and mop up, and you’re onto a winner.
It really hits home, as I’m walking around in the saigonese heat every day, having Phó and all types of different soups even on days when the sun is blazing hot. And the bread-dipping action towards the end is literally my life!
Also, yeah it is not only a popular breakfast, but also a bigger afternoon snack: Vietnamese people tend to have about 5-7 meals a day, albeit smaller than the full meals we have in the West, but all day long, often hearty soups to keep you going through the day!
So here’s to my Vietnamese heritage and its incredible food(s) of all kinds!
Today started with an early 6:30am wake up call —for no reason. I’ve been lacking some sleep over the weekend, so it wasn’t a great sign to wake up feeling tired.
I powered through the morning, and, around lunchtime, my Airbnb host asked me if I wanted to go out. I told him I was thinking about getting some Phó and so teamed-up on his scooter for a 12mn ride through the city.
He told me he caught the flu over the weekend, so I thought Phó should also be a good thing for him. After an delicious, energising, filling, and hearty lunch we were on our way back when he asked me if I ever had a face massage, here in Vietnam.
I explained to him that I hadn’t, and that the only massages I ever get are given by my girlfriend — I’ve never felt comfortable enough having a professional massage therapist (unrelated but yeah, I dislike the word masseuse). He said he was going to get one and offered that I tag along, citing how relaxing it was.
We parked in front of this hair salon, in the third district. Entering the salon, we were taken all the way to the back where they had a barely lit room with six beds, and two current customers. As you lay down, you realise that there is a flat surface slightly inclined, just enough so that your head is tilted backward.
The therapist put a towel under my head and another one on my chest, before starting to shampoo and wash my hair. With my hair wet and cleaned, she started massaging my cranium with their fingernails before moving on to my face.
She went through several cycles, several routines, going from the top of my skull down to my forehead, to my cheeks, to my neck, and even down to my shoulder blades. All in all, it was a very relaxing experience, especially considering my physical exhaustion from the past few days and the lack of sleep from last night.
Earlier this week, I’ve finally finished this book from one of my favorite authors Jack Cheng!
This was an incredibly touching story, with a very original way of introducing its plot. A short fiction read at about 300+ pages – I highly recommend it for fans of fiction, moving stories, drama, and space/NASA nerds!
An astonishingly moving middle-grade debut about a space-obsessed boy's quest for family and home.
All eleven-year old Alex wants is to launch his iPod into space. With a series of audio recordings, he will show other lifeforms out in the cosmos what life on Earth, his Earth, is really like.
But for a boy with a long-dead dad, a troubled mum, and a mostly-not-around brother, Alex struggles with the big questions.
Where do I come from? Who’s out there? And, above all, How can I be brave?
Determined to find the answers, Alex sets out on a remarkable road trip that will turn his whole world upside down . . .
For fans of Wonder and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Jack Cheng’s debut is full of joy, optimism, determination, and unbelievable heart. To read the first page is to fall in love with Alex and his view of our big, beautiful, complicated world. To read the last is to know he and his story will stay with you a long, long time.
Having been on the road since April, I thought it’d be a good time to finally take some time to share my favorite travel gear. I’ve been wanting to write this one down for a while because I’ve come to realize how much I rely on some of this stuff in my day to day.
Here’s a selection of the travel gear I can’t leave without — you can find more of my essential kit on my Kit.com page.
[caption id=“attachment_2566” align=“alignnone” width=“4032”] A picture I took at home, before leaving for 9 months on the road[/caption]
Preparing a trip of 9 months across the world, I needed to ensure that the very basic backpack would be solid, and allow me to cross borders, airport security, but still fit on the cabin of the many aircrafts to come. After a quick search for a good-looking, sturdy travel backpack, I decided to purchase the 35L Outbreaker, from Tortuga. It’s been the best decision I’ve ever taken in terms of gear to choose. I absolutely love this backpack, from the design, to the splash-proof material, and how sturdy it feels on my back.
This is a more recent addition, but after realising I was unpacking/re-packing every month, I been looking for a more efficient way to travel. This is partially solved by these packing cubes which allow me to put everything together in my bag, saving up a bit more space, and the hassle of wondering how I managed to pack so much in two bags in the past few months.
I picked up this travel mug during a recent trip to Amsterdam earlier this year. I stumbled upon it in the Design Museum’s store, and couldn’t resist the nice design and simple click mechanism.
I knew that I’d be visiting some countries with dust and/or a fair amount of pollution (Dubai, Shanghai, Vietnam, …) so I knew that a face mask would be a good investment. This one is meant to last longer than the usual paper masks you can find in convenience stores all over Asia, and you can even change the filters once you’ve used them for a while.
What happens once you’ve reached your accommodation? You go out and EXPLORE. My day-bag is a simple tote I’ve got as a gift from my subscription to Monocle Magazine. Simple, but essential, as I tend to put my wallet, my external battery, my laptop or iPad if I’m walking around, and any other accessory I might need on the day.
My go-to pair of noise-cancelling, wireless headphones. I simply can’t live, and especially can’t travel without these: noise cancellation is really on point, even when a toddler is sitting behind you and crying on a plane.
The battery life is huge for me (20h+) so I can keep them on my head from the moment I leave my Airbnb, go to the airport, fly for 10+ hours, land, and travel to my next accommodation —and I’ll still have some juice left!
I need a dirt cheap basic pair of earphones, for when I want to listen to podcasts or music, or have a facetime call, whenever I’m outside and walking around… at least until I decide to get myself a pair of Airpods…
Similarly to the noise-cancelling headphones, this is something I absolutely need in order to get some rest on a plane. On average, in an 8-10h flight, I hardly get more than 2 hours of sleep, generally 30-40 minutes at a time. So investing in a better sleeping mask than the basic ones given on a plane is also a small but crucial improvement. I bought my current one in Vietnam for about 3€ ($4).
Something so simple, and yet so incredibly vital to anyone traveling on the road with a few gadgets: this travel organizer is possibly the wisest 10€ I have EVER spent.
There’s a small zipped compartment which is perfect for small adapters, SIM cards, and memory cards too!
Obviously, something to fill the travel organizer with. If, like me, you travel with a few electronic gadgets, I’d recommend having a few spare ones.
For example, if you have an iPad AND an iPhone, have at least 2 charging cables. Or, if you travel with an android phone and another gadget like a Kindle e-reader, make sure you pack 2 USB to Micro-USB cables, etc.
Mine comes from the good folks at Xiaomi, who are trying to sell Westerners on good quality accessories prior to launching their Android phones in the West. I love this sleek-looking external battery, but if I had to pick another one, I would probably invest in a solid one from Anker.
For backing up my laptop regularly, and storing tons of movies, tv shows, comics and more, while traveling around the world! I love how sexy this thing looks!
[caption id=“attachment_2576” align=“alignnone” width=“3024”] Ready to hit the road, with 2 bags for 9 months![/caption]
I think it’s fair to say that some of these are pretty straightforward. However, when I was planning on my own, it was easy to forget about certain things. For example, when I arrived in Australia, I realized that I needed to buy an extra adapter. Or, more recently, a sleeping mask. These are just small things that are essential the more I travel, to make sure I can optimize my experience abroad with the least amount of friction.
Now, do I need every single item on this list? Probably not. However, having it available at hand with me when I travel makes my experience of going around the world a much easier one.
Think I forgot something? Want to add something that I should check out before I hit the road again? Let me know what are YOUR travel essentials!
I'm not a fan of War movies. I think I've overdosed on too many movies and tv shows (anyone remembers Band of Brothers?) at an early age.
But with such high acclaim from critics and audiences alike, it was hard to resist Christopher Nolan’s latest offering.
I’ll say this about Dunkirk: it definitely has the Nolan touch. The gorgeous cinematography, the music, the intensity and thrill of being unsure which way the storylines are going and how the different paths are intertwined with one another.
It’s not a movie or a story that necessary appeals to me, from the start. But it executed and directed so beautifully that I let myself be captured by those characters and their journeys as they try to get out of Dunkirk (“Dunkerque” in my native language.)
I would add that I was lucky enough to watch this movie for an empty mid-week afternoon screening, in IMAX 4DX. However, unlike my screening experience, while the extra sensory experience was intact, I felt even more immersed because the film itself was in beautiful 2D, with no motion play onscreen. The image was crisp as could be, and worked incredibly well with this motion picture.
Following up on my Shanghai mix, I’ve published a new mix last week, a little bit more dynamic and definitely on a sexier vibe. All this inspiration came from traveling around Shanghai, Seoul, Jeju Island, Busan, and lately Sydney & Melbourne too!
Sydney was very interesting, it was my first time back surrounded by westernised white people, after Dubai, Shanghai, and Seoul. But I quickly found my marks: it’s a big enough city that there are distinct interesting neighbourhoods and activities all year round, but it’s still small enough that you can easily walk everywhere. In my case, that meant long walks at different times of days and night.
I was lucky enough to catch up with two different friends from Brighton: Charlotte, back from University, and then James and his girlfriend Lauren. I used to work with James for about two years, back when I was at Realmac Software. It was really great to catch up with these great humans!
And in addition, spending 10 days in Sydney gave me some good time to get back to being productive and work for my clients a bit more than when I was in Korea. Glad to be back on tracks!
I’m going to keep it at that for now, and I hope that you’ve enjoyed these new vlogs. I’ve got loads more to share, but I’ll save this for next time!
This mix was way overdue. I had a lot of time on my hands back in Shanghai and I had started working on a new mix. However, time caught up with me, and by the time I got to South Korea, and later Australia, finally mixing this together had slipped off my mind.
So without further adue, here’s a quick mix of songs that accompanied me during my trip to the Chinese Metropolis.
After our holidays in Korea, Shana left to go back to the US. On my end, I had an extra week in the country, so I decided to visit Busan for the weekend. You can watch the latest vlog below:
Busan is a charming city located as far down south as you can get. It’s famous for its fish market, its harbour, and its film festival. Oh, and let’s not forget Gamcheon, a small colourful village that will bring back to mind the Cinque Terre in Italy.
Overall, it’s been a great trip, albeit a short one. But just a few days later, I would fly to Australia, for a month!
Ready to hit the road, with 2 bags for 9 months![/caption]
