Dusit D2 Barquda Pattaya

Last weekend, My family and I had a chance to stay for a night at the new Dusit D2 HIP hotel in Pattaya. The hotel is situated right on South Pattaya just opposite to Ripley's Believe it or not museum.

The hotel is very nice with new design in HIP boutique hotel style. The room is decorated with one big king size bed right in the middle of the room. The sexy bath room comes with glass screen so you can through when taking shower. It's really good for the honeymooner.

The reception is hugh with free form furniture and large sofa for guest. All decorated with mirror wall giving the sense of modernize style. The freeform pool is rather small. Good for poolside party, not for swimming. There is a good fitness room and the restaurant.

The function rooms that make this hotel unique. The rooftop bar is excellent place to watch the sunset and the Pattaya town from atop. The 2nd floor computer room decorated in white with a few iMac (that what I love most) with 300 Baht an hour for the Internet. The Karaoke room on 4th floor and the seminar room on 3rd good for small team meeting.

The hotel just sit right next to the Major Cineplex Shopping and Movie place. You can find a good Italian Pizza restaurant and Starbuck coffee there. Or you can spend the afternoon watching movies.

We walk across the street to visit Ripley's museum. Now they have the Haunted house, the Maze, and the 4D theatre as well. The total combination of 4 access is 680 Baht. Not too bad. We all visit the 4 themes. We love the maze room so much. It was fun to walk in there in the dark and try to find the way out through many mirror glass door. The least that I like about is the Haunted house. It was quite a long walk, but totally dark. Luckily we have mobile phone that illuminate to see the way. Otherwise, we wold have hit many things as it was totally dark in there.

Pattay had changes a lot lately form the last time that we had visited. It was 5 years ago. Now it has many tourist attractions. We went to the floating market where merchants sells their goods o shops near water or some from the boat. The entrance is free and it's bigger than the "Talad Nam" of the Ancient City. I took a few good photos.

I think Pattaya is not too bad at all apart from the Russian Gang and Prostitute, they are quite a town with many things to explore.

iSwap Face

After upgrading my iPhone to new firmware, I found this interesting piece of software. It's called iSwap Face. It just lets you to swap faces between the two persons. Myson did it on our duo portraits. I have nothing much to say, except see for yourselves how crazy it is.

Hansa Norway

During last week, it was a long holiday in Thailand. So we decided to take a trip to Norway. That's right Norway as the Norge in the arctic up there very north of the world. Thai Airway had just operate their flight direct from Bangkok.

Norway visa is rather easy to apply. However, we had well planned the trip and all supporting documents were ready as the embassy may asked for. It took them 2 full weeks to issue and re

turn our passport. So if you wish to go to this country, be prepare in advance. We had 6 days visa. That's rather short isn't it.

We left Suwaanabhume airport with 12:20AM flight and 11 hour traveling time before we arrived in Oslo. We then catch the SAS domestic from Oslo to Bergen, the UNESCO world heritage fisherman village tourist attraction. Bergen is the old capital of Norway before it change to Oslo. Flight time was about 50 minutes, but would take 6-7 hours by train.

We got to Bergen at 11:00AM. The hotel can not be checked in yet until 3:00PM. So we decided to walk around the town and visit the famous fish market. The fish market is very crowded most of them are wither tourists or the fish merchants. The live catch are sold in the market. We decided to have shrimp salad, salmon, fish & Chips, calamari, and the giant king crab. Pun Pun really enjoyed the king crab so much as he finished them all. Temperature in Bergen was sunny and really hot. I guess it was about 30 deg. Anyway, it's good for photo.

After the cruising of town, we then back to the hotel to freshen up before we came out

again to ride the cable car to the top of Bergen mountain for city scenic view. The weather was really nice. We see the whole town under the sun. We came back down at about 7:00PM for our first dinner. We went to a chinese restaurant located just right at the fish market. The meal cost us around 2,500 Baht. This is a normal price as almost every meal in Norway for us cost around that much, except when we lunched at a McDonald store that costed us around 2,000 Baht.

We went back to the hotel at about 9:00PM. The sun is still high. Just like 4:00PM in Thailand. I got up at midnight to see that the light still on in the street. Sun came down at about 1:00AM and back the sky again at about 3:00AM. If we had the chance to go up further north such as Nordcape, we will see the midnight sun.

The second day was a long day for us. We had reserved the "Norway in a nutshell" tour from NSB. The tour started at 7:45AM. We took the train to Myrday, get another famous scenic route train to Fram. Along the way to Fram, there's a very beautiful watrefall. At Fram, we took a walk around the place to see that nice little town and bought some very expensive souvenir. We then get back on th

e cruising boat to travel along the Fjord. It was really beautify. The sun was too strong. We all get back with tan. No one will beleive that we go so far to norther Europe just to get sun tan.

The third day of our trip we got back on the plane to Oslo again. In Oslo, we have a free afternoon, so we arrange a local sight seeing tour from Bat Service. The tour brought us to the old folk museum to see old norwegian houses and church. It also took us to the viking museum and the famous Vegelan park, where most of the nude sculpture created by Norwegian Sculptor "Gustav Vegelan". The park was very beautiful. The sculptures were all about the circle of life where human was born, grow, getting married, raised family, grow old, get sick and die.

The last day we had a few hour before the flight. We take a little OSlo on foot. We w

alked from the hotel to the central railway station, then to the new Oslo Opera House. We then head off to the Thai Airways counter. The flight was so full. At first we thought we might have to change the plan and stay behind. Finally there were no show of passengers, so the four of us can get back to Thailand safe and sound. Had to Thank the Thai Airways Station manager for helping us to find the seat back.

Panoramic View of Loch Muick

Seems like the power of Photoshop is enormous. I had just explored the Panoramic function of it. In this picture is the view of Loch Muick, a lake in Aberdeen, Scotland. After the conference, the whole team just took off to a nearby Lock (Lake in Scottish). At first we wish to go to Loch Ness. But Loch Ness is too far away from Aberdeen. It would take us at least one day to get there from Aberdeen.

Any how, we ended up in this Loch instead. It's very beautiful and quiet. I just took 3 pictures to cover the whole are of the Lock Muick. I used the File-->Automate-->Photo Merge function of the Photoshop. After the completion of rendering, I used the crop tool to cut off the excess edge. I also used the "Camera Raw" functions to adjust the exposure as well as the brightness, contrast, hue and saturation, etc.

A little Photoshop work

After having bought a few books on photography, one of the things I see nowadays is they all use Photoshop to enhance their photo, no matter what they are-- amateur or expert. So I'd just started up my Photoshop that I haven't used for a long time. Follow a few chapters on the book to start creating my very first Photoshop effect.

It's easier than I thought. Somehow those book didn't explained why they use those tools or techniques. It just one of those follow me don't ask kind of book. Perhaps, I should start taking a course seriously.

So I successfully created the B&W photo with color highlighting. See for yourself. I just used the magic wand tool to select the red "Chaba" flowers and use the select-->Invert to do the masking of the entire page, rather than the flowers. Then I created a B&W layer from the coloring layer tool (at the bottom of the layer pallet). I also created another layer for the Hue/Saturation to enrich the redness.

Another piece is the creation of High Dynamic Range from a single shot photo. Normally HDR is created by the Bracket function that you shoot 3 shots with 3 different setting of the same scene. The Bracketing allows you to shoot the under-expose, the normal, and the over expose. Once all three shots are combined, you

will have a photo that have details from foreground to background. The three shots can be combined easily using the special function called "HDR". However, we can create HDR fro

m a single shot by using three layers duplication. We make one layer of photo as B&W. We use the copy of the photo to another layer with Hue/Saturation and enhance the color. We then overlay all three layers together. You will have the HDR picture out of a single photo shot. Image on the left of this Swiss Lake is taking using normal exposure. The one on the right is the HDR created from that original picture. As you can see, more details appear on the second picture from foreground to back.

It's easy and fun. After my Norway trip next week, I might have a few more of my photo and some photoshop enhanced effect.

Back to Blog

Having been away for a big while. Lots of things happened in life. After a few month with around the globe travel, it is fun to be back. During the past few months, I spent the summer in Switzerland. I got to travel to Houston, TX, USA. Spent lots of fortune on shopping. Then back to Malaysia for an upset training course which was cancelled without prior notice. Back to England to watch Manchester United games with Arsenal at Old Trafford to celebrated their Premier League Champion. Up north to Aberdeen, Scotland to visit Stone Haven and a little Scottish Loch and Fjord.

Next month I'm going to Norway for a short 3 nights trip. It will be fun.

Relaxing Weekend

The last weekend was really my fully relaxing weekend.  My wife and I went for a stage play and a movie.  We spent over 6 hours sitting and watching plays.

The stage play that we went to was "Love 11 scenes".  It's a story of a couple who was first met at a high-school student get together pub.  They start to introduce to one another.  The story went on how the couple got into the love-sick cycle of life.  The got broken hearted from their ex, then fall in love together, getting married, having baby, having hard time raising baby, having lots of argument, divorced, re-married with someone else, get 

divorced again, the kid got pregnant and decided to keep the baby, got sick, and die.  

It all happened in 11 scenes.  I believe it's like the life of many.  Khun Sinjai was the leading actress.  She is a very famous characters with renown quality of her works.  This times she did it again as a 16 year old girl, growing up and growing old into 51 year old woman.  It was fun and very entertaining.  My wife shed her tears a few times.

Then we went for a new released Thai movie. It's called "Short Memory but Long Love".  It a story of two couples with different ages.  The young love and the old timer love.  The young female have lots of wound from the old high-school sweet heart ex-husb

and.  Now led her life as a gardener.  With her love of animal, it led her to an old friend who secretly had a heart for her from high school, but to learned that his sweet heart was falling for his close friend (who later turned to be her husband and ex-husband).  The couple have to go through many things in

 helping animal and the old couple.  This is the road that drawn the two to be come lovers at the end.

The story of the old couple was really admirable.  It's the symbol of the long lasting friendship that even distance won't keep them apart.  The old couple met in a computer training class for senior citizen, where the young boy of the young couple teach.  The old couple was living apart.  The women is in Bangkok while the men is in Chumpon (6 hours drive from Bangkok).  There are many gags that make the audience laugh, sending the heart out to cheer them to overcome all the fear and obstacles.  The old couple story was a bit sad that at the end, the old man realized that he had Alzheimer.  He would try everything to memorize the love and every moment that he has with the old lady.  At the end, the lady has to stay with her son's family in America, while the old man stayed behind with his son in Bangkok.  Distance is not the problem as they learned how to chat on MSN from the computer class that they went together.

It was a very good movie.  Of course, my wife shed the tears again.  It was a very happy feeling after all.  Sometimes you wish to forget something, but you can't and sometimes you wish to memorize it forever, but you can't.  This is how memry plays the trick.

Swiss Schengen Visa

From March 10-16 the whole family have a plan to visit Switzerland.  Like many others, Swiss was our dream destination for its beautiful scenic country.  The kids had just started their long summer holiday starting from March to May.  Good heaven for Bangkok with less traffic.  Probably the best time to visit Thailand.  We plan to go to Swiss for a one-week trip with Grandma and grandpa.  Both of them and my kids will also stay behind for another week with the visit to Austria and Germany.

The story began with visa application.  Since our port of entry and the longest length of stay will be in Swiss.  We all went to Swiss embassy.  We were treated poorly.  This make me realize that the embassy is not one of the place that had a real negative attitude toward the non-Swiss people.

I understood that going to Europe had been very strict for non-european, but we were very careful.  We learned a lot for the financial statement and asset that we presented to the embassy.  My mom had invested a lot in a non-bank financial institute (for example Tisco, or other trust fund).  This kind of passbook is not accepted at the first place.  My kids will also extend their trip with their grandma and grandpa, but the swiss issued only a 10 day multiple entry visa.  Finally they all have to cut the trip with two-day shorter than expected.

I really had a bad impression with Swiss embassy.  I was told that to apply for Schengen visa, we should apply from other countries like Germany, France, Austria, etc., but not the Swiss.

If by any chance you wish to go touring on your own, consider not applying visa from Swiss.

Omelet

Yes.  A simple Omelet that anyone can make.  Why it's so special?  It's special because my son made it for me.

His school start teaching kids to do some cooking this year.  Of course the Omelet menu is the simplest and easiest one to get over with.  It's a fundamental threshold of the future great cooking.

Pun Pun came back from school one day and told everyone that the night menu was Omelet.  It was a must for everyone to have it for dinner.  Of course all of us had to agreed and ate the first time ever made Omelet by Pun Pun.

Tell you what, hot Omelet with smoke-full fresh-from-the-oven rice with a little chili and fish sauce do make the day.  Pun Pun Omelet was delicious.  

The picture say it all.

Canon 5D Mark II

I spent lots of money over the weekend.  On my new set of camera and gears.  At first I was wishing to buy a second camera just to have my long lens ready for shooting along with my old camera for standard lens shooting.  I went to this fotofile.net shop and talk to the sales guys at the store about the features of the new camera.  I was eyeing for Canon 50D.  

I guys shown me both the 50D and 5D MK II.  Of course the MK II is a much more fancy in term of full-frame capture and the processing of colors.  The price is also twice as much.  I did the trading on my existing 70-200 f4L USM lens that I bought over 2 years ago but rarely use.  I got quite a good number as I bought it for 20,000 Baht and sold it for 15,000.  I also traded my EFS 17-85 standard lenses for 9,000 Baht (I bought it for 12,000 but heavily used it.)

Anyway, I bought back my Canon 5D Mk II, 100-400 f4L IS USM and a 24-105 f4L IS USM lenses.  Now my set is perfect.  I have two cameras as I wished for with lenses to cover from wide angle (10-20) up to 400 mm.  The only thing that I don't have is the art in taking photo.  My next move is to attend a photo class workshop.  Too bad for a weekend spending lots of money on this little hobby of mine.

KhonKaen

During Feb 6-8 2009, I have a chance to visit KhonKaen as one of my friend was to enter the monkhood for 7 days.  He selected a temple in Khonkaen to be his monastery.  Mac and I flew in on the evening as the event will occur early of the next morning.  We had plan to participate in his ordain then visit a golf course in that afternoon

After the ceremony, we drove to Ubolratana Dam Golf Course to learned that the course was closed for

 a competition.  We then decided to drive to the other side of the town to a newly opened course, namey "Dancoon".  Dan in Thai means the land, and Coon is a local plantation which is also the symbol of Khonkaen.  So Dancoon means the land of the Coon plant.

The course was neat with well groom fairway and excellent Green condi

tion.  The price was only 800 Baht.  We decided to use the golf cart as the weather is a bit hot and the rounding was the first of mine for this year.  I made four wonderful pars.  Not bad for a twice a year golfer like me.

The

 next day we have three hiurs before our flight back to bangkok.  We decided to give respect to the Khonkaen's town pole.  (The town pole is the sacred place when the ancester first establish the town, they drawn all spirits to stay at the town post to guard against all the devils and bad things.) 

We then drove off another 20 Km. to visit "Pratad Khamkaen" which is a pagoda in a temple that contain the remains of the lord Buddha.  The temple is also the first establishment community of KhonKaen 

town itself.  The name "Khamkaen" was the former name of "Khonkaen" as pronunciation has changed over time.

Crafting a KM Strategy Presentation

I was invited by IKEA-SEA and Bangkok University to give a presentation on KM.  My topic was about "Crafting a KM Strategy".  I got a chance to give my view on KM which I'm doing at work.  There were audiences from many places, mostly in academic area.

It was fun and enjoyable.  My view was really differ from other.  It's a story from the field.  I had a chance to meet Nial Sinclaire, he author of "Stalth KM" which is one of my favorite book on KM.

Now I'm invited to provide the same speech at Chiangmai University.  Let's see when.

New Year Cruise

I took a few days of before New Year to take my son--Pun Pun--on a cruise to Loei.  We didn't plan ahead but just want to fill up our free time.  Pun Pun's school was closed for 2 weeks to let all their foreign teachers to go back home during Christmas and Newyear.  He is too free and would do nothing, except watching cartoon.  It would be best for us to go out and see the world.  No mother and sister allows for the trip, just the father and son alone.

We flew to Khonkaen and rent a little Toyota Vios to tour around.  Our first stop is the Dinosaur Museum at Phu Wieng.  We drov off from highway 201 about 50 Km to get to the museum.  Phu Wieng Gosaurous was first found here.  We took about an hour to walk around the museum and take turn to take photos.

We then drove off back to highway 201 to get to Loei.  Khon Kaen and Loei is about 200 Km away.  Our next stop was Phu Kra Dueng, the famous mountain trekking site where all students in their prime age always visit and go up to the top for once in their life.  The walking and climbing distance is around 6 Km. and would take a normal healthy guy 4-5 hours to reach the top.  Pun Pun was too small to climb up.  Anyway we took lots of photo at the base to show the world that we both have been here.  We also have the certificate made saying that we had conquered Phu Kra Dueng.  (This certificate later did fooled my wife and sister that we both had reached the top of Phu Kra Dueng and made them so jealous.)

From Phu Kra Dueng we drove directly to RungYen resort in Phu Rue (just another 60 Km. away from the city of Loei) to end our first day trip.  So far we had already drive around 300 Km. for the first day.  We were so excited to get away from the house and spend the night at one of the coolest spot in Thailand.  Our next morning plan was to go up the top of Phu Rua mountain to see the sunrise and we should leave the hotel at 5:00 in the morning.

It was also a Christmas Eve and Pun Pun wish to receive some presents from Santa Claus.  Before going to bed, he prayed for the visit.  Before sleeping, he put up a sock at the end of the bed.  Shockingly, the next morning he woke up and rushed to his sock to find a stick of "Chupa Choop" candy inside his sock.  He was so glad and I was so surprised how the candy came into his sock.  Still unexplainable.  He promised me that he would be a good kid so that Santa can come and visit him again next year.  He was so proud and excited.

The temperature at RangYen was 12C.  We drove through the darkness heading for the top of Phu Rua mountain.  We were there at 5:30AM.  We then took a little bus from our parking space to face the tip of Phurua just before the sun rise.  The temperature was dropped to 9C.  It was cold, but not so cold as we expected.  

After Phurua, we came back to our resort to clean up and pack things to move on.  Our next stop would be the "Kang Kud Koo", a famous river bank along the Mekhong river where we planned to have lunch.

We decided to take a small country road along the border of Thai and Laos alongside the Methong river.  It was a scenic route and lots of trees and many beautiful scenery.  The road was quite bad as many truck loading with stuffs from Laos use this route as well.  The surface of the road was quite bumpy.  Anyhow, it took us almost 3 hours to finish the 60 Km, but it was worth the try.

We arrived safely at "KangKudKoo".  We had lunch there.  The famous local thing to buy is the sweetened coconut.  We stopped by and bought a Kilo of coconut with half for us to eat along the way, and another half for the mother and sister at home.  The coconut did not get to our home.  Pun Pun finished them all before.  It was so tasty.

That afternoon, we drove back to the city of Loei to stay at Loei Palace hotel.  Too bad, the TV in the room can receive the Cartoon Network.  Pun Pun asked to stay for 2 hours in front of the TV.

In the evening, we decided to have dinner at a water reservation dam.  It's called "Nam Mhan".  It was a peaceful and quiet place to visit.  We rented a wooden raft and stay afloat in the middle of the dam.  We ordered some food and drink and eat and lie down there.  It was a perfect lazy man dream holiday.  Pun Pun loves this place so much and will take his mom and sister to this place when we come to Loei the next time.

The next morning we drove off from Lei Palace hotel at about 7:00AM in the morning.  It would take us 2 hours to leave Loei via WangSaPung and Nhong Bua Lumpoo to get to Udon Thani airport.  We get to the airport at about 10:00Am to return the car and catch the flight back home.

That's conclude our father-son three day holiday.  And after we get back, we have to leave our house as early as 4:00 in the morning to catch the flight to Singapore.  This time the whole family is to be together.  Pun Pun and I had travelled for more than 5,000 Km. in a week.  That's tiring but fun.  I'll tell you more about our Singapore trip later.