Linkin Park Live in Bangkok

Last week-end (I know I'm late) I went to see the concert of Linkin Park in Bangkok.


I must admit that I was surprised when I first heard that Linkin Park was coming to Bangkok. I was like "Why would they come here?" lol

Anyway, they did come. And even best was the ticket price to go to the concert.

For a place in the last category - meaning quite far away from the stage- I paid 600 bahts (or 13€).

This is 4 to 6 times less than what I would have paid in Paris.


I went with a lof of friends, French, German, Iranian and Thai. Yeah it's still united color of Benetton here.



So we went to the concert which was supposed to start at 5PM. The time was quite unusual and that should have brought our attention.

We arrive at the Impact Arena (a complex of buildings designed to host all kinds of conferences, fairs etc) at 4:30PM and it turned out that they were many guest bands playing before the actual apparition of Linkin Park at... 9PM!!



This could have been bearable if the guest bands were not playing some kind of Hardcore rock mainly made of horrible growls and wierd noises. Needless to say that it was incredibly painful for my ears.

Apparently there is one thai band named Ebola (yeah, just like the virus) which is very popular in Thailand. Id (not sure of the orthography), the thai friend was a great fan of them. Good for him.



While waiting, we went to some other buildings to find some foods. We ended up in one of these very common food center where you can find all kind of food, japanese, vietnamese, of course thai and western food. It was one of my worst experience in a Food center but I want dig that subject.


9PM found us in the middle of a huge crowd, made of normal people and less normal (meaning fanatic) people dressed in black and stuff.

Of course the concert started late, at 9h30PM.

Despite being quite far from the scene, I was seeing quite clearly what was happening on stage, and the 3 giant screens were there to help from times to times.



Speaking of the live prestation, it was HUGE, AWESOME, WONDERFUL and I can keep going like that for another page lol.

really, I was impressed by the quality of the show. The way the sets of lights were playing, the audio quality were outstanding.

I have the feeling that Linkin Park did come with their technical team, cause Thai people didnt really accustom me to that kind of quality (no offense, just a fact).


Linkin Park delivered a impressive performance too. I dont know how the singer manages to scream that much but I swear that If I try to do the same, I will lose my voice in less than half an hour.

I think that is one of the reason why the concert was that short. A mere 1h20, it was short but intense.


The audience was delighted during all the show, people were jumping around, singing half of the time. Of course, we had a fair share of more than just tipsy people.

It wasn't surprising, the were selling tons of beer outside, and the smallest format was a glass of...1 liter of beer.


I took very few pictures of the show, it was quite dark (it was an open air show), and I was quite far.


Overall, it was a great, enjoyable evening.

I'm still hesitant about going to the concert of Muse at the end of this month.
What do you think?

Pictures of Bangkok: Touristic places

I've made a post with pictures of normal Bangkok streets with cabs, buildings, ad banner and all those stuffs you have no idea how they look like until you come to visit Bangkok.

However, Bangkok as you know is also a very touristic city with a lot of beautiful temples and some interesting market.



These are the places I want to show here.


I created an online Album on my Picasa Gallery

I'm gonna add more and more pictures on this album.

Hopefully the embedded slideshow below will be updated automatically.









Feel free to comment and to visit my Picasa pictures gallery.

Thai Cuisine: Sweet and Sour Chicken

It's been a long time since the last time I blogged about food.

I know that you, readers, miss that so I'm gonna blog about it more often and I already have a bunch of food pictures.


Today dish is the quite famous and classic Sweet and Sour Chicken (can be Pork too).

Thai cuisine has a lot of dishes which mix sweet and salted. It's a little bit bizarre when You first try it but eventually you quickly get used to that.


So here are two pictures of this dish.

Of course, you eat this one with Rice (as usual).

Monitor Lezard spotted in AIT

AIT is a very green campus. To describe it best I would say that it's a bunch of buildings erected on the middle of a forest.

We are surrounded by trees, natural gardens and all kinds of insects that come with such an environment.

We even have a Lake (partly artificial but it still does the job) with a food booth nearby so that one can eat sitting just near the lake.


This welcoming environment leads to a very rich fauna and flora.

One day, I was going for lunch when I spotted this big monitor lizard near the lake.
It is one of the biggest lizard I've ever seen (actually IT IS the biggest).

you can see by yourself on the pictures below.
















As usual, feel free to comment.

Hole in The Wall Initiative.

Normally I focus more on the travel/backpacking/Lifestyle subjects.
But from time to time I talk about other subjects.



Today I want to talk about one interesting initiative. The Hole-in-the-Wall initiative is basically trying to bring computer access to the poor children.

In the meantime, the aim is to help children to acquire new knowledge just by playing on computers without any external supervision.


What is interesting is that the computer is basically embedded in a wall and there is absolutely no restriction to the access.

The idea is that children will naturally learn, driven by their curiosity.


It's quite a counter-intuitive idea and the first time I heard about it I was thinking :" Whats the point".


The essay, which came as a part of my assignment in my ICT (Information and communication technologies) course, is exploring that initiative in the context of e-learning.



Feel free to read it (click on this link for a full screen version) and comment.





You can download the full version as a PDF or as a Word document.

The document is under the creative common licensing, which means that you can reused it as long as you explicitly mention the author (that would be me). If you can also link to this blog, its even better :)

Trip to see the "Pygmées" (Kribi, Cameroon)

This is the last post on the Kribi part of my journey in Cameroon.

I've already uploaded a fair number of pictures.

So I'll try to select just the most interesting ones. Of course, if you want to see the complete set of pictures, you just have to click on any of the pictures.





Me, getting on the dugout ("pirogue" in French")

Mum was very reluctant to get in that dugout. Initially, she wanted to wait for us in the car.

In a attempt to reassure us (I assume), the dugout driver told us:

Dont Worry, the boat is very solid (I guess he means we should not rely on the appearance of the boat).

Then he added something that makes us all feel more comfortable:
It's safer than the Titanic!

Dude, what A RELIEF. Good thing he didnt say "as safe as the Titanic.

This guy should have been a shrink.





There is no engine so some people have to make the dugout keep going, isnt it?




Some people use cars, some other dugout canoes.





The dugout parked at the "dock" (sort of).




Somehow, this is the "road" we took.




One Pygmée house.




Probably the Pygmee version of a Duplex.




A place where people gather together.




Frankly, there is not that much to see in that "Village"




Except posing with the so-called Chef weapons.




Even Mum was in.





The beds. No comment





The Pygmée people. They are distinguishable by their small height, usually between 140 and 160 centimeters.

This is one of the first (and maybe) only thing I remember from the early classes of the primary school in Cameroon.






Oki. we took a lot of pictures. What do expect?



Ok that's enough folks. More pictures are available after the jump (on the last pic).

Again, feel free to leave comment.

Song of the day: Ayo

Ayo has been with Corinne Bailey Rae, one of my favorite artists lately.

I've been blogging quite a lot today.

So I will go straight to the point.



The album is a masterpiece (nothing less) and its title is "Joyful".

If you want additional information, just click here


The 1st song is the famous single "Down on my knees".

Just press play, i dont know what more to say, its just breathtaking.






The second song just happened to be chose by iTunes which decided to start playin it exactly when I was typing this sentence.

It's "Watchin You", a soft, sweet love song.

So enjoy.








Edit: Ok fellows, since I like you, I decided that you deserve a little gift, so here it is.

No info on this one, just press play and when the song finishes and that you open your eyes, well just leave a comment ok?

More pictures from Kribi and the neighbourhood

Dude, I've seen more solid bridges in my life (not sure I've seen scarier ones though)




The waterfalls. Not that impressing hein?




Well people use them to wash their clothes.




And do fish too.




Which is kinda of stupid cause the fish is clearly too young.




Ok, it looks more interesting from this angle.




It's amazing what you can do with a close-up. Now it (almost) looks impressive.




My Bro walkin on the Water...well sort of.





I guess we can say that he's in harmony with the nature.




The last one. I like this one.



That's all folks...for now.

That's one hell of a catch up (thx bro for the pics)


The next post will be on the trip we made to see the "Pygmées".

So if you want to see more pictures or you want to know who are the "Pygmées"? well, stay tuned.

It's coming soon. Meanwhile, feel free to comment (note that if you dont want to sign in yo can always leave an anonymous comment).
If you want to know who are

Pictures of Kribi beaches (Cameroon)

Ok, if you are just about pictures, then this post is for you (unlike the following post lol).

Since I wasn't the one uploading the photo, I can't embed the slideshow like I have started to lately. So it's gonna be a bunch of (selected pictures).

If you wanna see the whole album (with A LOT of pictures) then just hit any of the following pictures.




A close look to the sea, the water is not as crystal clear as it is in Ko Samet but it's still a beautiful view.





One of the hotel we visited in our quest for affordable prices.





The view from our bedrooms (which were 1 meter behind at the ground - and only- floor).





2 meters farther, just near the beach.





The bedrooms where we stayed.





The restaurant of the Hotel. The food is many times better than the building look.





I love this view at the dawn.





My Bro





Me





My Bro & Me





We were playing a really stupid game. So funny





Me again (sorry to bother you with me lol)





The Water flow is quite powerful, I left with some bruises (cause of the stupid game :) )




How cool is life sometimes?




Of course Hell is on Earth, but the Paradise is here too.




We were going to see the (little) waterfalls.

Trip to Cameroon: Kribi and its beaches

Ok, I have to admit that I could have done it before.

But the thing is that since I left the charger of my digital camera in Paris when I went to Cameroon, I basically don't have pics of my own, so I have to wait until my bro upload them online to display them.


I have already a couple of posts on my trip to cameroon, including one on Cameroonian Food (damn I miss it).

But we didn't visit just the capital and the countryside.

Although we had to cancel the trip to the North where we wanted to go to visit the natural park of Waza, we managed to go to a coast city named Kribi.



Well to sum up, you take a car from Douala (or from Yaoundé), you follow the direction "Kribi" (it's not really indicated so you better go with someone who knows the way) and 2 hours later, there you are.

The next step is to find a hotel. And damn that is the hardest part of the movie.

We wanted an hotel just in the front of the beach.

If you happen to want that too, be ready to choke when you check the prices.


You wont find anything below 25000 FCFA (37€!!) and at this price you will get a barely decent bedroom (and when I say decent, I'm kind).

For something satisfactory you hit 32000 FCFA(almost 50€!!) ouch!

Ok, some people might not understand why I was surprised but one have to know that it's 1/4 to 1/3 of the salaries of government employees.




What struck me was the difference with the prices in Thailand and Cambodia (and even Laos although I've never visit a coast city in Laos).

When I went to Sihanouk Ville (Cambodia), we where in a nice hotel which was 5 min away from the beach (not in the front of the beach but just behind). I wont say it was top-notch but it was a nice one, with a silent AC and TV (with gazillions of channels).

And for that we paid US12$ (or was it $10?), less than 9€!


When we went to Siem Reap (Angkor, Cambodia), one of the most touristic city in southeast Asia (if not the most touritic) we slept in a very nice guesthouse with a wonderful swimming pool and a enjoyable decoration with a lot of wood and bamboo.

For that we paid US$34 for two nights (makes 17$/night for people who dont get along that well with maths). Granted, we bargained a lot, but that's the rule.

Noted it down if you don't know yet, "In Cambodia, U ALWAYS BARGAIN, about EVERYTHING"


So, yeah I found the prices to be, to say the least, surprising.

This is the part of the movie where having the right contacts proved to be handy.

Mum managed to find us two rooms in a company-employees-only hotel which, for this reason is WAY cheaper.

Ok, the rooms were just OK (actually on par with the hotels we visited before, but without the smell we found in one of them), but we paid "just" 15000FCA (22€).

I still find it expensive but it was the best we could find if we wanted to be just in front of the beach.


The stay was very nice (except for the sleep, the beds were not so great).

The food was awesome but awfully expensive. Kribi is supposed to be a fishing city and it is actually.

But for some mysterious reasons, the fish here is actually noticeably more expensive.

I wont complain because the food was delicious, just want to let you know that you better show up with 10000FCFA (15€) per meal if you want a 3courses meal and if you are alone. If you are more than 2 people(and if you dont eat like my bro and me) you might start to tap into the economy of scale.


We stayed there during slightly less than 48 hours.

It was a very enjoyable trip, and we had a great deal of fun (and some funky stories too, but its Cameroon right).


I wanted to include the pictures in this post but since this post is already quite long I think. I'll make another post (u know the one u just read above lol).


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