In less than five days, I'm going to South-East Asia to spend a month relaxing, trekking, inhaling pollution and fighting cockroaches the size of my fist in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. It's going to be wonderful.

My problem is that it is very expensive to call to and from most of the countries in the area. The tariff for a call between a Telenor fixed-line in Norway and my prepaid mobile in Thailand is an outrageous €1.41 (NOK 11.38) per minute. The worldwide telecom tariffs are not based on distance, but destination bandwidth, de-facto monopolies, local regulations, corruption and several other complicated factors. In this case, Telenor really helps out with their typically inflated tariffs. For comparison, the Dutch telecom KPN charges "only" €1.08 (NOK 8.69) for the same call. Nevertheless, the tariffs are unacceptable, and Skype is really not an option, as it's not as flexible and portable as a mobile phone.

This is where broadband telephony like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) comes to the rescue. Thanks to VoIP, there is a market for call termination over internet trunks where prices are slashed to the bone due to the globalized marketplace that internet provides. Now everyone can take international calls at wholesale prices and perhaps become their own little telecom company. By shopping around, I have found VoIP providers that will terminate a call between Norway and Thailand for only €0.0066 (NOK 0.053) per minute, or 0.46% of the Telenor tariff, and even 50% less than the Telenor domestic tariff. I'm laughing all the way to the bank.

Today I've ordered a new gadget for my Asia trip in February. It's the Globalsat DG-100, a simple GPS data logger utilizing the SiRF StarIII chipset, which has been getting very good reviews out there. It can be set to record waypoints (locations) for a configurable interval based on time (like every 10 seconds) or distance (like every 100m) with storage for up to 64,000 records of time, location and altitude. The output can be exported to a myriad of formats, and can be represented as a Google Maps interface or used to geotag images taken during the trip. I can put this in my daypack during the day, and in the evening I'll have a complete record of my movements. (Why? I don't know. It's fun to play with that kind of data.) Best thing is that it is made for exactly the purpose of logging data, with no fancy and power hungry utilities like bluetooth, giving it up to 35 hours of usage without recharge. It also runs on normal batteries, if needed.

Just looking at the Wikitravel page for Ratchadaphisek, the part of Bangkok I will be spending my first few days in, makes me all fuzzy and excited inside. The Wikitravel entry says that "touristy sights are basically non-existent in this neck of woods." Think about that for a second. That means that good old Ratchada actually became SO much more of an interesting place to stay. Less interference, and more genuine Bangkok noise, pollution and systematic chaos.

The main itinerary is now ready, and the long haul tickets are booked. I leave Oslo on February 7th 2008, and will fly Air France via Paris to Bangkok, where I will spend a week meeting old and new friends. Later I will go to the Krabi province to meet some more friends and recharge my mental batteries for up to a week.

I have updated the site with a more simplistic look and feel because I had a feeling that the old theme clogged things up a bit. The site hasn't been updated much lately, but I'm soon going on a trip to new adventures far away, and I hope to write about it here from time to time. I've personally enjoyed reading through the submissions from my previous trip two years ago, and many of my friends told me that they had good fun reading about the crazy shit that happened to me back then.

The itinerary is not quite ready just yet, but it will include Thailand, Laos and Vietnam (with the places I didn't get time to visit last time) and hopefully with a trip to Hong Kong and Taiwan.