Wednesday, September 24, 2025
8:00 a.m. Room 211, Hotel Raja Bot
Chow Kit, Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
I’m back in Kuala Lumpur, and I’m staying at the small and funky Hotel Raja Bot. Even the name is small and funky, and I think it translates as the King of Boats Hotel. The street is also named King of Boats, as is the neighborhood. I assume this name has significance and relates to Malaysian history, but I haven’t done any research into that yet. I ended up staying here because my lineup of usual suspects were too expensive. I’d recently stayed at the Crossroads because I got a good deal on an awesome room for 39 ringgit per night. But when I checked back, the rooms had jumped to 130 ringgit per night. And even the humble J Hotel Masjid India was way overpriced. Then I found the King of Boats advertising rooms for 47 ringgit per night. Add the tourist tax and various other taxes, and it still ends up costing more than I’d like, but unless you sleep in a dorm bed, that’s as cheap as you’re going to find in Kuala Lumpur and perhaps even in Malaysia.
Still, it’s a good value. The hotel is clearly a bit old. You can see evidence of that everywhere, but with age comes a certain pleasing solidity and character you don’t see in modern hotels. My room is surprisingly large as well and well-appointed with a large window, a desk, an open closet, a comfy (though hardish) bed, nice bedding, a kettle, hot water, a new air conditioner, and even a hair dryer in the bathroom. There are even the small touches that cause a lot of happiness on Planet Doug: a bedside table, bedside lightswitches, and three electrical outlets.
The neighborhood is also a joy. It has the wonderful hustle and bustle of Chow Kit with restaurants and markets and night life everywhere. I have only been editing video since I’ve been back, and I have NOT joined the night life, but I hear live music outside my window at night. And I see buildings adorned with inviting lights everywhere I look. There is no perfectly convenient 7-Eleven, but that has been replaced with a 99-Speedmart practically next door.
The staff are also great. Upon my arrival, I was greeted and welcomed warmly. Check-in was smooth and uncomplicated. There was no confusion surrounding the annoying tourism tax. Nor was there any talk of filling out forms, checking online records, and providing deposits. The desk clerk was on top of his game, and he had reviewed the day’s reservations in advance and knew I was coming, and knew who I was when I walked through the doors. The night desk clerk is a talkative fellow, and we have a regular chat as I pass in and out on my various errands. He has already told me everything that is wrong with my YouTube channel and told me what I should be making videos about: food. He also demands action in videos. As he said, if he sees me sitting on a bed and talking, “SKIP!!!” And he skips ahead looking for action. He’s certainly right, but I do like sitting on my various beds and talking.
I got back to Kuala Lumpur five days ago from Ipoh, the final stop on my Malaysia Mystery Tour. My hosts for the trip dropped me off at the Raja Bot, and then they checked in at the nearby Hilton Garden Inn. We had a final lunch together, said goodbye, and the next day they left for a ten-day trip to Japan. They will be back in Malaysia for a final five days on their return journey back home to the United States.
For the last five days, I’ve been editing, exporting, uploading, and finalizing the videos from the car tour. My original idea (as is often the case) was to make short, snappy, highlight-filled videos of the trip. The trip was scheduled for seven days, and my plan was to make seven short videos from twenty to thirty minutes long each: one short video per day. But the minute I turned on my GoPro and started talking on the first day, that plan went right out the window, and I recorded my regular video journal or diary of each day in full. And when you record that way, you end up with about an hour-long video for each day. The video that I started editing yesterday is nearly two hours long. I’m considering dividing that video up into at least two and maybe three separate videos. It makes sense because the video covers many subjects: Malaysia Day History; the Perak Cave Temple; a Tin Mining Museum Guided Tour; plus a “setting the stage” segment for the day, a hotel breakfast buffet, a meal in Little India, and a walk around a Ipoh city park. Unfortunately, I didn’t film all of these events separately. In terms of the storytelling, they all blend together, so it would be awkward to separate them. But that comes with the advantage of making several short videos as opposed to one super-long one. However, it would require a LOT more time and effort to make separate videos. I haven’t decided yet.
I’ve finished editing and uploading five of the seven videos so far. I have this two-hour video left to complete and then one short video about our trip from Ipoh back to Kuala Lumpur. I should be able to get most of that done today and tomorrow. And then I will have to go back and create all the thumbnails and video descriptions and other final details of these videos. Once that is done, I can turn my attention back to living life away from my laptop and recording MORE videos. The plan, of course, is to finally embark on a bit of a bicycle tour around Malaysia. As always, that plan has suffered greatly. It was supposed to start long ago when the weather was still relatively nice. But now it is looking like a bicycle tour that starts now will coincide with monsoon conditions. I’d still like to follow through on those plans. Perhaps the inevitable horrific weather will be part of the appeal of the journey. It won’t be the Mystery Tour of Malaysia. I can call it the Misery Tour of Malaysia or the Soaking Wet Tour of Malaysia or the Wet and Windy Tour of Malaysia. If we need some alliteration, perhaps it will be the Muddy and Monsoony Mystery Tour of Malaysia.
Editing the videos from the car tour has been a fun and fascinating experience. I get to relive the trip and see everything in a new, clear light. Having all that video deepens the experience and lets me see it differently. I haven’t had time or energy to reply to comments on my videos from the last week, but I did see one comment on my first car tour video, and this commenter wondered why there was no introduction to the couple that I was travelling with. And I instantly saw their point. In the first video, I just jump into the car with Habib driving and his wife Shahnaz sitting in the back seat. And I don’t introduce them or say anything at all about them. And that made sense at the time because they’re friends of mine. It just didn’t occur to me to do an introduction on video. Plus, we’d met up at a laundromat the day before the tour began, and I kind of introduced them in THAT video. However, no one would have seen that video. And it wasn’t much of an introduction. The laundromat was loud and chaotic and I didn’t have a microphone on either Habib or Shahnaz and you couldn’t hear their voices. So I just showed what they looked like and that was about it.
Had I been thinking clearly, I probably would have done an introduction to them in the first few minutes in the car. It would be natural to do that since I was setting off on a seven-day car tour with them, and no one on Planet Doug really knew who they were or how they fit into my life. But there was a LOT going on, and as soon as the car started moving, we had to deal with the traffic and roads of Kuala Lumpur. In fact, I started asking Habib some questions about his life and his childhood in Pakistan and then immigrating to the United States, but I could tell I was distracting him from driving and navigating, and I needed to stop or we would have an accident or never make it out of the city. And Habib’s wife, Shahnaz, is a very soft-spoken, gentle kind of soul, and it would have felt very rude to stick my GoPro in her face and start asking personal questions about her and her life. And with the language barrier and cultural differences between us, it would be difficult for me to be sure of my ground in terms of what is appropriate and what isn’t. I wanted to turn to her in the backseat and chat on camera, but I knew her voice would NEVER make to my microphone. I couldn’t even hear her myself most of the time. To have her on camera, I’d have to put a microphone on her, and there was no way to do that in that moment. And even if the microphone could pick up her voice, I wouldn’t be able to hear her myself, and we wouldn’t be able to talk anyway. It’s different when a louder more outspoken more western friend of mine from Australia shows up, such as motorcycle James. I have no trouble joking around with him and aiming a camera at him and putting him on the spot and putting a microphone on him. I know where the lines are and what is appropriate and what isn’t. But with Habib and Shahnaz, it was different, and I missed my chance to do the introductions. And then we had settled into the daily routines of the trip, and it never came up again.
I also noticed while editing the videos that I fell into the rhythm of recording video when we were apart. I think Habib and Shahnaz, by being super polite and considerate people, leaned into that by drifting away from me when I started talking into my GoPro and filming. I think they didn’t want to disturb me, so they would move away and stop talking when the camera was on. Only when I stopped recording and turned off the GoPro did we come together as a group again and start chatting. So when I go through all the video now, it appears as though we never talked, which is far from the truth. Habib and I were chatting all the time, and he has a great laugh and a great sense of humor. I told him that he reminded me strongly of the American stand-up comedian Himesh Patel. Yet, none of that was captured on video, and in my final set of seven videos, it will look like we spent all our time apart in different worlds. But I think that was just the result of how nice, kind, and considerate my travelling companions were.
And I realized that I’m not very good at recording video AND listening to people at the same time. I THINK I’m listening and paying attention, but the reality is that so much of my brain is focused on operating the camera that I miss what people say. I noticed that before, such as when I did an informal interview of a Japanese cyclist in Sumatra. I’d ask him a question, and he would answer it. But then I’d ask a follow-up question that clearly showed I didn’t really hear what he said in his previous answer. I was asking for information that he’d already given me, and I’d just missed it. And this really comes into play when people have an accent. I have a great deal of trouble sorting through accents and hearing the English words. And Habib and Shahnaz both have accents from Pakistan, it’s only now that I’m listening to them on video that I actually hear what they were saying clearly and in full. A great example of this comes from the video I’m editing right now. I went on a guided tour of a tin mining museum in Ipoh, and I put a microphone on the guide. And when I listen to the video recording of this guided tour, it’s like I’m hearing the tour guide’s presentation for the first time. I thought I heard everything he said during the tour, but in reality, I missed 50% of it or more. My brain simply didn’t process what he was saying. So it was great fun to have nearly the entire tour on video and finally hear all the specific information and all the jokes the guide made. All of that passed me by in real time during the tour itself. I really have to work on that. I have to train myself to really pay attention and hear what people are saying even when the camera is running.
I’ve also been able to reflect back on the car tour itself and put it all together, and I can see what worked and what didn’t work. It was an interesting experience for me to essentially go on someone else’s trip. And it took me a while to adjust. Our first destination was a small village called Kuala Tahan. This is a place that Habib wanted to visit, and when we talked about it, I thought it was because there was a special hotel there. I had never heard of Kuala Tahan. I didn’t know it was on the edge of Taman Negara (Malaysia’s largest national park). And even when I figured that out, I didn’t really know what Taman Negara and Kuala Tahan were all about. I didn’t know what you did there.
And then the combination of Kuala Tahan and Taman Negara turned out to be a revelation. A truly wonderful place. It had Planet Doug written all over it (other than the costs and high prices….). The secret to Kuala Tahan was the jetty and the river. And I knew nothing about this while driving there. I don’t think Habib did either. But essentially, the village of Kuala Tahan was on one side of the Tembeling and Tahan rivers, and the national park was on the other side. And on the Kuala Tahan side, the river was lined with maybe a dozen floating restaurants and docks. It was a wonderful and scenic and fun spot. You could get all kinds of great meals, snacks, and drinks on the floating restaurants (and on the river shore) from early in the morning to late at night. And from there, you could hop on any number of boats to take you into the national park on long and short hikes and amazing river adventures. It was a fantastic place, and I could have spent the entire week there easily.
At the time, we had plans to drive along the east coast of Malaysia, and to do that, we spent just two nights and one full day at Kuala Tahan and Taman Negara. I think if either Habib or I had understood just how much there was to do there and how special and scenic it was, we would have planned for three nights and two days. Or maybe not. I know I would have, but being more energetic, Habib might have still stayed for just one full day. He is accustomed to a faster pace of tourism, and he could naturally do several things in one day. I’m much slower-paced, especially since I need a chunk of time each day just to do the technical work of a YouTuber. I can physically and mentally handle just ONE big event or adventure per day. Then I’m done. But Habib and his wife could do a morning tour, an afternoon tour, and then a night tour while having three full meals plus snacks and THEN set off early the next morning. On Planet Doug, I can do the morning tour, and then I’m done for the day. And I’m exhausted and need a full day just to recover and reflect on the experience. And I find it hard to find time to have just one meal in a day let alone three plus snacks. So I could have spent a full week at Kuala Tahan easily and happily.
Bu the plan was to be there just for two nights, and then we hit the road with plans to drive to Kota Bahru way up in the northeastern corner of Malaysia on the border with Thailand. Looking back, that was kind of a ridiculous idea. Kota Bahru was 400 to 600 kilometers away from Kuala Tahan depending on the route you take. And that is a LONG distance to cover in Malaysia, particularly on a holiday weekend. Neither Habib nor I really understood that this was a holiday weekend and how much this would affect traffic conditions. Had I sat down and done the math beforehand, I would have seen that combining Taman Negara with a full drive down the east coast of Malaysia was too much for a one-week car trip. We would be driving every day for long, long hours. And this was compounded by the fact that Kuala Tahan and Taman Negara was kind of a deadend as far as roads were concerned. Once you drove up there on the narrow, countryside road, there was no way to continue on. You had no choice but to turn around and go all the way back south before you could get onto a road heading east or west or north.
Looking at the map now, we could perhaps have chosen to go directly to Kuantan from Kuala Tahan. That could have given us an east coast experience and we could have completed a shorter loop heading south down the coast and then circling back to Kuala Lumpur. But knowing what I know now, THAT trip would likely have been disastrous. We heard reports that the road from KL to the east coast at Kuantan was jammed with long-weekend holiday traffic. We likely would have been stuck in a traffic jam forever. And as it turned out, we ran into our own traffic jam on the way north.
Habib came up with a plan to break up our drive to Kota Bahru into two parts with an overnight stopover in a place called Gua Musang. Just as with Kuala Tahan, I had never even heard of Gua Musang. But some quick research showed me that it was located in a beautiful scenic area of limestone karsts and had an interesting history, and I was looking forward to seeing the place. Unfortunately, we ran into our own traffic jam on the way. Holiday traffic combined with major construction to create the worst traffic jam I have ever been stuck in. I didn’t really keep track, but I think it took us over two hours just to cover two and a half kilometers when we first hit the jam. Then the jam continued for hours after that. We ended up spending most of the day just sitting in traffic. We didn’t get to Gua Musang until the evening, and we were all so tired that we just had a KFC feast and collapsed into bed.
Luckily, we had great weather in the morning, and I woke up feeling great, and I went out for a morning walk to visit the old railway station and see the scenery of Gua Musang. It turned out that Gua Musang was a great town. And I could easily have spent a week there, too. Habib and Shahnaz and I had breakfast at our hotel and then saw some of the sights, such as the Muse Ecopark and all the gorgeous limestone karsts right inside the town. It was a fantastic place.
By this point, though, we had come up with a new plan. During that massive traffic gridlock, Habib and I had the time to look closely at Google Maps and crunch the numbers. And it became clear to us that our plan to tour the east coast starting with Kota Bahru wasn’t really feasible. It would require so many hours of driving each day that it wouldn’t be enjoyable. PLUS, Habib had a lot of trouble finding any kind of accommodation. Everything was fully booked for the holidays other than the most expensive places and some places outside of the cities. And then Habib suggested we change our plans and go to Ipoh instead. I thought this was a great idea and I wholeheartedly pushed for it. I guess in a way, it doesn’t make sense to rent a car and then stay in one place for several days in a row. If you went to the expense and bother of renting a car, you feel like you should be going to a lot of places and covering a lot of ground. But for enjoyment, I thought going to Ipoh was a much better option. And I suggested we stay there for three nights, giving us two full days to explore. I think that went against the usual style of Habib and Shahnaz, particularly since this was supposed to be a driving tour of Malaysia. But with the long weekend traffic jams and hotels being fully booked and the unexpectedly long distances to cover, it made sense to hunker down in one spot. Of course, that makes sense for me. Even two days in a place like Ipoh is woefully short for me. I would plan on two weeks as a minimum. I know I could hang out in Ipoh enjoyably for a full month without any trouble at all.
With that decided, Habib looked into booking accommodation in Ipoh for three nights. And he couldn’t find any! I guess it wasn’t surprising, but Ipoh was nearly fully booked for the holiday, too. In the end, the Mystery Tour of Malaysia lived up to its name, and Habib booked one night at a hotel in the town of Gopeng, another place I had never heard of. And then he booked us two nights in Ipoh. I was disappointed about this at first. It seemed like we couldn’t catch a break on this trip. I really wanted to settle down in Ipoh at ONE hotel and stay there for three nights and have two full days to really give us a chance to relax and put down roots and go out exploring.
But things turned out okay. It was actually kind of nice to see another mystery town like Gopeng even though we stayed there such a short amount of time. In fact, Gopeng, like Kuala Tahan and Gua Musang, was a great place. I loved it there, and I could easily have spent a week in Gopeng using it as a base to explore the area. It had a rustic, historic, local charm to it, and we had a great breakfast at a local restaurant and got to take in some of the atmosphere in the morning. Then we piled back into the Mitsubishi Xpander for the short drive into Ipoh proper. Luckily, we only had to cover nineteen kilometers with no traffic jams. In fact, we got to our next hotel, the wonderful Hotel Regal Vista, before noon and our rooms weren’t even ready. But we were able to leave our luggage with them and head out into Ipoh’s old town on foot.
Unfortunately, Shahnaz had not been feeling well, and she decided to stay at the air conditioned hotel and just Habib and I set off to do some rambling. For me, this was a typical reconnaissance mission, and my goal was simply to walk all around Ipoh’s old town district and see as many of the main sights as possible just to get my bearings. With that in mind, we checked out or at least walked by all these places:
Hotel Regal Vista
Durbar at FMS
Ipoh WoW
Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank
SPH de Silva Building
Kapitan Chung Thye Phin Building
Straits Trading Building
Perak Hydro Building
Ipoh Town Hall
Ipoh High Court
Ipoh Railway Station
Sultan Idris Shah II Mosque
Birch Memorial Clock Tower
Lorong Panglima
Kong Heng Square
Concubine Lane
Han Chin Pet Soo
The One Cafe
Market Lane (murals)
Bluez Chic Fried Ice Cream
Kinta Fire Brigade
Memory Lane
Perak Taipu Association
Warung Theater
I enjoyed that immensely and was pleased that I got to see so much so quickly. And perhaps people have different feelings about this, but I was very happy that it was a holiday weekend and that Ipoh was bustling. It gave places like Concubine Lane a festive and fun atmosphere as we could make our way through the crowds at only a turtle’s pace.
The next day also ended up being kind of a Planet Doug day. My kind hosts allowed me to pick a couple of my favorite places to check out, and we ended up visiting the Perak Cave Temple in the morning and then getting a guided tour of an awesome tin mining museum in the afternoon. The highlight of the Perak Cave Temple was the steep trail that led all the way to the top of the limestone karst revealing fantastic views of the city and the Kinta River Valley around. In the afternoon, we got very lucky with the guided tour of the Han Chin Pet Soo tin mining museum. Being a dummy, I didn’t realize that the only way to visit this museum was on a guided tour and that we had to book a spot on the tour online in advance. We just showed up, and the place appeared to be closed. But Habib encouraged me to step forward and speak to one of the guides, and the guide was kind enough to add our group of three to the next tour group at two p.m., even though we didn’t have a reservation.
I enjoyed this tour immensely, and I was even able to put a microphone on the guide and record almost his entire presentation. This gets back to what I wrote about at the beginning and how in editing that video it’s like I’m hearing the guide speaking for the first time. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he had a strong accent, and I imagine for people whose first language isn’t English, it would have been difficult to understand him. And I was so preoccupied with filming that I guess I was paying only half attention. I’m glad I’m able to hear the whole tour clearly on my GoPro video. I was thinking I should write full captions for the video of that whole tour, but that would take a LOT of time.
With a meal in Little India and a stroll through a local park in Ipoh and another wonderful night in my great and comfortable room at the Hotel Regal Vista, the Mystery Tour of Malaysia was winding down. All that remained was (hopefully) a relaxed and easy day driving back to Kuala Lumpur. I was worried that we would run into another massive traffic jam, but even though the traffic was heavy, it never really slowed down, and we got back to KL quite early despite enjoying a leisurely hotel breakfast buffet and taking our time for packing up and getting on the road.
Looking back over the Malaysia Mystery Tour, things worked out very well. Considering all the circumstances, things probably worked out far better than they should have. The highlight was clearly our full day in Taman Negara and the boat tour up the Tahan River. That was spectacular and I’m still thinking about it dreamily many days later. I probably would have enjoyed a second full day at Kuala Tahan and Taman Negara rather than getting right back on the road. We could have done a second river boat tour and/or a hike in the rainforest. But we had other places to be, and we had the car. So the draw of the open road was hard to resist.
On the very positive side in terms of the driving, we passed through some stunning scenery. I thought I was familiar with Malaysia, but I honestly had no idea how beautiful it could be. The scenic vistas began the very moment we left the edges of Kuala Lumpur and started heading north and east. I didn’t realize it at the time, but our route to Taman Negara took us up and over the full width of the Titiwangsa Mountain Range. And then travelling from Taman Negara back west to Ipoh, we passed through and over the Titiwangsa Mountain Range again, this time going through the Lojing Highlands skirting the popular Cameron Highlands to the south. The scenery at every stage was beautiful with so many elements of interest. Even when stuck in the endless traffic jam, we had the limestone karsts and the river valley scenery all round to enjoy.
Once back in Kuala Lumpur, the video editing began. The dream would have been to edit and post these videos in real time during the trip, but I was pushed to my limits just recording the video each day and then copying and backing up the video files at night while charging up all the necessary batteries. I thought I could burn through this backlog of videos in just a couple of days, but it is, as always, taking longer. Where’s the AI assistant who can take all my raw videos and understand the context for all of it and then quickly cut and splice it together, leaving me to do only the final touches? Sadly, I don’t think it works that way.
I’ve had some other small adventures since I’ve been back in Kuala Lumpur. One thing I learned on this car trip (and through watching a lot of American Hobo videos) is that a power bank could be a useful thing. My smartphones are getting older and the batteries don’t hold a charge like they used to. So I now need to plug in various devices throughout the day and recharge them. And to that end, and because I knew I would have a regular address for a few days, I ordered an Anker Nano 10,000 mah power bank through Lazada. I guess I’m finally learning my lesson that going to brick and mortar stores for shopping is a giant waste of time. No stores ever carry the items I want, and I waste entire days looking. But Lazada and Shopee came to the rescue, and I had this power bank plus a 6-ft USB-C to USB-C 100-watt cable delivered right to my hotel. Thank you, by the way, to everyone who has contributed some funds to the Planet Doug Touch’nGo account. It was that money that allowed me to make these small purchases.
It’s early days, but so far I am very pleased with this power bank. I love having the device. It makes me feel powerful and organized. It is beautifully designed, too. It feels great in the hand and powers up my various devices at lightning speed. I haven’t absolutely needed it during my days and nights here in the hotel doing nothing but editing videos. I have electrical outlets here. But I can see this powerbank coming in clutch many times in the future.
I was actually MORE interested in a slightly different model. I wanted to get the Anker Nano 3-in-1. This model functions as both a power bank and a charger. It has foldable plugs built into it and you can plug it into a wall outlet to recharge it AND power other devices through it at the same time. Unfortunately, this model uses the American-style electrical plug. I prefer that plug myself, but since it has those plugs, it isn’t for sale in Malaysia.
I was also thinking about picking up a tallish, action-camera tripod while I’m here in Kuala Lumpur. I’ve never wanted to carry a tripod around. They are generally bulky and heavy. And I use my GoPro Jaws Flex Clamp to attach my camera to objects around me in lieu of a tripod. But that is often very difficult to do and sometimes impossible. I see cyclists and travellers whipping out their tripods and putting them on the ground outside, inside restaurants, in their hotel rooms, and even on the streets to film themselves. Perhaps with a tripod, I can stop building towers of chairs and tables on my beds to create a place to mount my cameras.
And I’ve been looking into a “long, action-camera” tripod because a normal tripod is designed to hold a heavy camera. That’s why they are big and heavy and very expensive. But I don’t need that. I can use a lightweight model designed to hold only the weight of a GoPro. And then it can serve many functions. It can be a short table-top or “bed-top” tripod. It can also sit on the ground like a normal tall tripod. And it can serve as a short or very long selfie stick. The models I’m considering in particular are these two:
- Ulanzi MT-44 Extendable Vlog Tripod
- Ulanzi Go-Quick 11 1.4m Extendable Tripod
The difference between them is that the MT-44 is more of a traditional tripod with a ballhead at the top with a quarter-inch twenty screw. I really like that design. And it has a built-in phone holder. The Go-Quick 11 is designed specifically for action cameras and has a GoPro finger mount at the top combined with an Ulanzi magnetic quick release mechanism. They are about the same price and about the same height. The MT-44 is a bit higher as a tripod at 149 cm as opposed to the Go-Quick’s 140 cm. The Go-Quick, doing double-duty as a selfie stick, is a bit lighter at 322 grams. The MT-44 tops out at 422 grams, largely because of the ballhead at the top. It would be nice to see both of them in real life. In particular, I’d like to know how wide the base is on both of them. This type of tripod isn’t a true tripod in terms of stability. The legs are attached right at the bottom, which makes them less stable and they can easily fall over in even a light wind. If one of them has legs that stretch out farther, that would be an advantage. But that info isn’t listed on the Ulanzi website.
Anyway, I will do a bit more research and thinking and decide if I have a use for a tripod like this. Maybe it would end up as extra weight being carried around for no reason. I’ve gotten along just fine until now without a tall tripod like this. So perhaps I don’t need one. Or this could be one of those items that you think you don’t need. Yet, once you have it, you use it every day and you wonder how you ever lived without it. I feel that way about many things that I’ve added to my life of technology.
Speaking of adding new technology and wondering how I ever lived without it, I’m considering creating a Telegram group for Planet Doug. For a long time, I’ve thought about a way to have a more immediate channel for communicating with people and for people to communicate amongst themselves. I thought the Planet Doug Patreon could serve that need. It has a built-in chat feature. However, it’s clear that Patreon is seen mainly as a funding platform. It serves best as a way for people to support my small Planet Doug adventures and videos financially on a monthly basis. But the Patreon app and website simply does not attract people to visit. It’s honestly an amazing site, and they are still developing it and adding new, useful features all the time. But the fact that remains that few people are interested in visiting the Patreon app or the website itself. Even when I post a bonus video to the Patreon platform, it will end up with one view, and that view will be from me. It’s just not a happening place, and a group chat there just won’t work.
So I considered creating a Planet Doug group chat on WhatsApp. People are familiar with WhatsApp. Lots of people already have a WhatsApp account. A group chat there, I thought, would be very useful. But WhatsApp has a fatal flaw. Your account is based on your current phone number. And since my phone number keeps changing with every new SIM card, I’m constantly at risk of losing my Planet Doug WhatsApp account, which happened just recently. Out of nowhere, I was locked out of my WhatsApp account, and it was impossible to get back in because the phone number associated with that account had been recycled and now belonged to someone else. I lost all my contacts and all my chat history with everyone. I wouldn’t that to happen with a Planet Doug Chat Group.
But then I started following the cycling YouTuber the American Hobo. And as part of his YouTube channel, he created a group chat on Telegram. I don’t think I had even heard of Telegram. I certainly knew next to nothing about it. I didn’t think it was popular or that anyone really used it. But I joined the American Hobo’s Telegram group chat, and I’ve been an active member there for a few months now. And I’ve really enjoyed it. And I’ve learned that Telegram is actually quite well known. A lot of people like it better than WhatsApp for privacy and security reasons, and it has a very large user-base, much larger than I realized. So I’ve been considering creating a dedicated Planet Doug chat group on the Telegram platform.
The advantage to this is that unlike on YouTube, it’s possible to upload links and documents and photos and video clips. If I want to tell American Hobo about some new camera gizmo, I can upload a picture of it to his Telegram chat group or upload a link to the website. I can share photos on the site. That either isn’t possible at all on YouTube or YouTube would delete the comment. They don’t like any comments with links to anything outside of YouTube. Even if I mention a product in the comment, YouTube removes it. They are very sensitive to any competition. None of that would be a concern on Telegram.
Of course, I couldn’t guarantee that I would be a constant presence on a Planet Doug group chat on Telegram. I couldn’t say that I will be there constantly and have the time to chat with people for hours. I barely have the time to do what I do now on YouTube and Patreon. But the group chat would be there all the time and I can pop in and out. And it would be an immediate form of communication and allow for uploads and links of all kinds. And even if I’m not there, people could chat with each other without me.
Anyway, this is something I’ve been thinking about for Planet Doug. At least there would be no harm in setting up a group chat and seeing how it goes. If it isn’t popular or if it ends up being a problem to maintain or if YouTube creates a better option, I can always remove it.
And I think that brings me to the end of my thoughts for this morning. I had no intention of writing such a long update. This is basically an old-school journal entry, something that I wrote every morning before I had a YouTube channel. In fact, I think this update is so long that I’m not even able to post it to YouTube. It can only go on Patreon and places like that. I’m thinking about sitting down in front of my GoPro now and reading this aloud so that these thoughts are available to people who prefer things in video form. I can write it all down because I like how that feels. But then I can record it as audio or video.
It’s time for lunch here in Chow Kit. Hope you are all having a great day. It’s time for me to start the next stage of mine.