VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Welcome to another jam-packed Kuala Lumpur vignettes video. This one has it all: Good Indonesian food with friends at one of KL’s best restaurants featuring Padang cuisine, a life-sustaining care package from a Planet Doug supporter, a hotel change, more Lazada delivery drama, AND an unboxing.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning. Welcome back to Planet Doug in Kuala Lumpur. Very wet, rainy Kuala Lumpur. And probably the beginning of another KL vignettes video. Not one big adventure today, but I’m just going to be doing a bunch of little things. And I’ll record a little clip here, there tomorrow, the next day, whatever I end up doing, and putting it all together in a vignettes video.
And right now my life feels pretty chaotic and confusing because I’m meeting people for brunch again. And I think it’s a scientific principle that if you’re meeting one person say for coffee or lunch or brunch or whatever it has a certain amount of planning and preparation and communication comes along with it. You add a second person, it doesn’t double the amount of complications. It like triples it. You add a fourth and a fifth person and it becomes an infinite amount of messages and organizing and planning and readjusting and confirming.
And this morning I was working on a video and I’m dealing with the whole Lazada thing still with my tripod delivery, trying to get that sorted out still. And anyway, my and because of this whole Lazada delivery thing, now I have notifications turned on on my phone and I have my phone not on silent mode. So, the thing has been beeping like an insane creature. Just beep beep beeping like just nonstop beeping because I’m getting so many messages and so many communications and notifications and advertisements.
And then I’m leaving my hotel and the hotel clerks there, they’re aware of the Lazada drama that’s underway now. They’re worried that oh, like what’s going on and what happens if they deliver your item after you’ve left our hotel? How can we contact you? And so now I’ve got this long conversation underway with the staff at the hotel. And my phone is beeping. I’m getting more messages. And it’s pouring rain outside. So yeah, I feel like I have a complicated life right now. It’s not really that complicated, but yeah, I don’t deal well with time pressures or noise, which is why I always have my phone set to silent. Can’t stand it when the thing is beeping all the time. And anyway, this is the weather out here. It’s kind of a dead end there. Full of garbage and sewer gratings.
But yeah, how these things go. We were going to meet at 11 a.m. for brunch, which gave me plenty of time. But then Jamie reached out and said, “Well, he’s going to be here early, so why don’t if I’m up for it, I could meet him at a local cafe, Vietnam Coffee. If he gets here early, we can relax, have a coffee, and then head over to the restaurant.” But then Daryl, he also left early. So I got a message from him saying, “Oh, I left pretty early. I’m going to be there in 7 minutes.” And then, so I’m trying to tell him, “Jamie and I are already meeting at this cafe. Hey, do you want to come meet us there? Then we can go there.” And then of course Daryl discovers that it’s pouring rain outside. So now doesn’t make a whole lot of sense cause this cafe is kind of an outdoor cafe. So he’s going straight to the Rose restaurant. Why don’t we meet there? And the internet was abuzz with communication arranging all of this. So anyway, Jamie and Daryl should be down here somewhere. The Rose restaurant is over here.
So here’s a kind of a simple menu of this place. Longtong sour. Very popular breakfast in Sumatra when I was there. Had that all the time. Soto medan of course. Nasi soto medan. The funny thing I was setting up this breakfast meeting and I kind of wanted a leisurely morning so I set it for 11. But all of us are such early morning people. We couldn’t help ourselves. Still ended up getting here super early.
So even when we schedule something for 11, we still end up here at the crack of dawn. There they are. As I said, everything gets so complicated. I can’t see out of my glasses cause they’re covered in rain. You got to put your umbrella away and keep your camera dry.
Okay. I usually try to. Yeah. I thought you were going to sit there for one minute. He was. He was quietly hoping you were. I know. I got to get organized, man. It’s like I was just talking about how rain makes life so complicated when you’re if you got a camera running or driving, walking. It’s just like secretly praying to make it before that. And I was watching the weather and I thought, well, this would be a good chance. I’ll go up there to try and try that Vietnamese coffee shop. Yeah, it seemed like a good plan. But the weather I was kind of thinking behind it might there might have been a covered area. I don’t know. They were stripping the sugar cane right back there. But this is much better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in the rain. This is much better. Yeah.
And I like that they have air conditioning. It is. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that because a lot of the others are all open air.
Is he on the coming or. Yeah, as far as I know. He he’s a man of few words and you guys and me I we we got we got messages going back like we’re setting the internet on fire but Bill he’s like yeah be there then you never hear from him again the location sharing has been golden for me I love learning little hacks like that so I love it KY taught it to me and now I teach other people do all about location sharing on WhatsApp. Yeah, you’re saying that about Bill when I when I was when I reached out to him about meeting at KL Sentral. That was the same thing. Reached out said we’re possibly going to meet here. My complaint gave him the same thing I gave you. And then he he he said something like sounds good or that was it. I said, “Yeah, that’s Bill.” Yeah. Yeah. I chatted with expat Pete, but yeah, he’s not coming this morning. So, keep saying I need to reach out to him. I might speak sometime.
I’ve been up since 2:30. I had to watch the Iowa football game. It was actually televised on Peacock, but I got to watch a football game. I woke up at 2:30. I slept at three. So, since then, watched that. And then Penn State Oregon was on when I left. And both of us are sports reasons as well. I watch the Premier League. So, you got me beat. I was up at 5 and I really didn’t want to be cause I’m tired. It’s like I need more sleep, but I couldn’t. Yeah. Once you wake up, me too. I can’t sleep. Oh, yeah. So, there’s the boys behind me. They’re having a deep conversation about college sports and things like that. And Daryl gave me his Action Five to walk around with while I walk around with my GoPro. So, we’ve got camera inception going on here.
Yeah. Since this is an Indonesian restaurant, I just thought I’d walk around and look at a few things. Like this drink I’m very familiar with from Sumatra. I don’t know if you see it in Malaysia as well, but that’s very common in all the convenience stores in Sumatra. So this display. Oh yeah. And table. I would have like two of these a day when I had my MIM box. I would get two of these. Table with ice. So that’s very familiar.
Yep. So just want to see what’s going on here. Looks like we got a fruit bar of some kind over here. So they could make some sort of a fruit drink. So yeah, there. So there’s all the juices that you can get. Tea, coffee, apple, orange. Yeah, all kinds of stuff. Ah, look at that. They’ve got tourism. I was there. This is near Padang. Beautiful area there. I rode my bike all through this district. Oh, yeah. Soto. I know all these places. That’s cool.
Huh? Oh, yeah. Bungee keropok snacks. Oh, what have we got here? Some desserts. I guess that’s the name of them up there. And then over here there will be some familiar types of food like rendang is a really big one of course. So I’ve got rendang ayam which is chicken rendang which I just had over the weekend delivered to my hotel room. It was amazing. Beef rendang, rendang daging. Some kind of a sate up there. Rendang jering. Gulai tunjang.
Yeah. All Indonesian words that I’m familiar with, even if I can’t automatically connect them with an exact food. But yeah, this is all very familiar to me. Some curries over here. Some veggies and then more menu up there.
So, here’s the interior of the place. Yeah, very nice. It’s actually air-conditioned inside here a little bit and they have the fans as well. So, the amount of people, the air con does end up creating a bit of noise for conversation. You got to raise your voice a little bit to be heard, but then connected to the interior is this outdoor area. This is kind of nice, so they have seating here. It’s actually quieter out here. Voices don’t reverberate as much out here. And Daryl was saying that this other sign across the road where it says restaurant on Rose, that’s what confused me. That was the original location and then they just moved across the street to here. And from the. It’s still raining out here. There’s the outside of the restaurant. Restaurant Rose Makan Masakan Padang. Great place. Absolutely. Great place.
International Big Shot. Do you feel like walking us through what you got? Rice. Rice. Tofu. I think that’s an egg. Tor. Gay. Tor. Gadar. Gadar. Tul. This. I’m not sure what it is. And sambal. Tug. Sambal. Green. And sambal red. Cool. There’s one meal. And it looks like they have a system where they come to your table. Ooh, look at that. You were not messing around, Jamie. Not at all. That is quite the collection. Very colorful, isn’t it? Yeah, it looks great. Rainbow. Yeah. Need a photo before you dive in. So, what did you what did you get, Jamie?
Of course, egg and then tofu. Yeah, that’s a jackfruit. Oh, jackfruit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Some eggplant there, cabbage, sambal, and greens. Greens. And you went a little bit simpler over there. Yeah. Just the rendang chicken. Rendang chicken and the two sambals. Ah, nice.
All right, my turn. And now that I’ve seen everything that those guys got, I have an idea of what I want. I was going to get the longtong, but where’s the rice? I’m already lost. I don’t know where the rice is. Rice, rice, rice. Oh, here. Okay, that makes sense. That’s enough. Setia City. Yeah, that’s good. Thank you. So, I just got a little bit of rice. Didn’t want to go too crazy. And of course, I have to get some eggplant and some buah pucuk.
Oh, okay. Here’s the jackfruit. I’m glad I didn’t miss that. I love jackfruit. And oh, I might be getting a little bit ambitious here, but I would like some tofu. And I really like the look of the omelette that Bill got. Oh, right here. Okay. Okay, I think that’s it. Looks amazing.
I don’t think I have to talk a whole lot about this food. Just going to grab a couple of my favorite pieces on camera. Jackfruit. Spicy. It’s more spicy than I had a lot of jackfruit in the Philippines. One of my favorite dishes there if I remember right, but it was never quite this filled with chilies. I’m just not used to any spice at all in the jackfruit. So, this is a little bit different, prepared a bit differently. The eggplant, there were two trays of eggplant out there. Oh, really? One tray on the bottom had the chili and the other tray on top didn’t. I see. But I didn’t notice that until I already got the chili one. Very familiar flavor there. And there you have it, a meal from Restaurant Rose.
So that was breakfast. The boys are heading off for coffee and I would normally join them except, believe it or not, just as we’re getting towards the end of our breakfast/lunch, I looked at my phone and I got a notification from Lazada that my parcel is on its way. It’s in transit. And I thought, “Oh, that must be an old message cause I got like a million of these messages.” But no, it was just sent today at 10:00. So, it has started a brand new Your Parcel is in transit sequence starting at 10:00 this morning. So, does that mean it’s out for delivery right now? No idea. It would be nice if I had more information. Like, it is out for delivery. It will be there by 2:00 or something. I don’t know. But anyway, so I’m heading back to the hotel. I have things to do anyway.
It’s a busy busy neighborhood. That is a great restaurant. Really glad I went there. Rose Restaurant. When I was in Tanjung Balai in Sumatra, places like that. Of course, the whole city was full of Indonesian food, but I never saw a restaurant like that when I was in Sumatra. So, this Indonesian restaurant in KL for my tastes had much better food and much more variety of Indonesian food than I could get when I was actually in Indonesia. But I guess that could be because I was in all these relatively small towns.
All right, almost back at the hotel and then I wait for the package to be delivered. Well, it is delivery time and I’m heading down to the lobby to meet up with a delivery driver. But believe it or not, it’s not the Lazada person with my tripod. I still have no idea what’s going on with that parcel. You can’t get any information at all from Lazada. But a Planet Doug mystery benefactor has ordered a care package to be delivered containing all kinds of goodies apparently. And yeah, the driver is getting close. At least with this you get notifications like exactly what time the person is going to be there. So, yeah, I’m coming down to the lobby.
And here we are in the lobby. Are you delivering here? Are you delivering something here? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Maybe it’s for me. For you? I don’t know if you have my number or my friend’s number. His name. What? Okay. Thank you, sir. Ah, thank you very much. All right, cool. Thank you. There goes my delivery, people. And yeah, there it is. Sort of a GrabMart delivery.
So, yeah, more confusion even about that delivery because I came down here and there was nobody in the lobby at all. Though my friend said the delivery guy is in the lobby. So I was no there’s nobody here. Then I look outside and there’s a Grab driver out there and we made eye contact and I’m looking at him going like like are you my guy? I can’t tell. And then I finally went outside and he was just standing out in the parking lot. I don’t know why he didn’t come to the door. Anyway, it’s all it all worked out in the end for this delivery. Anyway, so here it is. Going to bring this up to my room.
So, here I am. Planet Doug Studios with my care package, which I am going to unbox. But I’m looking again at this Lazada delivery business. It’s so crazy. Yeah, just I’ve never been so stressed out in my life about such a little thing cause it like it just says your parcel is on the way. And it told me that at 10:00 this morning and of course I’m just sort of keyed into this whole situation so much that I have to turn on notifications on my phone and I have to turn on sound and vibration. So, my phone has just been like beeping and beeping and just beeping all day long. I cannot wait until this tripod arrives and I can turn my phone off and go back to silent mode. It’s just like beeping all the time. And it still says estimated delivery on September 26th, even though today is the 28th. So even though the delivery failed and now they had to send it all the way back to headquarters and send it out again, their system still can’t even update the estimated delivery day. Anyway, I should stop ranting about this, but it still amazes me. Everyone out there in the world, like as in out there in the real world who don’t live on Planet Doug, they always give me reasonable advice and say things that should fix all of my issues. So, for example, I was just chatting with the clerk at the hotel here and he’s like, “Well, why don’t you just use the tracking number?” And I’m like, “Well, yeah, of course, but the tracking number doesn’t work in your world.” Yes, you put the tracking number in. It tells you where your package is on Planet Doug. I have the tracking number. It’s right there. I can copy it using the copy thing. I can type it in. I can do whatever I want. But no matter what I do, it just says this package can’t be found. So, this tracking number is not connected to anything. And that’s what happens on Planet Doug, right? But yeah, everyone gives me reasonable advice.
Yeah. So, I don’t know. It looks like it’s not going to show up today either. So, I’ve got all day tomorrow to look forward to being and I’m moving out of this hotel tomorrow. I’m moving to a different hotel and the package still hasn’t arrived. Hey, that is what happens when you live on Planet Doug. Anyway, yeah. I’m in a little bit of an awkward space here. Let me move my camera back a little bit. Make a little bit wider image for this. And I know what’s in here. My mystery benefactor sent me a list in advance, but it’ll be fun to take it out anyway. And I have a dinner coming at 7:30. So, this is just the opening the opening act for the deliveries today.
There we go. Come on. Yeah, that was really strange though. Par for the course, but strange that the address was this hotel, my room number at the hotel, my name, everything. And then my mystery benefactor sent me a message that said, “Oh, they’re there in the lobby.” But there was nobody there. And then I’m looking outside and I saw a woman sitting on a scooter and then a man standing there. Both of them in Grab uniforms. And I saw a I saw this bag out there as well. So I thought, “Oh, I wonder if those are my delivery people.” And actually I asked the hotel clerk like, “Oh, are do you know are those my delivery people? Did they come to the door?” And he says, “No, no, no. They’re not yours. They’re there for somebody else.” So he seemed to know who they were and he told me, “No, those aren’t for you.” So then I just sort of stood in the doorway and I stood in the doorway looking outside looking at these two people. I made eye contact with them like to make a connection like if you’re looking for somebody to deliver something to, I’m here. But yeah, they never made a move to more towards me. They didn’t pay any attention to me. And I finally went up to him, the man, and said, “Are like are you trying to deliver a package to this hotel?” And he says, “Yeah.” And so anyway, so I finally got it. So I never know what’s going on. So ah this is very exciting.
Milk. Mystery benefactor knows how much I love milk. This Dutch Lady. Very good milk. Nice and ice cold right now, too. This room doesn’t have a mini fridge, but apparently the room I’m moving into tomorrow is supposed to have a mini fridge. So, there are a couple of items in here I might set aside for tonight and then put them in the fridge tomorrow, but I don’t really know whether that room will have a mini fridge or not. It says so on Agoda that this room has a mini fridge and all the things, but quite often they end up not having any of those things. And I mention them to the person at the front desk of the hotel like, “Look, my room is supposed to have all these things, but none of these things are in the room.” And they just go, “What are you going to do?” Right? You can’t do anything. You’d think they’d be embarrassed or try to fix the inaccurate listing, but most of the time, no, they just leave it like that. And it never gets fixed. So, Dutch Lady Milk. And in terms of drinks, check that out. We have a Carlsberg. Says on the back, probably the best beer in the world. And what? I think I’m going to have this while it is cold. The. No, the milk.
Anyway, we’ll figure this out. There is a fridge down in the lobby, so maybe I can put something in there. Ooh, Heineken. So, we have a Heineken and a Carlsberg. Beer assortment and. Oh, wow. Cafe Latte. Farm Fresh. Eyes wide open. Cafe Latte. Look at that. Very, very nice.
Toothpaste always welcome. Toothpaste Advanced White. As I said, it is a care package and yeah, Dove soap. I was talking on a video recently about how for whatever reason I went out looking. I needed a bar of soap and I could not find one. I went to a lot of different stores. No stores. There’s like one carried soap, but you could only buy them in bulk, like four bars at a time. You couldn’t get single bars. Single bars are hard to find these days. So, anyway, my mystery benefactor heard me talking on that video and found a single bar of soap for me. Dove premium soap and a delightful mix of assorted biscuits. They seem like yeah individually wrapped like all kinds of different biscuits in there. So very very cool. Very exciting. But yeah, thank you very much to my mystery benefactor. Yeah, this is nice. I’m definitely. Well, why don’t I open this right now? Because I’m so stressed out about this tripod. I regret ordering this darn thing. It’s taken over my life. It really has. Oh, man. I’m so worried that the the the second delivery is also going to go awry. And as they said, I get three deliveries and then after that I’m cut off or something. And I just don’t want to deal with this anymore. So I really hope I was really hoping it was going to. Yeah. Daryl and Jamie and Bill, they went out for coffee after our brunch. And of course, I was invited to go along with them, but I said, “No, no, no. I’ve got I’ve got this message that says my tripod is coming, so I better go back to the hotel and be there for when the delivery comes.” So, I’ve been here for the entire day waiting. And. Nope. I’m having a lot of trouble with this can. There we go. This one felt like the most the coldest one of the bunch.
Oh, that’s nice. Like mentally you associate a cold beer with the end of the workday. The day is done. You’re at home. You open the fridge and get out a cold beer and that’s a signal that the work is over and you can relax. So, it has like a real psychological effect. Yeah, nice.
Yeah, still it was a good day. Brunch with the boys. That was really nice. That Indonesian restaurant, that was a really nice surprise. Really enjoyed that. And I basically been working on Planet Doug videos all day getting things done. So, all right, that’s it. Again, thank you very much, Mystery Benefactor. Cheers. And I’m going to look for a fridge and maybe I can put some of these things in the fridge here at the hotel and then bring them over to the new hotel if assuming I don’t I can’t drink all of this tonight. So yeah. All right. Cross your fingers. The tripod is still coming today.
One more trip down to the lobby. This time it’s another meal coming from Oriental Kopi. So, dinner is coming tonight and there’s a couple of really amazing dishes included in this order from Oriental Kopi. So, yeah, let’s check this out.
Raja Boat. Yeah, that’s me. Yes, that is it. Thank you so much. Looks great. Okay. And there it is. My dinner for tonight and probably counting four different containers of breakfast or lunch tomorrow as well from the Oriental down here. Traditional gourmet master. And based on the meals I’ve had from this restaurant already, that’s no exaggeration. It’s very, very good food. Even I can tell, and I’m not a food expert.
So, there’s my dinner. And it contains a Nanyang curry chicken rice and a fried an order of fried chicken meat. And really interesting dessert, something called Mango Sago, which I’ve seen photos of all of this this restaurant, Oriental Kopi. Go check it out and look at their menu because they have such beautiful photography of all their different meals. Okay, let’s take all this out. Whoa. Oh, that’s two together. I thought I was picking up just this little one. I thought, “Wow, that’s heavy.” But no, there’s two of them together there. Oh, and this one, I can feel it. It’s a bit cold. So, this is the Mango Sago. And I’ll wait until after dinner to enjoy that. Set that to the side. Oh, and this one is very lightweight. So, that is a bit of a mystery. That I guess that would be the chicken meat, perhaps. I don’t really know. We’ll find out once I start unpacking it further.
All right, here is the meal all laid out. I have it figured out and organized more or less. So, this, as I said, is the mango dessert. Look at that. That looks absolutely amazing. There’s definitely enough for two people, but there is the mango dessert. We’re going to set that aside until it’s time for dessert. And in this box is the fried. They call it I think fried chicken meat. I’m assuming that in Chinese the name is better than fried chicken meat. But yeah, there it is. It looks very very tasty. And then the star of the show is this double-decker. So this is Nanyang curry chicken rice and it’s a double-decker. I figured that out by now, the packaging from this place. So this top part comes off, which is very cool. It’s like a little spaceship. And here is the chicken curry. Smells amazing. Yeah, it’s really, really good. And over here is the rice and a poached egg and vegetables. And then my mystery benefactor also threw in an extra fried egg to round out the meal. So that is what we have going on right now.
That looks amazing. I spend the whole day I spend what feels like the entire week. It’s turning into a lifetime. It feels like waiting for my tripod to show up. And if I had a tripod, the one I ordered, I could mount it here on the floor and I could film myself enjoying this meal. But without the tripod, I have to do this one-handed cause as I said, this room isn’t really set up even for me with all of my gadgets, all of my adapters, all of my mount. There’s just nowhere to put the camera. So, I have to hold it I have to hold it in my hand like this is the best I can do. And then sample this with one hand. Let’s try some of the curry cause that is the star of the show. This curry sauce that is flavorful and hot. It’s very very spicy. Wow, that really is something else. That is so good.
And then in here, of course, is all of the the chicken. It’s kind of hard to get some of the chicken one-handed, but here we are. There is some of the chicken. That is so tasty. Mix it with a little bit of rice. They do a nice job with deliveries, too. This meal is very, very hot. Wow, that is so good. I don’t deserve food this good, let me tell you. That is delicious. That curry that is really something else. That is really something else. Wow. That is amazing.
And we have the the extra chicken. So, just to remind you, there’s the the curry. Look at all that sauce. I mean, have you seen anything so beautiful? Really? That that is amazing. That is so good. And the rice and the veggies and the poached egg. And then we have the I don’t know, I almost want to call them chicken tenders for some reason. I don’t even know what chicken tenders are, but I’ve heard that in movies people call things chicken tenders. And I think these could be called. Just trying to get us a piece that I can eat. Yeah, chicken tenders in English. That sounds better than fried chicken meat. That’s not a good name for a dish in English. Wow. Very, very tender. That is really good.
And I am going to save the dessert for after my meal. But while I have the camera running, yeah, let’s try some of this mango. Try just a little bit of it and then I will have the rest for dessert afterwards. There’s all this mango on the top and then there’s some sort of is that like tapioca? No, like tapioca balls. And then underneath is ice. Yeah, shaved ice. I don’t know whether you’re supposed to mix it up or not, but let’s try some on its own first. So, just some of the mango. That is so good. Oh my goodness. Wow. Yeah. I don’t think you need to mix this. This is all pre. It’s pre-delicious. It doesn’t really matter what you do with this. It’s just going to be fabulous no matter what you do. I better stop or I’ll ruin my appetite with dessert.
So, there you have it. That is one amazing meal. And I think some of this is going to be my breakfast. That’s a lot of food for one meal. So, there’s going to be dinner and breakfast mixed in here, but I’m going to dive in and enjoy all of this.
We jumped ahead in time from last night until the afternoon and a few things have changed. I’ve changed hotels and I’ll talk about all that in a minute. I guess I just have a few thoughts on my mind. One is that the Lazada drama continues. The story has not reached its conclusion. I’ve been checking obsessively and according to the Lazada app, my parcel is on the way and it is in transit. And of course, I got that message yesterday at 10:00 a.m. And that’s why I rushed back to my room at the Raja Boat Hotel because it said the parcel is on its way. So, I thought, well, I better be there. So, I went back and of course I waited all night and then I knew I was checking out of that hotel at noon. So, unless the package arrived before noon, I was going to have to make other arrangements.
It’s funny though. I’m telling this story to everybody in my life, including everybody that watches my YouTube videos and everybody is very helpful and they have all this advice for me, but everything they tell me to do, it just it maybe it works in their world in their world, but it doesn’t work on Planet Doug. So, I get all this well-meaning advice. It’s like, well, why don’t you just cancel it? Just cancel the delivery, send it back, get a refund, and then go buy the tripod down at Liat Plaza. And yeah, absolutely I would do that, but you can’t. The package is out for delivery according to all of the systems. So the only way I could even return it, send back to the company or something would be they have to deliver it first and then the system goes on to the next stage and then I can say, “Oh, I’m going to return this and get a refund or whatever.” There’s just like there’s no way to cancel it. I mean, I can push that cancel button until the cows come home and it’s just not going to do anything because it doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s I mean, the cancel button is grayed out because the system just does not allow for it.
And then they say, “Oh, why don’t you just change the delivery address? Just tell Lazada you’ve moved into a new hotel and change the address.” And maybe that works for other people, but there’s no way for me to do that. I can go into Lazada for the next million years and there’s no option to change the delivery address to do anything. I can’t even figure out whether the delivery exists or not. It’s still out there in delivery limbo, right? So, yeah, the tracking number still doesn’t work. And then I go to the Lazada system. They have the window where you can talk to Lazada, but of course it’s just a computer. And then you tell the computer like, “How can I track my package?” And they say, “Well, use the tracking number.” And I say the tracking number does not work and they say, “Well, we’re very sorry about that, but just use the tracking number.” I mean, the chatbot doesn’t know anything, so that’s pretty hopeless.
Yeah, there’s really nothing I can do except wait. So, anyway, when I left from the Raja Boat Hotel, I yesterday chatted with one of the staff. He’s like the nighttime clerk. He comes in. He works from like 3 till midnight, something like that. And he’s aware of the situation. He’s a very chatty fellow. We’ve had lots of conversations in my time there and he’s well aware of this package coming and he says if it comes during his shift, yeah, he’ll accept delivery and just put it on the desk and then I’ll be able to see on Lazada that it has been delivered that will be updated and then I can just go back and get it. But the other front desk guy, very friendly, very helpful, very nice guy. He was on shift today when I was checking out and I’m trying to update him on the story. And oddly enough, it was him that was away from the front desk when they tried to deliver the package the first time. So, the fact that he was not there to open the door for the delivery guy, he caused all these problems because there was nobody at the front desk. But anyway, I’m trying to explain to him what’s going on. And I thought he would remember because I talked to him about it. I was like, “So this morning like remember that package that I’ve been waiting for, but they couldn’t deliver it because you didn’t open the door for them because you weren’t here.” And he’s like, “No, I have no memory of I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Like I said, very nice guy, very friendly, but I could tell from the look on his face, he had a nice smile and everything, but he’s like, “I have no idea what you’re trying to tell me.” And I, over and over I told him, “Yeah, okay. The package is still coming, but I’m moving to a different hotel, so can you accept delivery and I will come back to get it?” And then of course he’s like he’s thinking like a professional front desk clerk and he’s like well then I need your phone number and I need this and I need this and I don’t think we can do that. We can’t take responsibility because now you’re no longer
at this point. I’ve given up on it entirely and I’m just telling him that well I’m only moving across the road to a different hotel. Just can you just accept delivery, put it here and I’ll come back and get it. He said, “How will how can I contact you?” He says, “No, you don’t need to. I can see on Lazada when it is delivered, so don’t worry. I will come back and you you’re not responsible for it. Don’t worry.” Anyway, so I really, really, really had to work pretty hard to get him to understand that yeah, this is fine. Don’t worry about it.
Anyway, so then I left from there. I had a really interesting chat actually. There was a foreigner in the lobby. I’d seen him going in and out of the hallways a little bit and he was a guy like me, a traveler, from the United States and he had a backpack and he was actually moving to a different hotel as well. And he was waiting in the lobby because he can’t check in until 3. So, he has to check out at 12:00, but can’t check in till 3:00. And that always happens to people like us as well. We’re always trapped in limbo between check out and check in. And a 3pm check-in is such a huge pain. But anyway, I just sat in the lobby with him for a long time just chatting. He’s been all over the place. He’s been traveling for 2 and 1/2 years now, he said, and he’s been to 63 countries and he just starts rattling off all the places he’s been. Pretty incredible. So, that was a nice chat I had with him.
So then I came over here to the Crossroads Hotel and I had to book this room because my room at the Raja Boat was booked out from under me. I wasn’t able to extend my stay. I could have if I moved to a different room, but I thought about it and I thought, well, if I have to go to all the trouble of packing up and checking out and moving into a new room into a worse room basically, then yeah, why don’t I just look around, see if there’s a like a better deal out there? And I got a much better deal here back at the Crossroads.
So, yeah, my check-in here was kind of funny. When I first came to the Crossroads the first time, I made a joke about the front desk like, “Oh, well, the whole hotel, they turn off all the lights in the lobby area and all the hallways.” If you look on a picture of the lobby looks amazing. It’s like a 1970s decor. Like these chairs, I think, were installed in the ’70s. They have that disco look to them, and they still have the original chairs. All the decor is original from whenever this hotel was built. It looks pretty amazing. But in the original photo, it all looks new and it’s bright and it’s charming and it’s quirky and it’s interesting. But when you come there in real life, they’ve just turned off all the lights. So, it’s very gloomy. It’s grim and it’s dark. And then there’s one front desk clerk. He does his job. No complaints about him doing his job, but he’s just completely stone-faced. And he I thought he was angry with me. I just thought he was like, “Whoa, what what did I do that’s making you so upset? Why are you so angry?” And I joked that he this whole place had the vibe of a serial killer’s residence. And then this desk clerk probably was a secret serial killer. Like, why else would he look so mean, right?
So anyway, that was my first time checking in. And this time was exactly the same. The same atmosphere, the same gloom, the same darkness, and the same front desk clerk. And yeah, he was just not friendly at all. I wanted to talk to him. I just wanted to ask him like, why are you in the hospitality industry? I mean, what drove you to take a job at the front desk of a hotel, a job that you clearly don’t like and you’re clearly not suited for? I mean, at least that’s what your face is saying. Like, why? Why? How did you end up here? But I didn’t. I just let him do his job.
And then I made a mistake because I gave him my phone and I called up my confirmation from Agoda and oh, here’s here’s my reservation confirmation. And he’s looking at the computer, looking at my phone, and it didn’t make sense to him. The details on the reservation didn’t match what was on his computer. And he says, “Oh, there’s something wrong here. Your room doesn’t have a window, but it says here your room has a window and there’s no no everything is wrong.” And then I looked at I gave him the wrong confirmation. It was for the Raja Boat Hotel. So then I went into my email and got a new email, downloaded the confirmation. Okay, sorry. I gave you the wrong one. Here it is. And I gave him a photocopy from my wallet that I keep of my passport. And I haven’t updated any of my records with my new passport number. So my Agoda reservations all have my old passport number and I have a photocopy of that passport that I give to people. So I gave it to him, but it was all kind of wrinkled now cause it’s been in my wallet for a while. And he kind of looked at it and you can see my picture. You can see all the information. You can see the passport number, the dates. Everything’s fine. Everything’s clear. But he didn’t he didn’t like it. He was just kind of looking at it going, “No, I I need to see the original.”
So now I’m digging out my original passport, of course, which has had the corner cut off and it’s been punched and it has the word cancelled stamped on every page. And now I’m handing this passport over to him thinking, I wonder if he’s even going to notice. But he didn’t. He just put it on the photocopier and he made a copy and he didn’t notice that it had cancelled right on the like right over the information page and the corner was cut which is what the Canadian embassy does or the high commission in this case. So anyway, I got away with that. I got out my new passport as well just in case he said, “Oh, this passport isn’t valid anymore.” And then we were going to get into real trouble because I made the reservation with my old passport, but now it’s cancelled and I’m giving him my new one. He’ll think I’m some sort of international criminal, I thought. So, but luckily he did not he did not figure that out. He had no problem with that passport.
And then yeah, you have to pay a five ringgit cleaning fee at this hotel for some strange reason. So, I paid that and you have to pay a 50 ringgit deposit. But the one thing I was really curious about is whether or not this room actually had the facilities that they say it has. And this is a this is something I think about quite a bit. Where as a guest, where as a customer do you draw the line and when do you just accept reality for what for on its own terms? What I mean is this is a low-budget hotel and if you come in here expecting five-star treatment, well, you’re going to be complaining about everything. You have to adjust your expectations based on the reality of life, the reality of the world. And in this case, I booked this room in particular partially because when you look at it on Agoda, it’s a well-appointed room. It has a mini fridge according to Agoda, a mini bar, a coffee maker, hair dryer, and on and on and on. Then the main thing I was interested in was the mini fridge. Wow, mini fridge. That’s cool. I’d like a room with a mini fridge. So, I chose that room specifically because it has a mini fridge and it was the same price as the other rooms.
So, of course, I come into the room and yeah, let me give you a little bit of a room tour, I guess. It’s a very good room. I mean, I’m very pleased to be here. It’s not very bright, unfortunately. I don’t have my light bulb with me. So, this light bulb is like incredibly dim. It’s like a yellow thing that barely puts out any light. So, this side of the room is very, very gloomy. If I had my own light bulb with me, I would switch it out and brighten up that part of the room. But, yeah, it’s a twin twin bed, as you can see. But I love the old school furniture. It’s very sturdy. As I said, this this goes way back. This is all original from the ’60s or the ’70s or the ’80s whenever this place was built. And it has a yeah, piece of furniture over there, which is cool. And of course, it’s got the TV, air conditioner, and it’s got a chair and a desk. And the bathroom is huge. Look at this. It’s actually got a separate shower area with a shower curtain. That is very rare. Yeah, look at that tile floor. Full length mirror over here.
So, yeah, I mean, no complaints at all. This room is not the deluxe, so it doesn’t have the window, but where the mini fridge is supposed to be right there. No mini fridge. So, the mini fridge was a lie. So, that’s my question. As a guest, as a customer, I chose this room because it has a mini fridge. That’s what it says on the reservation. So, now what do I do? Do I have the right to go down to the desk and lodge a complaint and ask the guy, “Hey, what’s going on? There’s no mini fridge. It says here on Agoda there is a mini fridge, but come on. I know from experience that it doesn’t matter. I’ve been to many, many, many hotels listed on Agoda and they list all these things in the room. They may even say the room has air conditioning and then you book the room, you get there and there is no air conditioning. This is in places like Thailand, Indonesia. So if you draw the line there and then you go and make a stink over this essentially you’re going to spend the rest of your life complaining and who needs that in their life. So I generally just let it go.
And again, if I were a front desk clerk and a customer came to me or a guest came to me and said, “Oh, I booked a room with a mini fridge, but there’s no fridge in the room and look, it says on Agoda mini fridge and coffee maker and and I would take it upon myself to fix the problem. I mean, I may not have the power to give the guest an upgrade to a new room or go out and get the guest a mini fridge, but at least I would pass on the information or make the changes myself so that the Agoda listing is accurate. I would make sure that the Agoda list matches reality. That’s what I would do as a hotel employee. But I know from experience that if I go down to the lobby now and I tell the guy, “Hey, on Agoda it says I’ve got a mini fridge, but I don’t.” He’ll just go, “Yeah, well, what are you going to do about it?” I mean, that’s not my problem, right? So, he’s not going to change it. It for the rest of eternity, the Agoda listing for this room will say it has a mini fridge, and there will never be a mini fridge, and that will never change.
So, yeah, I guess that’s kind of my question. Where do you draw the line? Where do you complain when there’s nobody to complain to? Same thing with this Lazada delivery. It’s just something that happens. And it is a bit frustrating that there’s nobody to yell at. In movies and TV shows, all characters have the satisfaction of being able to yell at people. When people do bad things, they get to yell at them. But in the real world, things happen and it’s pretty much nobody’s fault. So you never have the release of being able to get upset and get angry and yell at somebody. You never have that satisfaction. So you just have to adjust to the world as it is rather than fight with it all the time.
And one of the reasons I wanted a mini fridge is because of the last video clip that showed the care package that I got. And in the care package was a liter of milk and a large container of a really nice cold cafe latte. And there happened to be a fridge in the lobby at the Raja Boat Hotel. And I left it in that fridge last night because I couldn’t drink all of that in one night. So I just left it in the fridge. And then I thought, well, I can come to this room and I can put it in the fridge here. But of course, there is no fridge here. But my cafe latte is still ice cold from that other fridge. So, my room wasn’t quite ready when I showed up here. I had to wait about 30 minutes for my room to be ready. And then while I was waiting in the lobby, I was sipping on my ice cold cafe latte. That’s really good. Farm Fresh susu berperisa kopi. It’s not quite not quite ice cold anymore, but it’s still still cold. That’s very good iced cafe latte.
I’m still playing games with Lazada and the app. I’m I found a new button. I found a new button that led me to a new page that listed all of my orders. So, it lists all the ones that have been shipped and delivered and then it lists all the ones that are still not fulfilled yet. So, then my Ulanzi MT44 is listed there as your parcel is on the way. You will get it by September 26th, which was 3 days ago, right? So, like their system never gets updated. And yeah, yesterday morning at 10:00 a.m. I got the notification as I said that it is on the way. But yeah, like 36 hours ago and it’s still on the way. But yeah, I don’t have any idea what else I can do. Though I did just see another button that I never saw before. Way down at the bottom, I saw a button that said chat with customer care. So, I may click on that and see what happens. Nah, it’s the same old thing. Customer care just brings me to the Cleo, what they call, “My name is Cleo, your virtual assistant. How can I help you today?” And yeah, I’ve talked to Cleo over the last week. And Cleo is of no help to me at all. So, there’s no point going through that all over again. Every time I talk to Cleo, then I get a survey. They say, “Oh, we saw that you had an interaction with Cleo, our chatbot. How would you rate your interaction with Cleo?” And of course, all the questions they ask have nothing to do with my experience where I have to choose something and things that I don’t. So, it’s like, “Well, how would you rate the interaction?” And then none of the answers there match my reaction. Anyway, that’s kind of funny.
One other thing about this hotel and these rooms that is really amazing and I don’t understand it at all. I don’t know how this works. I have an unbelievable mobile internet connection at the Raja Boat. I had a window like one wall was almost was 50% window and yet I barely had any internet connection at all. This room is buried deep in the building. I’m far away from the edges. There’s cement walls all around me. So by rights I should have very poor mobile connection. But I have an incredible connection. So I’m on mobile internet right now. I did a speed test and I get 140 megabits per second download and 40 megabits per second upload which is for me that’s incredibly fast. I never get speeds like that. So I don’t know how they do it. They must have a special booster or something. There’s no way I should be able to get a mobile signal like that behind all this cement.
But anyway, that is an update. When I knew I had to change hotels, I was thinking, well, I can just have a regular day. I can just live my day as normal and then at some point, boop, I just pop over to a new hotel and just pick up with my day as normal. But it doesn’t really work that way, does it? The fact that I have to that I had to change hotels that job expanded and became so much bigger and required so much of my energy and attention that it’s like taking up my entire day. I’m focused on this getting to a new hotel business. And yeah, really wasn’t a regular day at all, like in terms of getting things done. I mean, so it’s kind of a kind of a loss today, I think, in terms of productivity here on Planet Doug. But it’s been fun.
There’s another look at my room. Got that amazing setup of twin beds. I haven’t unpacked yet. I just still got my bags over there. That lonely spot down there where the mini fridge should be. Yeah, it’s a big big room for a budget hotel. So, that is it for this afternoon’s brief update. It is 4:30 on a Tuesday afternoon now and I just left from my hotel. That’s my current hotel. That’s a Crossroads Hotel right behind me here in Chow Kit. And oh, I don’t know what’s going on here. It’s a very busy street. A lot of traffic comes at you from all kinds of directions. The building that Jason and I went exploring in a couple weeks ago is right in front of me.
That’s the building. And I’m only pointing it out again because a subscriber to Planet Doug left a comment saying that this building was quite famous. It had been featured in a Malaysian movie, kind of an indie flick, I would say, and it made a big splash on international film festivals because it was focusing on a social issue here in Malaysia. Now, of course, now that I’m talking about it, I forgot the name. It’s something like Adik and Abang or Abang and Adik. And it’s the story of two orphaned brothers who found themselves through life circumstances. They’re Malaysians. They were born in Malaysia, but through circumstances, they didn’t actually have any ID. They had no official documents recording their birth, their citizenship. They didn’t have an IC card, like the local Malaysian ID. They didn’t have a MyKad. I don’t know the difference between an IC and a MyKad. Maybe the IC is the number and the MyKad is the card. I don’t know. But anyway, they had no proof. They had no ID. They had no documents. So they found themselves living in this basically like an illegal migrant worker. They were hiding from the police just in the same way an illegal migrant worker would. And they couldn’t get a driver’s license. They couldn’t do anything. They couldn’t open bank accounts. Anything you needed ID for, they couldn’t do. Even though they were Malaysian citizens, they just couldn’t prove it. Anyway, so it covered the movie was all about the lives of these two brothers at a particular at a critical moment in their lives. And the key is that they lived in this building, which is quite interesting because the building, as I discovered, really is home to a lot of migrant workers. Whether legal or illegal, I have no idea. But a lot of migrant workers that come to Malaysia, yeah, they live in this building. This neighborhood is full of a lot of migrant workers. A lot from Indonesia as far as I can make out. But yeah, the whole movie was set in that building and the brothers had an apartment there.
Now, of course, I really want to watch that movie, but I don’t know if I’m able to track down a copy. I don’t think I’m able to, but we’ll find out. Turns out they when the movie makers they used the building, but in the in the trailer, I’ve only seen the movie trailer so far. They didn’t show the outside of the building. They only showed the interior. And I recognized it instantly. Oh yeah, that is the inside of the building. It’s very very recognizable. So that’s kind of cool. But in the world of the movie, they said it in Pudu. It’s not actually here in Chow Kit. I don’t know why they put it in Pudu, but that’s where the story of the movie takes place. So, that’s where they said the brothers were living in that building. Very cool.
So, where am I going? Well, believe it or not, I’m still in the middle of my Lazada delivery drama. I’m on my way back to the Hotel Raja Boat and my idea is to just set up camp there and wait for the package to be delivered because at quarter to 2 this afternoon I just happened to check my Lazada account like on the website. I clicked on my account to look at any look for any updates and to my amazement to my surprise there was a notification saying that my package they were going to attempt how did they word it exactly? They were going to reattempt to deliver my package today. And that notification showed up in my account at about quarter to 2 and it’s now 4:30 and I’ve heard nothing since then. But interestingly, to dive even deeper into this crazy mystery, all this time, I’ve had notifications on my phone turned on for Lazada and I’ve had sound turned on because I am so worried about missing any new notifications. So, my phone has been driving me nuts. It just beeps and beeps and beeps. I get advertisements from Lazada constantly, just ad after ad after ad after ad being pushed onto my phone and so I had to do that because I’m waiting for notifications about this delivery. And then they sent a notification to my account saying the package is going to be delivered today. But it never got sent to my phone. After all this time, after all these days, the notification, the really important one that they’re going to deliver it today, never showed up on my phone. The only reason I even know about it is because I manually opened up the website and I went to Lazada and I opened my account and I clicked on the orders button and then it’s like, “Oh, a new message.” But that message never went to my phone. It never beeped. No, I got no notification. It’s the most important notification, but it’s the one that they didn’t send me. They sent me a million advertisements.
Anyway, what I’m saying is I’m done with Lazada. This is yet another way that they disappointed me, which is kind of funny. Anyway, I have no idea when it’s going to be delivered, but I figured I could come down to this neighborhood, maybe get a coffee here at Vietnam Coffee, though it’s really hot out here, man. It’s brutal. I could go get a cendol. I just want to be near the Hotel Raja Boat so that if the delivery driver shows up here and the door is locked and there’s nobody at the front desk again and the driver calls me, I’m here because if I’m sitting at the other hotel and he calls me, well, it’s too late. He’s not going to sit around here waiting until I run all the way down here. So anyway, I’m investing another chunk of time from my life. This I’m telling you, this tripod better be the most amazing tripod the world has ever seen to be worth all this work, all this effort and time. But anyway, I’m going to pop into the hotel right now, tell them that things are happening. Expect a delivery. And actually, let me yeah, I’m going to grab a cold drink from 99 Speed Mart and then I can hang out in the lobby and just have a cold drink while I wait.
I got myself a liter of ice cold Dutch Lady milk, my favorite. And yeah, there’s a couple of other elements to this story. Oh, I’m heading. Yeah, I was backlit there. That’s okay. What I look like? So yeah. Before all this happened, I was still just fiddling around looking at different things on Lazada, clicking on buttons, and I went back to the store, the online store that sold me the tripod cause we have a I have a message chat going with them, and I kind of gave up on them. The one time I talked to them, they just say, “Hey, don’t bother us. Go talk to Lazada. It’s not our problem.” So, I don’t really count on those guys. But I kept checking the tracking number and the tracking number just doesn’t work. So I thought and Lazada kept telling me to go back to the seller and confirm that the tracking number is accurate. I don’t even know whether the store has anything to do with that. But anyway, that’s what Lazada told me to do. So I went back to the store, online store, and I said, “Can you confirm that this is the correct tracking number?” And they just said, “No, it’s not our problem. Go talk to Lazada.” So, I kind of let them have it. I just wrote something like, well, I’m giving up on you guys now. I’m probably I’m never going to buy anything from your store again, and I doubt I’m ever going to use Lazada again. The customer service is so poor and so unfriendly. That’s basically what I said. And then I got a message back from them saying, “Oh, thank you very much for your sincere feedback that will help us to improve in the future.” I’m like, “Dude, dude.” And that must be an automated response. And now they’re actually sending me these action cards over and over and over again. They want me to review the online store saying, “Please review us.” I’m like, “Do you really want me to at this point? You’re just going to get a one-star review. Like why are you pushing me? I was just going to leave it alone. It’s like, okay, I had a negative feeling experience with you guys, but I’m sure you’ve done a good job with other people. If the delivery had not screwed up, I wouldn’t have any issue. Well, well, I don’t know. Yeah. No, I wouldn’t have just trying to get information out of them. It just didn’t work. So, now I have negative feelings and I’m going to give you guys a one star. If you really want me to review you, I will. I mean, I’m willing to let it go, but it’s so funny.
But also when I got the notification on Lazada, the new delivery today, it’s a new driver, new everything like new driver, new phone number, new contact number. And I learned from experience that if you click on that contact button and call them, they’re going to yell at you cause they’re busy. They’re in they’re driving in traffic and doing a million things. So they don’t they don’t have time to talk on the phone because that’s what the other driver basically led me to believe. So I just entered his number into WhatsApp. He has a WhatsApp account and I just sent him a message saying, “Oh, the delivery going to Hotel Raja Boat to Douglas. Could you possibly give me an hour heads up if you can? I’ll be down there in the lobby waiting for you.” And I sent a screenshot with the tracking number, which is useless, and the order ID number, all that information. So, I sent that as a message on WhatsApp to the driver, the new driver, but he hasn’t replied. So, as far as I can tell, he hasn’t seen the message. So, that’s where we are right now. And we are back at my original home, the Hotel Raja Boat. So, I’m going to see if they’ll let me hang out in the lobby for a little while.
Anyway, finally success and I’m the proud owner of this package which hopefully contains the greatest tripod the universe has ever seen based on the amount of time and effort I’ve invested in getting it. Finally being united with it. Yeah, I I don’t have anything good to say at all even now about Lazada and the delivery because as I said, I got the notification on the app on the website at quarter to 2 and the only reason I saw it was cause I manually checked. Despite them flooding my phone with advertising notifications, the important one that I was supposed to get, they never sent it to me. So, they didn’t even send me the notification that my package is being delivered today. I could have missed it entirely and I had no idea when it was coming. I sent the driver a message to his number on WhatsApp and just sort of, as a favor, could you let me know an hour before you come and then I can make sure I’m at the lobby waiting for you so I don’t miss you a second time. But I never heard anything. So I just went to the hotel and I just hung out there in the lobby for a while just chatting with the desk clerk. About all kinds of different topics and then I was waiting and waiting and waiting and it was 6:17 exactly. Well, yeah, 6:17 a guy walked into the lobby, a delivery guy, and I got no notification that he was coming. Nothing at all. He just sort of walked in and was waving the, anybody here waiting for a package. I said, “Thank you very much.” No smile, no nothing, no chitchat. He just barely even there mentally or physically. And then he left. And then I looked at my phone because at 6:17, I looked at my phone and there was a notification that said the package will be delivered within the next hour. At 6:17 and at 6:18 it said package has been delivered. So after he handed it to me, he hit a button on his phone or whatever his device is and at 6:18 it like it there was like 1 minute warning. He showed up at the hotel. He was walking into the lobby. That’s when he sent the notification. I will be there in an hour. And yet he was already there. So if I weren’t there waiting for him, I would have missed him again because I wasn’t given any notification that they were on that he was coming getting closer. And of course, the tracking number doesn’t work, so I couldn’t physically track him.
Anyway, it’s over the long drama. Now what I have to do is open up the package. I get the fun of an unboxing. And as I said, hopefully it will turn out to be the greatest tripod of all time or failing that. It will at least be something that I’ll end up getting a ton of use out of. But I’m also I’m meeting some friends for dinner right now. So, the unboxing may have to wait. It’ll wait until later. Maybe until tomorrow morning. No, probably until later tonight. Ah, all done.
All right. The big moment is here. The unboxing of the legendary tripod. I even made myself a cup of coffee to enjoy while I do this. I don’t know how much light there is for you to see me. This room that I’m in now doesn’t have any kind of a window. Doesn’t have much light. So, it feel it feels very dim in here as I look around. But on the GoPro screen, it looks looks bright enough. So, there it is. It’s kind of weird that yeah, the tripod is just like bouncing around inside this box. I don’t know whether the box is a Ulanzi box somehow. I doubt it, but it could be. Or it’s a box from the company that I bought it from. What I’m getting at is if this is a box from the online store, I have another reason to not really like them because yeah, like there’s no packaging in there at all. But it could be an original box from Ulanzi for all I know. So, let’s open up this package.
What is going on here? Yeah, definitely. I’m not liking this company at all. What is going on here? Okay, so yeah, they made their own box from Red Buffalo. A 360° aluminum ball head phone and camera combination holder and three in one selfie stick. So, this is like a Red Buffalo box that they cut down to size and taped up. Not exactly a professional operation, whoever these dudes are that I bought this from. Yeah. I mean, that’s that’s the thing about ordering online. And I guess that gets back to why I so prefer going to a store because you can see the product, you can see the people at the store. You can. Well, Malaysia, to be honest, doesn’t have great customer service at most levels. So, if something is inside a package, you can’t actually open it up and look at it and play around with it. When I was in Vietnam, I was amazed at the difference because I would go into a camera store and I would tell the guy what I’m looking for. Yeah. And he would just grab the box off the shelf, open it, hand it over to me. Yeah, put it together, play around with it, try it out. He doesn’t even know whether I’m going to buy it or not. But that that was the level of customer service in Vietnam. You could actually put your hands on the product, take it out of the box, and they they weren’t worried about that at all. I loved that. But of course, you can’t do that in Malaysia. So, yeah, if you go to a store, at least you can see a little bit. They maybe they have a display model that you can look at, but if it’s a tripod, it’s probably out in the open, so you can kind of get a look at it. See how it works. Oh, maybe I have to take back what I said because there’s an Ulanzi box inside the Red Buffalo box.
All right. Okay. So, it’s Ulanzi that didn’t really add any sort of packaging on the inside. So, the other thing that I’m worried about is that this product, which is the Ulanzi MT44, has two versions, an old the original and then the upgrade. And then the company that I ordered this from clearly said on the advertisement, “This is the upgrade.” They had that in brackets, upgrade, which means it’s taller. The original one wasn’t didn’t extend high enough. And I wouldn’t I don’t want that one. But now when I when I’m looking at this, I mean, I have no idea what the packaging is like from the original and this new one, I’m just once I have it out, I’ll be able to tell once I extend it. Is this the upgrade or the original? So, in terms of features, you can see the picture there, and it does a few fancy things. I don’t know whether I’ll end up requiring that at all, but it has a tripod 1/4 in 20 thread on the top. And that’s what I wanted because my entire camera system right now is based on these Teles quick release mounts. I have this across all of my devices, all of my mounting apparatus. And this is what I’m using right now. This is my current tripod and it only goes that high. So, if you put out the legs, this is the this is as high as it goes. So, if you’re out riding your bike down the street and you want to mount the camera to film yourself or even here in this room, I can’t use this. You can’t put it on the floor. It doesn’t extend high enough. It’s design. It’s a tabletop tripod.
So, my idea is to replace this one with this one because if I have this one, to be honest, I don’t think I really need this one anymore. So, it would be just dead weight carrying it around, but I haven’t decided yet. I’ll probably still carry both of them for a while just to see how things work out. But this one also has a tripod threaded mount on the top. So I can put on the Teles adapter. And then once the Teles adapter is on there, then my GoPro just clicks into place like that. And then I can twist it off, put it on my bike, put it on here, put it on my neck mount. Every single mount I have uses the same base. So that’s why I wanted a tripod ball head. And this one has an advantage because it has a cold shoe mount here where you can mount your microphone. And I and this one doesn’t. But what this one does have which I may or may not find useful is it also has a smartphone holder built into it. So, you can mount a camera using the tripod thread. I can mount my GoPro using this adapter. And you can also flip up the smartphone holder and you can mount a smartphone. So, pulling it out. There it is.
I never like any kind of rattling sound. I don’t like any kind of play, but I think that’s because. Oh, that’s nice. I didn’t realize it had one of these wheels, which is very, very nice. This one has the wheel, right? And the reason that’s important is that if the 1/4 in 20 thread is fixed and then when you screw something on, you can’t control the angle. Like you screw the camera on and wherever it tightens up at that point, that’s the direction the camera is pointing and there’s nothing you can do. But if you can rotate the 1/4 in 20 thread from the bottom using this wheel, then you can hold the camera in place and tighten the thread so you can always control the angle where your camera is pointing. And all the same thing with this adapter. So, I didn’t know this had a wheel. Again, I would have seen that in a store. And the fact that it has this smartphone adapter makes it bulkier and heavier and more complicated. And I’m not thrilled about that. I didn’t realize just how big and bulky it was at the top, but that makes sense. But anyway, let’s see. The it has a ring here for the base. So these are the legs. Okay. So you unscrew this ring and then you put the legs out and then you tighten it. So there is the tripod base. And now comes the important part and you tighten it up. How long is it?
I think that’s okay. I did get the right one cause you can see it’s sitting down here. It’s above my head. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that is the the right one. And then you can use it as a selfie stick as well. Okay. Yeah. Nice and stiff so you can use it different lengths. And the key, another key that I forgot about, it has a ball head so you can put it on an angle like all the way to the side 90°, tilt it any any angle you want, right? And that’s important because you put this on the ground and if the ground is uneven, your selfie stick is like sticking up at an angle and now if it’s fixed, your camera is on an angle. But because it has a ball head, you can adjust it and you can you can keep this level all the time. So I always like having the ball head. So that would that was the key to this whole operation. Lightweight, high enough, light enough to be used as a selfie stick and with a ball head at the top with a tripod thread. And this was the only one I could find like that. And it came with the smartphone adapter, which like I said, if I could choose, I would choose one without the smartphone adapter because I’ve got a million smartphone mounts already. I don’t need one built into it. It just makes the thing more complicated.
So, let’s get my little adapter on there just to make sure. There we go. No problem so far. And now the key moment mounted GoPro. There we go. There we go. So, with the the ball head, yeah, you can turn it around, angle it however you want, and then use it as a yeah, selfie stick. Yeah, I’m not happy about the smartphone adapter being on there. I mean, it’s complicated enough. I don’t need more junk on there, but it is something that doesn’t get in the way. Doesn’t bother me. I well it does bother me but it’s not going to affect anything really but let’s see how that works. I may never even use it. I really don’t know. So yeah I haven’t looked at the instructions at all. Okay. So that’s how it works. Pretty simple.
Yeah. So, your phone goes in there just like any smartphone holder spring loaded and then when you don’t want it anymore, put it down and then you lock it into place. So, it has some kind of a locking mechanism there. But, okay. So, you just just lever that and go like that. So, it’s anybody like I don’t do a lot of filming with my smartphone, but occasionally I do. I take pictures with my smartphone. So, who knows? Maybe maybe this is one of these things that after I use it for a while, I’m like, “Wow, how did I ever live without it?”
Okay. Okay. I’m I’m I’m digging it. I’m digging it. And there it is extended to its full height. And if I stand beside it, I’m I guess I’m just over 6 feet tall. So this is with the the camera is like perfect height for filming me, for filming anybody. That’s yeah, that’s where the the height of it is right there.
And this kind of design, like a real photographer’s tripod, is different because the legs are not like this. The legs would go way out farther and then they go much higher and gives you a much more stable base. This is meant as a more of a lightweight and more like a selfie stick combination. So because of that, there there’s there’s some wobbliness to deal with up here. But there. Yeah. So if anybody bumps into it over it goes. So it’s kind of nice. Even professional tripods, they often have a hook on the bottom and then you hang a weight on it to increase the stability. If this is a dangerous situation, you just put weights here. like you put your knapsack and you put it on the legs to hold it in place, make it a little bit stronger. But yeah, there it is.
That’s it. At long last, will it end up being worth all this effort in getting it? Probably not. It would have been a lot better just to go to a store and buy it. That would have been done in half a half a morning, probably assuming I could find it in stores. But anyway, there it is. So, I think that’s the end of this overall video as well, my KL vignettes video. I’ll end it there with my successful unboxing of the tripod. So, that’s it. Shutting down as always. Check out the Planet Doug Patreon if you’re looking for some extra photos and updates, little stories, things I’m thinking about or interested in. And then if it’s possible based on what the content is or the length of it, I’ll copy and paste it from Patreon into the YouTube post section. So you go to YouTube Planet Doug, look for posts and you can see sort of up-to-date sort of updates and thoughts and photos there. So So I’ll see you on Patreon. I’ll see you on the posts on Planet Doug. I’ll see you here on Planet Doug. and check out Planet Doug behind the scenes for longer form videos of everything going on behind the scenes. All right, that’s it. Shutting down and I’ll see you later.