VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Welcome to Dumai, Sumatra – a city I wasn’t expecting to love quite this much.
I stumbled across a cafe called Monochrome just down the street from my hotel, and it turned out to be exactly what I needed. Great coffee, fried bananas covered in cheese and chocolate (courtesy of a mystery benefactor!), and enough Wi-Fi to actually get some work done.
Then I found Louna Cafe, and everything changed. Fast uploading speeds, a gourmet burger, air conditioning (sort of), and a garden full of power outlets. I uploaded three videos in about two hours. For a YouTuber, that’s basically pure joy.
This video is a bit of a hybrid – cafe tours, behind-the-scenes tech chat, some thoughts on modern travel (e-wallets, GoPros, camper vans), and a few updates on YouTubers I’ve been following. It’s a slow, honest, unpolished look at what my life actually looks like on the road.
No disasters. Just a guy with a laptop, a GoPro, and a very nice cup of local coffee.
If you enjoy long-form, conversational, travel-adjacent content about the small details of life as a digital nomad in Southeast Asia, you’ll probably like this one.
Places mentioned:
– Monochrome Cafe and Roastery
– Louna Coffee and Space
– Wisma Cemara Hotel
Tech things I ramble about:
– GoPro Hero 9 / Hero 12 / Hero 13
– The new GoPro Mission series
– DJI Pocket 4
– Media Mod frustrations (old vs. new)
– Touch ‘n Go e-wallet magic
– Gojek, GoCar, and QRIS payments
As always, thank you for watching and for supporting the channel – especially my Patreon members, Touch ‘n Go supporters, and the Crunch Club who make it all the way to the end.
See you in the next one.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
You have a chicken katsu. Katsu. Yeah. So, satu and a cafe latte. Cold ice cream 46.
I’m busy being the digital nomad again today. I discovered this cafe just down the street from my hotel, the Monochrome Cafe and Roastery. They even have a little room outside where they have equipment inside where it looks like they roast and grind their own beans. So, it’s a very, very nice cafe. I was here yesterday and I came here just to try and take advantage of their Wi-Fi for uploading videos because in my hotel there’s like no Wi-Fi at all that reaches my room. Like just the tiniest trickle. If I leave my laptop and my phones connected to the Wi-Fi full time, an email will eventually get through, a new message will register on WhatsApp. So I can connect to that extent, but I can’t surf the internet, I can’t upload, I can’t download, I can’t do anything. So I came here and my mobile internet in my hotel, it doesn’t work either. Even outside I tested it and upload I mean downloading was really, really fast like 150 megabits per second but uploading is always throttled. So uploading is like 1.3 megabits per second. So the numbers are just all over the place. Anyway, so I came here this morning again to see if I can continue uploading a file and the current file is at where am I? 64%. It’s going faster all of a sudden for some reason. Right now I’m actually connected with mobile because I figured out that even though the mobile sometimes is at 1.3, sometimes it goes up and then it goes up much higher than the Wi-Fi. Anyway, so I’m on mobile right now and I’m making progress. So, this is very cool. I’ve got so much gear in terms of adapters and cables and power banks, all these sorts of things. It’s nice to kind of be a digital nomad, sit in a cafe like this. There’s nobody else here at all, by the way. I’m the only person here, which is why I can talk like this, and I’m not bothering anybody. I’m still keeping my voice low. And there’s no loud music playing. It’s air conditioned, comfortable. I mean, if you haven’t seen this place, let me flip the GoPro around. I’ll show you where I am. There’s Planet Doug Studios. I’m editing another video while this one is uploading. And then there’s the cafe. That’s where all the coffee is made. They have a kitchen in the back. And a lot of nice seating, but as you can see, there’s nobody else here. I think there’s a smoking area out the back, out the front there. Yeah. So, here we are. Monochrome. Really nice place. They even have a photo booth outside where friends can get into the photo booth and insert money and it takes pictures of them and they encourage people to put their photos up there on the bulletin board, which is kind of fun. And the reason I fired up my GoPro right now is because a mystery benefactor put in an order for me. And these are something that this cafe is famous for, I guess. They’re fried bananas. So underneath you got a typical pisang goreng and then they’ve covered it, it looks like, in cheese and chocolate. I haven’t tried it yet. I’m just about to dive in. I guess it’s considered a finger food because that wasn’t served with cutlery. I normally have my own cutlery, but I got all packed up for all my video stuff and I never got around to, I forgot to pack my color.
Yeah, it’s different from the fried banana you get on the street. That’s usually like bigger, thicker pieces. This looks like kind of a flattened banana deep fried. And then you have all of the cheese and the chocolate on top.
I think this dish is meant to be shared amongst four people. That always happens to me as a solitary person, especially in Asia. Most places are geared to large groups, you know, family groups, friends. I go in there as one person. And sometimes it’s hard to get the single serving dish or, you know, that kind of thing. I think this is not meant for one person to inhale all of this, but I will have no trouble, no trouble at all doing so.
My day at Monochrome Cafe and Roastery is coming to a close. I just left. It’s 4:30 in the afternoon. So, I was in there since noon at least, maybe 11:30. I think I got there around 11:30 till 4:30. So I was there for 5 hours and in all that time I managed to upload one video and I had to switch back and forth between mobile internet and then their Wi-Fi. I kept checking to see which one was faster. Sometimes my mobile internet would slow down to a crawl and then I’d notice their Wi-Fi was a bit faster, so I would switch to Wi-Fi and I just went back and forth, back and forth. Ran out of data in my mobile package. So in the middle I had to buy another 40 gigabyte data package, start with a new package. And after 5 hours of sitting in that cafe occupying their table, finally got done.
Hello. Every time I hear one of these trucks go by over on that road on the other side, it sounds like a train to me. I keep expecting to see train tracks, but that’s actually a road over there. And while I was sitting in the cafe for 5 hours, what did I end up ordering between me and my mystery benefactor? I got a kind of a chicken chop with French fries and salad and an iced latte. And then my mystery benefactor ordered fried bananas with cheese and chocolate sprinkles. And then I got another ice latte. So only two drinks throughout the entire day. I thought I got more, but maybe only two drinks and two food dishes while I was sitting there. But the place was pretty much empty the entire time. For most of the time, I was the only person in the whole shop, in the whole cafe, so I wasn’t getting in anybody’s way.
And there’s an Indomaret up ahead. And right out front of the Indomaret, they have an iced tea stall. So, I’m going to pop into Indomaret, see if I can get some more milk and then iced tea at the same time. I did that yesterday as well when I finished up at the cafe. One thing I love is that even here in Sumatra, I can use the Malaysian Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. So, at Monochrome, all the food and drinks that I ordered all day today and the data package when I bought the new 40 gigabytes of data, I paid for all of that using the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. Just scan a QR code and submit payment through Touch ‘n Go. So, I don’t need any Indonesian rupiah. I don’t have to change money. I don’t have to worry about having small change or running out of local currency as long as I can keep paying with an e-wallet, either Touch ‘n Go or GoPay. Very cool.
Oh, they finally restocked their milk. When I first got here, there was no milk available on the shelf like this, liters of milk. There’s just completely bare shelves. I thought maybe they just stopped drinking milk or something, but I guess they just had a supply problem and now they have some. So, I’m going to stock up. This isn’t my favorite, the Diamond, but I’m going to get some milk.
Yeah, finished. Oh, it’s finished. So, oh, you have you have that es teh. Okay. What? What?
So, I guess my favorite. This one is all finished for today. Oh, yeah. Or I don’t know what that is. So, I’ll figure that out. The QR code.
So, right here is the QR code. Scanning it with Touch ‘n Go.
There we are. Lima ribu.
Okay, thank you.
So, there you go. Lima ribu rupiah, 1.2 ringgit for an ice cold drink like this. I don’t see exactly, I don’t know exactly what it is, so I better look that up right now. Handy dandy Google Translate. Es teh.
Yeah, food and drink rarely works. Whatever the word is for a local food or drink, it often does not have an English equivalent because it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just the name of something and we don’t have a name for it in English. So, I don’t really know what this is, but perhaps my taste buds can tell me. I doubt it. If you’re depending on my taste buds to tell you about food and drink, you’ll be waiting a long, long time.
But that’s what it looks like. It’s more clear, like it’s not the milky tea, more like a fruit juice.
I never drink enough. So, every time I pass by one of these drink stalls, I really should get something. Anything. So, let’s give this a try. I have no idea what it is. It doesn’t really taste like a distinct fruit to me. It just tastes like a cold flavored liquid. It’s good. Don’t mind it at all. I’d order it again, but I have no idea what it is or what if it’s based on a fruit or not.
Ah, bakso. Yeah. Ah, bakso.
With a sauce. Some kind of sauce. Oh, okay.
For that. Lima ribu liur?
Yeah.
When I was walking down the street yesterday, a man came by on a scooter and he gave me a bag of this bakso just as a gift. He wanted me to try some Indonesian food. And I was wondering where he got it from. And I’m assuming this is where he got it.
Biasa.
Cili? It’s okay.
I think he’s telling me it’s spicy. Very spicy. It’s okay. Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. Look at that. He’s got the whole box set up on the scooter. He can basically go anywhere. Park it. He’s got the umbrella attached. I love a setup like that. It’s amazing. And he really knows what he’s doing. Of course, he’s prepared hundreds, thousands of these in his lifetime. And I have a feeling he’s popular. Like people know him. You get that sense when you’re standing there and then people just come pouring in from the roadside when they spot him. They know he’s serving the good stuff. And I like how he hesitated before he put in the really spicy stuff. It’s like, “Are you sure you really want me to put this in there?” And I don’t know how spicy it is, but I assume when the guy on the motorcycle gave this to me yesterday, he just got it normal, which I think that’s what biasa means. That’s why I said to him, “Biasa, just normal. Whatever is normal for local people, just give me one of those.” And it was flavorful, a lot of flavor, but it wasn’t too hot. So anyway, it’s really, really good what I had yesterday. So I hope this is the same exact same stuff.
Just back at my hotel, Wisma Cemara. And if I have dinner tonight, I’ll probably have dinner next door. I’ve eaten at this place right across from, right beside my hotel one time already. And if they’re open today, I’ll go back there. I’m going to go look over the wall and see if they’re open yet. But I won’t have dinner for a couple hours yet. I hear music coming over the wall. That’s always a good sign.
Yeah, I think they’re open. You can see over the wall. Yep. Yeah. They might even have live music tonight. They have a stage set up and it’s the weekend still.
Nope.
This is the hallway that leads to my room.
There it is. Planet Doug Studios home edition. Today’s cafe. That was Planet Doug Studios cafe edition. Settled back in Planet Doug’s home edition. And as I talked about in the last time I was here, I came back from the same cafe. I stopped and got a cup of tea and I talked about how valuable ice is. This is actually the leftover ice from my last cafe latte at the Monochrome Cafe. And you don’t let that go to waste. Love that sound. And I still have a lot of ice left over from my es teh whatever that is.
Adding this to that. Oh, and then I have my favorite drink of all time. Cold milk. Well, it’s not cold yet. That’s the thing. Have a little bit of air in there, so gives me some space to shake it up.
This kind of milk, it’s not real. I mean, it’s like it was dehydrated and hydrated or something, so there can be some stuff on the bottom. So, you got to shake it up a little bit. And now ice and milk.
Let’s let that get nice and cold and then let’s dive into this bakso. See if it’s the same as the bakso that I had yesterday. I mean, it’s a possibility that the man who gave me the bakso, maybe he intended to do it from the beginning and he might have ordered a special, you know, foreigner friendly version without too much spicing. So,
I’m being a lot more casual with these videos, by the way, which means I don’t have a microphone connected. This is a Hero 9, and I happen to have that Hero 9 attached to my neck mount. And rather than going crazy and attaching microphones and cables and cords, I just plopped it there. And so you’re hearing my voice recorded on the internal mic of the Hero 9. So you’re probably not hearing me that clearly, but maybe it’s good enough for now. So let’s give this sauce a try.
It’s spicy, but I think it’s the same as what I had the other day. Basically the same level of spice and flavor. This one came with an egg.
Mhm.
Bakso.
Very good. Anyway, I’m not going to film my entire experience eating this bakso. I just wanted to talk about it a little bit. See how I better hold on to this. See how cold my milk has become.
Oh, so good. M. Very, very good. It does make me think about, though, how does everybody in the world know that foreigners like me, Westerners, are not accustomed to really spicy food? Like this man, for all I know, maybe he’s never had a foreign customer before. Well, he might have had, but he hasn’t had very many. And so how does he come to the assumption that everybody that looks like me can’t handle his spicy bakso sauce? I mean, you don’t see it in movies all the time. It’s not like every movie or TV show talks about how Canadian food or American food is so bland. It’s not like every show shows a white guy like me going to Thailand and having tom yum soup and sputtering because it’s way too spicy for us. So, how is it that everybody in the world makes this assumption that we can’t handle spicy food? I mean, they’re right. Canadian food is very bland by comparison to this. But how does he know that exactly? Does he just grow up knowing this that everybody just assumes it? How did he come to that conclusion? Yeah, interesting idea. Anyway, that’s it. I’m going to enjoy my milk and my bakso.
I wasn’t planning on recording any video on this particular excursion out into Dumai, but I stumbled across a really nice cafe for my purposes called Luna. Luna Cafe and Space, something like that. Luna Coffee. And the great thing about it is their Wi-Fi. So, I decided to test it out. I actually took a GoCar go car to get here. I was going to ride my bicycle, but I didn’t want to get here hot and sweaty and then sit down to edit video. And I kind of wanted to dress up a little bit to justify, you know, hanging out in a nice cafe. So, I ordered a go car cost 5 ringgit in total, like 22,000 rupiah to get here, which is a really good price. It’s like 4 km from my hotel to get here. And I was so happy to see what a nice place it is and how fast the Wi-Fi is. Let me flip, I’m recording this on my phone because I didn’t bring any cameras with me. Yeah, I always forget how good this phone can be for recording a video and hopefully audio. I’m recording audio through this headset. So, I hope it sounds good. Let me flip the phone around and I’ll show you some of the interior. Here’s Planet Doug Studios. As always, I have one video editing and then over here I have another video uploading. And the Wi-Fi uploading is so fast here. I’ve already uploaded two videos in about an hour and a half and then I’m probably going to finish uploading. Oh, it’s already done. It’s processing. So, three videos uploaded in like an hour and a half, maybe 2 hours that I’ve been here. I had a couple of cafe lattes. And the reason I fired up my phone is because I ordered a burger. And look at that. Look at all those fries. Baby tomatoes, good looking burger, and the seating here is extraordinary. They have this seating area which is indoors and air conditioned with fans. The one downside to be honest is the air conditioning is not very effective. So, it’s pretty warm in here. And before I dive into my burger, let me show you some of the other areas. But there’s me as dressed up as I get right there. And they have this seating area outside.
And assuming I come back here, which I probably will, I’ll probably sit out here just because I wouldn’t feel guilty about occupying premium space on the inside and the air conditioning doesn’t really work anyway. And these booths on this side, they all have a power outlet. So, like you can see, there’s electricity here. So, all of these ones are good for a digital nomad like myself. These booths, they don’t have any electricity, I don’t think. But look at all this seating. All of this like an outdoor garden. And then over here, more seating. I see big groups of workers come in here like that work for Pertamina, the big petrochemical companies that operate in the Dumai area. Big work crews come in here in their overalls and they all occupy one of these big booths. And then there’s another seating area up there, like another balcony up there, bathrooms, prayer room over there. So, it’s a pretty cool place. I’m really glad I took the time to track it down. And then while I was sitting inside, I just discovered a new area. I think up there. So if you follow these stairs, there’s like another area indoors up there. And maybe it’s better air conditioned up there. Or maybe that’s a smoking area. I’ll check that area out before I leave. But even here they got a little living room area with a corner sofa, some nice artwork on the wall, and then here’s the main seating area. And I’m in the corner over there.
Yeah, they’ve got quite the menu, too. They even have a cheesecake. And full menu. Everything you might want, you know, from coffees, all kinds of coffees, mocktails, rice dishes, western dishes, finger food. Desserts. Very cool place.
There it is. Cafe Luna Coffee and Space. I’m thinking about moving to a hotel near this coffee shop. Like if I stay in Dumai longer, this would be nice to be in this neighborhood closer to this cafe just for the uploading speeds.
So, I’m going to dive into my burger. I don’t think I need to record my reaction to the burger. I don’t have a mount for my smartphone, so I can’t record myself anyway. I’m just going to enjoy my lunch. And the video already finished uploading. 5 minutes left in processing.
Good morning from Planet Doug Studios, aka my low budget hotel room here in Dumai, Sumatra right now. And this is the morning after you just saw that video clip from the Luna Cafe. And just for fun, I was sitting here in my room and plugging in my kettle for a cup of coffee and I thought I would fire up the GoPro and then just do a little bit of a morning chatting over coffee. Kind of a behind the scenes look at whatever’s been going on lately and whatever I did yesterday. So, Luna Cafe. Wow, what an amazing place. Sometimes you don’t know how much something is bothering you and weighing on your mind until it’s dealt with or it goes away. So, ever since I got here to Dumai and I moved into this low budget hotel room and I discovered that their Wi-Fi doesn’t reach my room. I don’t think their Wi-Fi really works at all in terms of uploading. So, even if I was sleeping directly underneath the router, wherever it is, I still wouldn’t be able to upload videos. And the only place I could find to do it in my neighborhood was a cafe called Monochrome. Monochrome Cafe and Roastery, a really nice coffee shop just up the street here from my hotel. But even there, the mobile internet and Wi-Fi internet, the uploading is throttled. So I would spend an entire day like I would sit in the cafe for 6 hours and almost or maybe upload one video and then I got into this terrible loop that I’ve struggled with in the past where I found out that my mobile internet was faster than the Wi-Fi internet for uploading. So then I started uploading directly from my phone. You know, technology. I mean, my poor brain, there’s nothing left of my brain cells anymore because of my constant struggle with the vagaries of technology. It’s just that I was testing uploading speeds on my phone and it would be really, really fast or faster. But then as soon as you create a hotspot and then connect your laptop to that hotspot, then the uploading speed drops down to nothing. So even though my phone is able to upload at a reasonable speed, once I connect my laptop to it as a hotspot to use mobile internet, then my laptop for some reason is not getting access to the uploading speeds that are on my phone. So then I took all of my videos that I wanted to upload and I copied them from my laptop to my phone and then I started uploading them directly from here from my phone. But then you get into this situation where with YouTube mobile uploading is just weird. It sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t. And then I got myself caught in this loop where I would buy a data package for 40 gigabytes, like 40 GB of data. And then I would be uploading a video file that is like 25 gigabytes in size and then it would get up to like 20 GB uploaded and then it would somehow the connection would break and it drops down to zero and starts all over again. So, by the time you’re done uploading a 25 gigabyte video file, you’ve used up 100 gigabytes of mobile data because it resets all the time. And for whatever reason, if you buy 20 GB of data and you upload 10 GB, it uses up 20 GB of data to upload 10. That’s just the way the math works. So, it’s just a nightmare. And so then when I decided, well, I got to look for a solution to this and I went out looking on Google Maps satellite view and typing cafe and doing internet Wi-Fi searches, things like that. I found this cafe called Luna here in Dumai and I decided to go there to see, hey, maybe since they’re more downtown, Luna is more in the downtown core, maybe they just have better Wi-Fi, who knows. So that’s what I did yesterday. I went there and as you saw in that video clip I think I talked about it. The uploading speeds were amazing. They were as high as 70 megabits per second. In a weird twist, downloading was 50 megabits. Uploading was higher than downloading at 70 megabits. But the numbers went up and down while I was there. But regardless, I uploaded three complete Planet Doug videos by the time I left. And I was only in there for like 2 hours. I think the actual uploading time was like an hour and a half, 30 minutes per video. As soon as one video finished uploading, I just started the next one. And then while the second one was uploading, I was editing a third one in Luna. And then I finished editing it and I exported it because I had my laptop there obviously. And then when the second video finished uploading, the third one had been exported and I just started that upload. 30 minutes per video. I was there for 2 hours. Had a delicious burger while I was there. Amazing. And then I could feel my brain and my body just relaxing because uploading for a YouTuber is oxygen as I’ve often said and without uploading you die as a YouTuber. You have to have the internet. You just can’t live without it. Take away the internet. It’s like taking oxygen away from the body and you’re just done. And it’s so exhausting and tiring to fight with uploading because the shooting of the video is a great deal of fun. The editing of video is really fun for me. I really enjoy it. Everything about YouTube I love. I love being a YouTuber and uploading videos and having people watch my videos and community meeting new people. Everything about it I enjoy. But it can be exhausting, like absolutely exhausting to be a solo YouTuber doing everything yourself. And when you run into technology problems, it just wears you out. And then if you have a problem like uploading as a block, as a preventing you from moving forward, when that block disappears and you’re suddenly able to effortlessly upload, it’s just such an amazing feeling. So that was my experience yesterday. Oh, that was so amazing. So Luna will be my new, depending how long I stay here in Dumai, that will be my go-to place if I have videos to upload. I’m not even going to mess around. Go straight to Luna, upload, have lunch while I’m there, have a good cup of coffee.
An interesting technology note about that is that I also decided to go to Luna by Go Car, which is part of the Gojek super app. If you’ve been following my life here on Planet Doug, you know that I’ve gotten heavily into e-wallets and apps and things like that. So, I’m a master at Touch ‘n Go, the Malaysian e-wallet. And then with Touch ‘n Go, you get the Touch ‘n Go Visa card, a debit card that is connected directly to your Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. And then while I was here in Sumatra in Banda Aceh, I dove into the world of Gojek and the Indonesian GoPay e-Wallet. So I know all about that as well. So anyway, I was sitting here and I was going to ride my bike to Luna. I mean, I went to all the trouble and expense of bringing my bicycle here. I might as well take advantage of that. But packing up my laptop and everything I need to edit video in a cafe. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but I’ve got my little knapsack there, and I think, oh, I’ll bring my laptop with me. Okay, I slide in my laptop. Good to go. No, I also need my mouse. And then I need, well, I need power. So, I need my USB-C 100W power supply for my laptop. And then I need all the adapters to be able to plug it into whatever outlets they have at this cafe. You never know how far away they are. So you need all of your cords, all of your extensions, all of your adapters, all of your cables. And then I want to be able to, you know, work while I’m there. So then I need my memory bag, you know, which has all my SSD drives and memory cards and other cables and everything. By the time you’re done packing up just to work on videos in the cafe, it’s a lot of gear. And then now, I’m riding my bicycle, so now I need to bring my bicycle tool kit with me in case I get a flat tire and a pump and bicycle lock and things like that. And then you got this heavy knapsack full of all your laptop gear and you ride your bike through the heat and traffic of Dumai. I mean, that alone is an Olympic level physical feat. Just riding a bicycle here is really something. And then you get there and you’re hot and you’re sweaty and you may not be able to park your bike. They may not have space for it and you got to lock it up in some weird place or it may start pouring rain. There’s been a lot of rain here surprisingly. Bone dry when I was in Malaysia, which I really liked. But here, suddenly the rain is happening a lot. Anyway, because of all that, I decided, let’s just go to Luna by car. Let’s summon. I was thinking about the scooter, which is like half the price of a car, faster than a car in many situations, but I get a little bit nervous about that. Not for me physically. You get on a scooter as a passenger here. Obviously, it’s riskier than being in a car. A much higher likelihood of getting into an accident. But at the same time, now I’ve got my laptop in a knapsack on my back and I’m thinking, you’re on a scooter now. You’re kind of overloaded. You’re top heavy. This weight just kind of makes you more awkward. And then if for whatever reason even the scooter falls over or the guy hits the gas when you’re not ready and you fall off the back of the scooter, may not hurt me physically, but I could land on the laptop, snap it in half. So I thought, adding all of that up, let’s go for a car. I don’t want to risk the laptop when I’m on a scooter with somebody else driving. If I were driving, no problems. But there’s a risk there. And if you tumble off the back and land on the pavement, I might scrape up a little bit. No big deal. But if I break my laptop, that’s a big deal. So, anyway, I decided to take a car. And then I was so excited to dive back into the world of technology because I was looking into this when I was in Banda Aceh, you know, Grab car, Grab food deliveries, Gojek, the go car, go food, go everything. And so what I ended up doing, I decided to use Go Car, which is part of the Gojek super app. And then I booked the car. Everything worked fine.
It cost 17,000? I think it was like 22,000 rupiah which is about 5 ringgit and that’s for a 4 kilometer car ride. It’s 2 km I saw for the driver to get from his location to my hotel and then it’s 4 km through really rough. The roads here are really rough. A lot of gaps in the road, lots of potholes. You go over a bridge, it’s like down the other side. It’s a rough ride for these cars. Wear and tear, how slow you go. So, a 4 km ride through Dumai, that’s no joke. And 2 km to get here. 4 kilometers to get to Luna Cafe. Brand new car, air conditioned, super comfortable. Driver spoke English. Absolutely amazing. All of that for five ringgit. I mean, it’s a no-brainer. Even if you’re a dedicated cyclist, take the car. It just makes sense. And then you get there and you’re nice. I dressed up as well because I knew I’d be hanging out in a fancy cafe and I don’t want to show up in cycling shorts and a t-shirt drenched in sweat, right? So I thought, take a car, you get the added benefit you can wear long pants. You can put on a shirt with collars and buttons and things and just look nicer while you’re hanging out in their cafe. So, I took the car, but then I booked it. I went through the steps on a go car, booked it. We’re looking for your driver. Your driver has accepted and is on his way. And then I saw I got a beep beep on my phone and it said five ringgit had been deducted from Touch ‘n Go. And I thought five ringgit, I didn’t just spend, where’s that charge coming from? But it turned out what I had done when I was in Banda Aceh was that in Gojek I had added my Touch ‘n Go Visa card. The Visa card number I had added it to Gojek as payment. So here I am. I’m in Indonesia in Sumatra using the local super app Gojek to summon a car and the payment went automatically from my Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. That was just amazing. It’s like oh that is so cool. I forgot that I had done that and I guess I had it set up automatically. Maybe in Gojek you can choose your payment option. I assumed I was going to have to pay because I thought I had set up QR code payment that it would go through Gojek and through GoPay and maybe I’d have to scan a QR code and pay with GoPay. I forgot that I chose Touch ‘n Go as the payment portal and then I had it set up as automatic for the Touch ‘n Go Visa card. And I’m glad I did that because that is by far the most convenient thing to do. I was a little bit worried that the driver is not up to speed with any of this and he doesn’t even know that the payment has already been made and we’re going to get to the coffee shop and he’s going to turn to me and say, “Oh, you know, 22,000 rupiah, please.” And if that happened, I was thinking about that while we were going there and I was thinking to myself, well, if the guy does not understand that the payment has already been made for whatever reason, he’s not accustomed to this and he’s never seen it before, I’ll just pay him whatever he asks for. I’m not going to make a big deal out of it. If he says, “Oh, 22,000 rupiah, please.” Well, I’ll give him the 22,000 rupiah in cash, and then I’ll just worry about it later for my next trip. I’ll end up paying double for that car ride, but I don’t want to sit in the car and go and fight with a guy and say, “No, I already paid online. Look, here’s the Touch.” You know, I don’t want to do all of that. So, I was just going to see how things played out. And then, to my delight and to my surprise, we got there and the driver was like, “All right, see you.” He knew the payment had already gone through. He just pulled up to the door of this really nice cafe and then he was just waiting for me to get out and go, right? So, he knew the payment had been completed already. So, that was amazing. And then you have the option of giving them a tip. Of course, that’s part of the app. So, you can give the guy a tip. And it worked out so amazingly, so incredibly. I was so happy that it went so smoothly getting the car. It’s nice when you go from two fixed locations that are well known, like you’re not standing at the side of the street and the driver can’t find you or doesn’t know where your pin is. But if you’re starting from a hotel, this Wisma Cemara Hotel, which is an older hotel here, it’s been here forever. Everybody knows about it. And then you’re going to a big fancy cafe like Luna, the driver is going to know both places. And I made sure in the app, it starts off with just your location as a pin, your physical location, but what you can do in the app is then choose to enter an actual location. So I overrode the location pin and just put in Wisma Cemara Hotel and that pops up in the system. So he knew he had to come to this hotel and then take me to Luna. Both very well-known places. No communication problems, no hassles, no problems with anything at all. It’s just the modern world of the traveler is so much better than the old world. I have to say that. Of course, you can look at it in other ways. I mean, I’ve been to Sumatra before, before the internet, before apps, before computers, before anything existed practically. And then back in those days, you had a paper map and it was really hard to get anywhere. What you did in those days, of course, you just rode in the local becak. The three-wheeled motorcycles or a bicycle, you know, you sit in the back, and then of course you’ve got to talk about where you’re going, fight through the language barrier, and then you got to argue about the price, and you always get overcharged. And that was part of the adventure of being a foreigner in a country like Indonesia. It was fun, but it was also really stressful. And I think thinking back to how I traveled in the old days, I do more now. I experience far more now than I did back in the pre-internet days. And that’s mainly because of communication. No matter how tough a traveler you are and how good you are at handling language barriers and that sort of thing. Back in the old days, you do less because it was harder to do going out, getting around the city, getting back to your hotel without getting completely lost. Ordering food, ordering drinks, figuring out how to order, how to communicate with people, how to pay. All of that took a lot of energy and in my case I did a lot less because of that difficulty. Today the ease of travel, the ease of communication, the ease of payment means a lot of those barriers have been removed. So, for someone like me, that means I’m far more likely to go out, interact with people, try new food, go to new places, have new experiences. It’s all because of how easy everything is, how stress free, assuming you are the master of technology that I have become today with all of the apps and the e-wallets and Google Translate, everything like that. So, it seems that way to me. It feels like I have a much richer, more fulfilling, more satisfying experience overseas now in the modern era than I did in the previous era. Maybe back in those days, you felt more special. I think about this quite a bit because it seems to me today because I guess I’m so wired into the world of travel vlogging and that sort of thing. It seems like half the world is on the move. So if you’re out here in Indonesia bombing around having new experiences, there’s nothing special about you anymore. It doesn’t feel very special because everybody seems to be doing it. At least when you’re on the internet, that’s what it feels like. Of course, when you’re in a place like Dumai. You feel like an explorer, like an astronaut, because I don’t think there are any other foreigners in this city right now. There’s no westerners anyway. I mean, I could travel up and down these streets all day today for the next week and I’m never going to see another person who looks like me. So, you still feel like you’re having a unique, unusual adventure specific to you. But as soon as you go on the internet, it sort of feels like everybody’s on the move. And I remember having that feeling in the old days too, like one of the big adventures of my life was my cycling hiking trip in Ethiopia. And I remember going there and that felt like such a special experience. But now of course you can go on the internet, type in cycling Ethiopia, and your screen will be filled with videos of people cycling around Ethiopia now. So, it doesn’t have that same feeling of I’m struggling to find the words, but feeling like you’re doing something brand new that nobody else is doing, having a unique kind of adventure. So, there is that side of the modern world. I think the ease of travel, the drop in airfares, technology, the easy availability of information means that far more people are willing to take the leap, hop on a plane, fly somewhere they’ve never been, and they’re able to navigate other countries easier than they could in the past. So, more people are living this kind of life. You’re not unique anymore. You never were really, but back in those days, I mean, you read travel books and then if you read a travel book, oh, here’s another person living the way I’ve been living, but it’s not in your face all day every day on YouTube that you are not unique. So, that’s kind of interesting. But anyway, that’s a bit of a tangent. All I was really talking about was going to Luna and how I used a combination of Gojek, Go Car, and then paying for the ride using my Touch ‘n Go e-wallet Visa card, which is all pretty amazing. And at the cafe itself, they’re hooked into QRIS, the Indonesian e-wallet system. You know, the QR code payment system here is called QRIS, Indonesian standard. So, I look for that everywhere I go. And at this cafe, they had this system where they total up your bill on this brand new fancy electronic cash register. And then if you tell them QR code, I actually had my wallet in my wallet. I had my smartphone. It’s funny. There’s a Freudian slip. I think of my phone as my wallet now because I do carry a wallet, a physical wallet with cash in my pocket. I bring it with me everywhere, but I never take it out anymore. So, in fact, this is my wallet, my e-wallet. Anyway, so I had the phone in my hand and then the woman at the cash register, she kind of looked at me and went, “Oh, QR, you want to pay using QRIS using a QR code?” And I says, “Yeah, QR, you know, QRIS.” And then what they do is they total up your bill and then they have a little handheld unit and that handheld unit displays a QR code that I had to scan using Touch ‘n Go and I scan it with Touch ‘n Go and then it appears on my phone with the amount already entered. So, I just have to confirm the payment and I feel like a master of the technological universe when I’m doing stuff like that and it’s very, very satisfying. So, that was my experience at Luna. Everything worked great.
I’m thinking about moving into a hotel for my remaining time here in Dumai near Luna. And I thought that would be a very easy thing to do because there are a lot of hotels here. But I don’t know what it is about me and my magnetic pull on the universe. Apparently, this week and this coming weekend is a big festival in Dumai. It’s the birthday of the city. So, it’s Dumai’s anniversary and apparently they have bazaars and big markets and festivals and performances. So, all the hotels are fully booked. I was like, “Oh, I’ll just stay here.” Because I saw all these hotels near Luna and it’s more downtown and I thought, “Why not change hotels and have a new experience, get to know a new neighborhood.” And then I’m looking at all these hotels. Oh, no rooms. Oh, no rooms. No room. Like, what is going on? How can all these low budget hotels be full? It made no sense to me. Then I started doing a bit of research and it’s like, it’s a holiday week. Of course it is. It’s because I’m here, right? Everywhere I go, no matter what I do, the dates I pick, it’s always a big local, national, international holiday of some kind. And I don’t know for sure that this festival is that big and is filling up the hotels but my AI buddies told me that I actually asked. I pointed this problem out to some of my AI buddies and it says, “Yeah, I’m here in Dumai and I’m trying to book a hotel room and everything is full. Can you tell me why that might be? What’s going on?” And they all said, “Well, this week is a big holiday celebration in Dumai, dummy.” The AI didn’t call me dummy, but so, who knows? I haven’t gone back online. I kind of looked into it briefly yesterday, and I have all these technological tricks to do with booking rooms as well. There’s all these weird things. Technology is so useful today but also very complex where if I go to Agoda and I check on this room or this hotel it’ll say nothing available but they might say one day you can stay here Monday night and that’s the only night available and that’s it and you think that’s it but then if you go to Google maps go to that hotel it will also say Monday is the only night available. But then if you click on that link and that link takes you to the Agoda listing for that hotel for Monday night and then you edit the time and say, “Make it one week. Give me six nights.” Then it gives it to you. It’s like it depends how you enter Agoda. If you just go straight to Agoda, it will say only one night is available. And if you try to get more nights, it says no, there’s nothing. Then you go to Google Maps, it says only one night available. But then you go from Google Maps to Agoda, one night is reserved. And then you extend it for six nights. Suddenly there’s a room available. Who knows why? So it actually depends even how you go to one of these sites. So anyway, at some point today, I’ll make a decision and I’ll get online and I’ll just try all these tricks, see if I can find something. The prices seem to have gone up as well. I’ve been getting this room for 31 ringgit and suddenly it jumped up to 41 ringgit and I think it’s because of the festival, because of the holiday coming up, the holiday weekend. I don’t know. It’s just the way it goes on Planet Doug. That is the way it goes.
Since I’m on the topic of technology, I can give an update about my laptop. In a previous morning chat session, as I was getting ready for the day, I talked about how I was having trouble with my laptop with copying video files in particular, copying from a memory card, right? I have like 100 gigabytes of GoPro video I want to copy to my laptop. So, I put the memory card, I take it out of the GoPro, put it into a memory card reader, plug that into my laptop, and then I copy the files over. Normally works blazingly fast, no issues at all. But then recently, it’s just been stuttering, lagging, and freezing. And I’ve been unable to multitask where the copying took so long because the copying process would go down to zero and freeze and just sit there and sit there and sit there and then after a long time it starts copying a little bit then down to zero again. Anyway, it was a big problem for me because I copy a lot of video files and then you end up sitting here for an hour and a half waiting for it to finish copying and while I was going down to zero, the rest of my laptop froze and I wasn’t able to edit video, do anything on the laptop. So, it’s like there’s something really weird going on here. I may have fixed that problem. It could have been just a glitch in the pipeline. I went into all the technology stuff asking all the questions, troubleshooting. 90% of the time all the troubleshooting doesn’t do anything. They tell you, “Just go here, change that.” And you change that, it has no effect. It never does. Including they always talk about drivers, right? So, I was talking with all my AI buddies, laying out all the problems, and I’m troubleshooting, doing the troubleshooting where I figured out that it was not the memory card. I’m pretty sure about that. All of my testing told me that the memory card was fine. The memory card reader was fine. It wasn’t the USB ports on the laptop, those were fine. So, it was something internal in the laptop. We isolated that. And then when you get to that point, they always say, “Well, just update the drivers.” Everyone thinks that’s like a magic fix. Oh, problem with your laptop. Update the drivers. And it never ever does anything, does it? But anyway, in this case, I got that advice. Oh, this is a driver problem. You should go to the ASUS support website, see if there’s updated drivers, and just download them and install them. So, I went through that whole process, and that’s never as easy as you might expect. It feels like a laptop this advanced, this powerful. It’s an ASUS TUF A16 gaming edition laptop with all AMD components, AMD, you know, a GPU, a dedicated GPU and it’s a good laptop. And you would think the ASUS system through Armoury Crate and updates and this and that, all the things it should know what’s going on with your laptop, that you are fully up to date with everything you need, right? You shouldn’t have to think about anything really. But I went to the ASUS website and I went to, I’m logged into my account where this laptop is registered, it knows what laptop I have and then, you know, I can see it. There’s the name of my laptop, the model, everything is the same. And here are all these updates, but there’s no way to tell whether you need them or not. They’re not sorted or dated in any way that makes sense to me. You would think ASUS would be able to scan my laptop and say, “Here are updated drivers,” but it doesn’t. I went to the chipset drivers and there was a list of them, and I was like, what are all these chipset drivers? Because they all had dates on them and some of them went back to like 2024 and then 2025 and then the most recent one was 2025. So I’m thinking, what I download all of them. I download the most recent one, but the most recent one was like I said 2025. Maybe I already have the 2026 chipset downloaded and installed and by downloading 2025, maybe I’m installing an older chipset and maybe I’m going to screw up my, it doesn’t tell you what to do and it feels like it should be smarter than that. Anyway, I eventually took a chance because I did all this research chatting with all my AI buddies and I decided, okay, it’s worth the risk. Let’s just see. And I downloaded the chipset driver that was at the top of the list, the most recent one. And I downloaded it. It downloads. You got an executable file. You click on that, double click on that, it installs it. You reboot, restart, and the problem went away. So, in a rare moment downloading a new driver, either the new driver, it could have been an old driver for all I know. I might have replaced a new driver with an old one, but whatever happened, whatever the pipeline barrier was, the block, it seems to have disappeared. So, that’s good news. So, I was worried that maybe the SSD drives were failing. That was the most obvious problem, but apparently it was just a glitch and I cleared out the glitch. So, my laptop is working fine again. So, bullet dodged there.
And speaking of technology, new cameras have hit the market and that’s pretty exciting. Figure I might as well throw my hat in the ring and talk about the new GoPros a little bit. There’s been rumors for a long time that GoPro is going to do something big because a month ago, two months ago, the news was leaked or GoPro, no, GoPro announced it that they have a new processor, the GP3 processor. And it’s a new processor in many, many, many years. And last year, they skipped the usual camera release. They normally release a new GoPro Hero, a new version every year. And then last year, they were supposed to release the GoPro Hero 13, but they just didn’t. And then they announced in the spring this GP3 processor and they showed all this video from the new GoPro cameras using this new processor saying, “Something big is coming. Everybody out there get excited.” And all of this video and photo, the video and photos were completely different from normal action camera video and photos which made me personally very nervous. And it turns out my nervousness was justified. What I mean is they posted a photo of craters on the moon in sharp resolution. So, how in the world are they getting that out of a GoPro? Like any camera that took that photo is not a GoPro action camera anymore. It has to be a completely different kind of camera. So, I was worried that GoPro was going to do another 180° turn and then produce something brand new that’s going to be of no use to me. So, what I was hoping for, GP3, new processor, more powerful, better heat management. So, therefore, they can produce a GoPro Hero 14 with far better battery life, never overheats, never glitches, never freezes, and much, much better low light. You know what I mean? Take the GoPro Hero 13, the most recent one, insert the GP3 chip, make it better. But technology companies, they don’t like doing that as a rule. Like every time they add more power to whatever object it is, whatever device it is, instead of using that power to make their camera better, they just add more and more and more features that use up all that extra power, pushes it to the limit, and then it still just kind of doesn’t really work any better than before. And then they add all these things that don’t make any difference to me. You know, the video quality of my GoPro Hero 12, I think, is amazing. It’s good enough for me. So, you don’t have to make the video quality better and better and better. So, if you got the GP3 chip, fix what’s wrong with the camera, then you can add better video quality if you want, but first fix what’s wrong, then add new features. But they just add new features. It’s sort of like taking a car with a 1.8 L engine in it and then you take that car and put a 3 L engine in it, but instead of just letting the car drive better and drive faster, they add four tons of weight to the car because they can because the engine’s more powerful. So, they just make the car heavier and that just uses up all the extra power and you don’t get any benefit from it. That’s what technology companies do. And I was worried GoPro was going to do that. And then they just announced they did that. Of course, the jury is still out. No one has been able to post videos reviewing the new cameras using them yet. So, we don’t know how these cameras actually work, but from my point of view, I don’t like the direction that GoPro took. The company confuses me because they do these turns rather than just making what they have better and better like DJI does. Every new version of the action, they just make it better, make it better, adding real features that people need and want and use. GoPro will just come completely out of left field. Even the GoPro Hero 13, it’s like what the heck? Like rather than taking the GoPro Hero 12 and just making it better, they redesigned the whole camera again, moved things around, a new battery, this, that, the other thing. And it’s just like ah. And what they focused on for the GoPro Hero 13 was accessories, fancy lenses, all these weird lenses you could buy. And that doesn’t do me any good. So that’s what they did with the Hero 13. Now I’m waiting for the Hero 14. And what does GoPro announce? I think they’re abandoning the Hero line. I’ve heard nothing about another Hero. I think the Hero 13, they might just give up. That’s the end. That’s the last Hero they’re ever going to make. They’ve released what they call the Mission, the GoPro Mission. And of course, if you’re following the news, you know there’s three versions. There’s the standard, the GoPro Mission One. Then there’s the GoPro Mission One Pro, and then of course is the GoPro Mission ILS, interchangeable lens system. So, the first two, the Mission One and the Mission One Pro, those are still classic action cameras. Technically, they’re kind of the GoPro Hero 14, but all three cameras have a 1-inch sensor. So, that’s the headline change. They added a 1-inch sensor. And I’m pretty sure I know why they did this. They’re losing market share to DJI, to Insta360. They needed to really do something to jump ahead to offer something that none of the other camera companies are offering right now. And they’re taking a chance and they’re saying, “Let’s make a brand new camera built around a 1-inch sensor.” Most people are deliriously happy about this because people in the action camera world have been crying out for a 1-inch sensor forever. They wanted the Action 5 from DJI to have a 1-inch sensor. They wanted the Action 6 to have a 1-inch. They want the Insta360 Ace Pro 2 and 3 to have a 1-inch sensor. The idea is a bigger sensor is better. Bigger is better. You’re going to get better image quality, better low light, better this, better that. But DJI and Insta360 have proven you can get really, really good low light, better video quality without jumping up in sensor size. With GoPro using the GP3 processor with AI capability, they could add low light capability just fine using the old sensor. They didn’t need to go to a 1-inch sensor. And going to a 1-inch sensor is not like a fix-all. It’s not like a magic bullet that just gives you better everything because it introduces more problems you have to deal with. Again, I’m not an optical engineer, but a 1-inch sensor means you need different lenses. And my understanding is that with a very small camera, you don’t have a lot of room between the lens and the sensor. So, in order to get that lens to aim the light at that bigger sensor, you have to do some real engineering to get that done. And I think the lens has to be wider and wider and wider, very wide lens, in order to get the light lined up onto that sensor properly. And that can add all kinds of issues that we don’t know about yet. It could easily make the camera worse, not better in terms of video quality. We don’t know yet. We’ll see. And with a 1-inch sensor, now you’re dealing with depth of field issues. And one thing I like about action cameras, the GoPro Hero 12, it has essentially infinite focus. I like that. You don’t have to worry about what’s in focus, what isn’t. Everything is in focus. If I’m holding the camera out here, my face is roughly in focus. The background is in focus. Everything is in focus. And for a travel vlogger, that’s what I want. I want everything to be visible all the time. And if you got a 1-inch sensor, well, now you have the option of having a blurry background, which is more cinematic. People love the look of the bokeh, you know, the blurry background or as Con Camera Conspiracies would say, the tonality. But I don’t need that. If I want that, well, I have other cameras that can do that. If I want a photo of something with an artistic blurry background, well, I’m just going to use a camera to do that. I don’t need my video action vlogging camera to do that. And there is a risk that with a 1-inch sensor, you’re going to be forced to have a blurry background like the DJI Pocket 3 and now the Pocket 4 which was just released. It uses a 1-inch sensor. It’s been using a 1-inch sensor for ages. And one thing people like about that is it gives that a little bit of bokeh in the background, a little bit of a blurry background. And people like that cinematic look, but me personally, I don’t like it. That’s one of the things I don’t like about the Pocket 3. I don’t want my background blurry. If there’s a sign in the background, I want people to be able to read it. If there’s a food stall in the background, they’re making some food. I want people to be able to see the stall, see the food clearly. I don’t want everything blurry back there. So, the GoPro Mission One and Mission One Pro, the action cameras, now has a 1-inch sensor. And who knows? Well, according to the GoPro press release, if you go to the GoPro website, you can read all about it. They’re claiming that overheating thing of the past, that this camera will run forever and never overheat. So, your battery will run out of power before there’s any overheating. So, overheating done. The GP3 processor is so much more efficient that it just doesn’t produce heat. It’s so much more powerful. Don’t worry about it. No more GoPro overheating. Good. They also say battery life, surprisingly, you would think the GP3 being more powerful would need more power to run it, but they’re saying nope, far better battery life. So, there’s huge increases in battery life, thermal management, all of that has been fixed according to them. It’s going to get far better low light capability, also good. But those are good changes because of the 1-inch sensor and the GP3. But what are the bad changes? What are the negative things that are coming? Because they’re not taking a proven technology like the GoPro Hero. They’ve been incrementally working on the design and the features for year after year after year. It’s proven mature technology. The GoPro Mission. It’s a brand new camera essentially that they had to build from the ground up based on a brand new processor, brand new sensor. So, who knows what works and what doesn’t? What problems are being introduced? And stabilization because action cameras, one of the reasons they have such amazing stabilization is because they use a relatively small sensor and then you can stabilize that pretty easily. Now you’ve got a 1-inch sensor. What does that mean for stabilization, for horizon lock, for all of these things? They do talk about massive improvements in other areas like slow motion where now you can, I don’t even care about slow motion, so I don’t pay attention to these specs, but they’re talking about how we can do 1080p at 920 frames per second, which apparently is huge. People that love slow motion, they’re very excited about this. Nobody’s been able to do this. So, you’ve got 4K at 240, I think, 4K video at 240 frames per second and then 1080p at 960. Slow motion people are crazy excited about this. So, I guess that’s a good thing. It’s a new feature that people want, but I don’t care about that. So, they took the GP3 processor and they’re using all that power to provide features that I don’t have any interest in. So that’s the GoPro Mission One, Mission One Pro. The Mission One, Mission One Pro, they’re essentially the same camera except the Mission One is crippled a little bit. So all those slow motion things that I talked about, some of the high-end new features, they’ve removed it from the Mission One, and it’s going to be a little bit cheaper. The Mission One Pro is the flagship. So, they’re the same camera, same processor, same sensor, but they basically added the full suite of features for the Pro and then they crippled the standard a little bit just to make it cheaper. So, two different price points and that’s really the only difference between them as far as I can tell. What else did they do? Uses the same battery as the Hero 13, which surprised me. And it’s a little bit bigger than the Hero 13. A little bit heavier. And the lens is more bulbous. It’s sticking out from the camera more. I think has to be because of the 1-inch sensor. And you have a lens hood makes it look bigger, a little bit less svelte and action camera like, but I’m surprised they kept it as small and light as they did. So that’s a good thing. And then the other one, I’m not going to talk about that very much, but that’s the interchangeable lens system, the ILS. And to my amazement, it has a Micro Four Thirds mount. And that came completely out of left field. I don’t think anybody was really expecting that because if you’re a camera nerd, you know about Micro Four Thirds. And Micro Four Thirds is a very niche category dominated by Olympus and Panasonic. I know all about Micro Four Thirds because I’ve had an Olympus Micro Four Thirds camera for the last 15, 17, 18 years. So I’m fully on board with Micro Four Thirds. I’ve got Micro Four Thirds cameras, Micro Four Thirds lenses. But for most people, I think if you talked to them 2 months ago, they would have said Micro Four Thirds is dying. It’s a dead end as far as photography and videography is concerned because everybody is all about full frame and full-frame sensors, big sensors, big lenses and then you got the Nikon mount and the Sony mount and the Fuji mount and all those different mounting systems. Micro Four Thirds, everybody thought that’s just a dead technology. And suddenly GoPro comes out with an action camera, technically the GoPro Mission that has a Micro Four Thirds mount, but it’s on a 1-inch sensor. It’s just so weird. I’m sure there’s a market for it. GoPro wouldn’t do it if they didn’t think they could sell it, but it’s just weird. Normally you would use a Micro Four Thirds mount so you can mount a Micro Four Thirds lens which puts light on a Micro Four Thirds sensor. It’s a package. Micro Four Thirds sensor is the starting point and then you need a Micro Four Thirds lens to work well. And then Olympus and Panasonic developed a proprietary mounting system for Micro Four Thirds lenses. It’s owned by Olympus and Panasonic. So GoPro, I think, must have made a deal with them. “Can we use the Micro Four Thirds mount?” And that gives them access to the entire world of Micro Four Thirds lenses from companies like Olympus, Panasonic, Voigtlander. And these lenses are amazing. They’re high quality lenses and they have the big advantage of being smaller and lighter. So choosing Micro Four Thirds makes a lot of sense, but it came completely out of left field. I never would have expected it, but there’s all kinds of weird things because like I said, it’s being used not with a Micro Four Thirds sensor, but with a 1-inch sensor. So now you’re mounting lenses from a Micro Four Thirds system on a 1-inch camera and it’s like, well how is that going to work exactly? So now you’ve got a 2.6, I’ve heard as high as a three times crop. So anywhere from 2.6 to three times crop. So there’s no way you’re getting wide angle on that camera. So you can’t use it for vlogging. It’s more like a telephoto system because every lens you put on it, it basically triples the focal length in terms of a full-frame equivalent. So, very, very interesting. And the lens mount has no electronic contact points, so there’s no communication between the lens and the camera. It’s just basically a static mount. You just click it on, but they’re not talking to each other, which means no autofocus. I think it means no auto exposure. So, it’s not really a camera connected to a Micro Four Thirds lens. It’s not like having it mounted on an Olympus or a Panasonic camera body. It’s just basically sitting there doing nothing, not talking to the camera. So, you have to manually focus. So it’s just a very unusual beast that they created. And who knows, I’ve heard from a lot of people that the film industry is going to be all over this. They call them crash cams that they can put this camera, this GoPro with a high quality lens into a car during a car crash scene and they don’t have to worry as much about the camera being damaged. So, I guess they call that a crash cam. So, they’re getting much higher video quality at a much cheaper price. They don’t have to put an expensive camera into this car that’s going over the cliff and exploding or whatever. So, who knows? Maybe there’s a huge market for this, but for someone like me, I have no use for it at all. I have three Micro Four Thirds lenses, but it’s not like I’m going to buy a GoPro to attach them. I already have an Olympus camera body that I can attach them to. So, to me, it’s a nothing camera, the ILS, but who knows?
Now, where things get really interesting for me, for Planet Doug, just drives me crazy is the accessories. And most people haven’t talked about the accessories very much, but for me, that’s the most interesting thing because along with the Mission One and the Mission One Pro, GoPro released a brand new Media Mod and a GoPro wireless microphone system. And this is so crazy to me because on the one hand, from my point of view, amazing. I love it. Love the new Media Mod. Loved the new GoPro wireless mic system. I’ve been wanting them to do that for years and years and years.
But in order to take advantage of that, they finally released a brand new Media Mod with a ton of improvements where they fixed most of the problems with the Media Mod. But it doesn’t do me any good because in order to use the new Media Mod, you have to buy the new GoPro. It only fits the GoPro Mission. So, this goes back years for me, years and years and years. And this is probably my main beef with GoPro as a company is they release a product, they dump it on the market, and then they never refine it. They never improve it. They never listen to customer feedback. So, they released the GoPro Media Mod, how many years ago now? 7 years ago, eight. A long time ago. I remember getting the Media Mod. I ordered it and I did like an hour and a half video yelling about how much I hated the Media Mod. As soon as I thought it would be amazing, but as soon as I got it in my hands and I unboxed it and I put a GoPro inside, all these design problems became apparent. I was like, “What? You did that?” It was so badly designed in two main areas. And I just couldn’t believe they released a product like that. It was so badly designed, but it was still the best way to attach an external microphone. So, I had no choice but to use it. And I’ve been using it ever since. And I’ve just hated it all the time because the main problem with the Media Mod is every time you need to change the battery, you have to disassemble your entire mount. So you’re out there hiking, shooting video with your GoPro. You’re cycling. You’re in the middle of a busy city. Crazy traffic everywhere. Sun is beating down. Now you need to change the battery. It’s like technological surgery where you’re carefully constructed mount how you mounted the GoPro on your chest harness, on your helmet, on your bicycle GoPro broomstick mount. You have to unscrew the thumb screw. Dismantle the whole thing. Open the Media Mod. Pull out the GoPro. Then you can finally change the battery. Put it back and you have to reassemble the whole thing every single time. It’s really awful. It’s so irritating. It’s difficult to do and it has this knock-on effect of you actually losing things. I’ve done it myself because you’re in the middle of traffic. You’ve parked your bicycle at the side of the road. You’re dealing with a crowded chaotic environment. You got all these bits and pieces. The thumb screw, the mounting rig, you have to remove the microphone. You’re putting all this stuff down. Where do you put it? Put it on the ground. Hold it in your hand. You’re dropping things. You’re nearly losing things. And one time when I was in Sumatra, I was doing all of this and then of course you’re changing the batteries and you got so many bits and pieces. You put the battery down temporarily on your bicycle. You reassemble the GoPro, put the new battery in, change the memory card, put it on, put it on the bike, you got to line everything up again because you’ve moved all the mounting points. You’ve got to get it lined up. And then I got on my bicycle and I rode away and I forgot I put the battery on the bicycle. So, the Media Mod has led to me losing batteries, losing mounting gear. And my original Media Mod, you have to open it so many times. Every day I go through three or four batteries. I’m opening the door, pulling out the GoPro, doing all this. And over time, because you open the door so many times, the hinge broke. It just broke into pieces. So, my original Media Mod broke. And because I had to open it so many times I had to buy a brand new Media Mod. So, the Media Mod has been the bane of my existence with GoPro. And year after year after year, I keep waiting for GoPro to fix it. And one thing they could do to fix it is so easy. Because one of the main problems with the Media Mod, I’m babbling here, but hey, you signed up for Planet Doug, you know what you’re going to get. The Media Mod does not have its own mounting system. It just has a hole in the bottom. So, you have to take the fingers from the GoPro, lower them through the hole. So, you’re using the GoPro’s mounting fingers that go through the Media Mod. That’s why you have to dismantle the whole mounting apparatus because in order to take the GoPro out of the Media Mod, it’s blocked by the fingers. You have to disassemble everything, raise the fingers, then you can pull the GoPro out. All they needed to do was take this little plastic case and on the bottom, instead of having an open hole, just make it a flat hole and put a couple of GoPro fingers on the bottom. Boom. Problem solved. It would have taken a GoPro engineer a weekend over a coffee break. They could have designed it, put it out on the market. DJI, they would have done it. They would have fixed it the first year. Insta360 first year they would have heard all of us people complaining about the Media Mod. They would have fixed it in one year. “Yeah, we see what you’re talking about. We’ll fix it. Here you are. New version.” GoPro, they dumped the Media Mod on us and they said, “Well, that’s your problem now.” And how many years have gone by and they couldn’t be bothered to fix it? That’s the biggest problem with GoPro for me. So now finally they put out a new Media Mod and they fixed that mounting problem with the new one, but I can’t use it unless I buy a GoPro Mission. So they’re forcing me to buy into an entirely new camera system just to take advantage of the redesigned Media Mod. I mean, that’s GoPro in a nutshell. So, good news, new Media Mod. Bad news, you have to buy a new camera to use it. A whole new camera system basically. So, that’s GoPro for you. The other product, the wireless mic, we don’t know yet whether that’s good, medium, or terrible. We don’t know yet. We’ll have to wait till it gets released. And I’ve been wanting GoPro to do something about audio for years. As long as I’ve been complaining about the Media Mod, I’ve also been complaining about audio because I won’t go into that in depth. That would be here for another 20 minutes. But I really wanted them to produce a microphone system, like a GoPro branded wireless mic that connects directly to the camera via Bluetooth without needing a receiver. DJI has it, Insta360 has it. They’ve had it for years. And they’ve actually produced three or four generations of their microphones. In DJI’s case, really high quality audio, direct to camera, Bluetooth connection, don’t need a receiver. It’s amazing. So, you don’t even need a Media Mod. And I wanted GoPro to do the same. But, of course, year after year after year, they’re like, nah, we’ll just leave you. We’ll abandon you as far as audio is concerned. So, now they finally released a GoPro wireless mic system that can connect to the Mission One via Bluetooth, which is amazing. It does have a receiver as well, but you don’t have to use the receiver. You could do a direct connection. So, now you got the possibility. The GoPro Mission One Pro, tiny microphone connection. No cords, no Media Mod, no receivers, no batteries in the receiver, which sounds amazing to me. And when I was reading about the microphone in the GoPro release about it, to my amazement, they said it was backwards compatible with all Hero cameras. But I think there’s a caveat in terms of audio quality because the GoPro Hero 12 and Hero 13, you can connect microphones to them via Bluetooth, but the audio quality is horrendous. It’s just awful. It’s basically unusable. The Mission One and the Mission One Pro, I’m pretty sure it has brand new Bluetooth audio technology magic. So that when you connect this GoPro microphone to the Mission One or Mission One Pro, you’re going to get high quality audio via Bluetooth. Amazing. And you can connect that microphone to my Hero 12 via Bluetooth. At least I think you can, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be using the old Bluetooth in the camera. So therefore, the audio quality is going to suck. It’s going to be unusable. So even though they’ve released a brand new GoPro wireless mic system, I think the only way to take advantage of it is to buy the new GoPro camera system. We Hero, we loyal GoPro Hero people have been abandoned. From my point of view, not being a businessman, I think what GoPro should have done was given us both. Why not? You’ve got the GP3 processor. Amazing. Put it into a Hero. Let’s make a GoPro Hero 14. Let’s keep the Hero line going. Take advantage of the power of the GP3 processor and make a 1-inch sensor model. Give us both. Why not? I mean, I know people are going to say, “You can’t do that because sales of the Hero will cannibalize sales of the Mission. It’s not good business strategy.” But I don’t buy into this cannibalization argument. I hear it all the time, but I don’t really buy it because if they released a GoPro Hero 14 with a GP3 processor that connected to this GoPro wireless system, I would buy it. GoPro Hero owners would upgrade to the Hero 14. Other people that want to take a chance with the 1-inch sensor, they’re going to buy the Mission Pro. So, I’m still buying a GoPro product, right? So, if they release a Hero 14 and a Mission Pro, the Mission One Pro, if they did that, anybody that buys a Hero 14, sure it’s cannibalizing sales of the Mission, but you’re still buying a GoPro product. You see what I mean? I think a lot of people will look at this GoPro Mission One and if the 1-inch sensor doesn’t really work for them, they’re abandoning ship. They’re going to go for DJI. They’re going to go for the new Insta360 Ace Pro 3, which should be coming out this year. So, they’re going to lose GoPro customers. I would take the risk of cannibalizing sales. Anyway, that’s what I wish they had done. Do both. You want to make a GoPro with a 1-inch sensor to blow away the competition? Go nuts. Go do this big experiment coming way out of left field. But don’t abandon the Hero line. Keep that going as well. Now you’ve got a choice. GoPro Hero 14 with the GP3 1-inch sensor. GoPro Mission One Pro with a 1-inch sensor GP3 processor. Give us both. I think that would have been amazing. But I’m never going to get what I want here on Planet Doug. And I know I’ve been babbling about this for a long time, but if you stuck with me this long, it’s because you’re interested in technology. If you’re not, you stopped watching this video ages ago. So, I’ll keep going. I just saw this morning a video from a guy who does Micro Four Thirds rumors or leaks of all kinds. Basically, he does camera leaks on his YouTube channel and he posted a video that Insta360 is about to launch a Micro Four Thirds camera and this one is going to have a Micro Four Thirds sensor and the Micro Four Thirds mount for Micro Four Thirds lenses. Right. So, I find that fascinating because another one of my pet peeves going back a decade is that the big camera manufacturers were ignoring vlogging for the most part. Sony, Nikon, Fuji, Canon, all the big camera companies, they’ve stayed focused on photography. And for vlogging, for video, they would throw us a bone from time to time. They take one of their photography cameras and they kind of tweak it a little bit and say, “Here’s your vlogging camera.” But they’re not taking it seriously. Stabilization in particular is just not usable. Two things basically. Stabilization isn’t good enough. Field of view isn’t wide enough. So none of these vlogging cameras have worked at all. So basically Nikon, Canon, Fuji, Sony, they’ve ignored the vlogging market. They guess they don’t think they can make money there for the most part. But now what we’re seeing is the action camera companies, Insta360, GoPro, I think they’re seeing there is a market there. So rather than the camera companies moving into this new market, it’s the GoPro companies, Insta360, DJI, they’re the ones moving into camera territory. They’re taking advantage of this empty space. So now you see GoPro, they’re making an interchangeable lens system based on Micro Four Thirds. Insta360 is about to release a mirrorless camera. And I’m hoping that because it’s Insta360, this will be a video camera first and foremost with excellent stabilization, excellent audio systems, and excellent field of view possibilities because you’ve got interchangeable lenses. So, I’m hoping that this is signaling a shift where all of the vlogging companies, the action camera companies, this market that the big camera companies have ignored, they’re going to take over. And because they are video companies first and foremost, we’re finally going to get good vlogging cameras. I mean, this GoPro ILS, the Mission ILS, that’s not a vlogging camera. So, GoPro missed the boat on that. But the fact that they’re using Micro Four Thirds lenses is breathing new life into the Micro Four Thirds market. And now, Insta360 coming out with a Micro Four Thirds camera of their own. That’s very interesting. That’s more life into Micro Four Thirds. This camera system that everybody was saying is dead, is a dead end. And the biggest problem there, by the way, is that Olympus and Panasonic, they abandoned their roots because the main advantage when Micro Four Thirds was launched was how small and light they were. Small lenses, small camera bodies, much smaller than the competition. But over time, their camera bodies have just been on steroids. The new Panasonic Micro Four Thirds camera bodies, they’re huge and heavy. So full-frame cameras are actually smaller and lighter than the Micro Four Thirds cameras now, which is completely insane. But now we’re seeing a move up from action cameras into Micro Four Thirds. And they’re starting from the point of view of small and light. So I’m hoping they’re going to go back to Micro Four Thirds basics. And they’re going to focus on keeping their cameras as small and light as possible to match with the small and light Micro Four Thirds lenses. But of course, this is going to take time. It’s not like, “This fixed all of my problems that tomorrow I can go buy the Insta360 perfect vlogging camera.” That’s not going to happen. But I see something very interesting and promising there in the world of Micro Four Thirds, which as I said, everybody would have told you it’s a very niche market. It’s a dead end. Suddenly, it’s coming to life, which is really, really weird but also very interesting.
And if all of that camera talk was not enough, not exciting enough, this morning I woke up to an absolute blizzard of YouTube videos about the new DJI Pocket 4. I guess I knew the Pocket 4 was on its way, but I lost track of it. I wasn’t thinking about it. I think it was actually last night I saw the first videos popping up on YouTube. Potato Jet posted a review of the Pocket 4, comparing it, of course, to the legendary Pocket 3. And then this morning, everybody posted their videos. So, I’ve been watching all these videos about the brand new Pocket 4. And it looks amazing. Again, the Pocket 3 sits in an interesting spot in the camera market for me because as I said, most of the action camera people haven’t really focused on vlogging. GoPro in particular has ignored vlogging. DJI has done better, but these companies are still making action cameras. They’re not really making vlogging cameras. The big camera manufacturers, same thing. They’re focused on photography. They’re ignoring the vlogging market. They have been for a long time. Right in the middle was the DJI Pocket series, which took the camera world by storm. And in terms of vlogging for a certain type of person, it fills the gap. It was nearly a perfect vlogging camera. It is the one camera that stood out that pretty much everybody loved, especially when you got to the Pocket 3. I think the original Pocket, the Pocket 2 had issues. It was good. It was promising. People liked it. But man, it really came into its own with the Pocket 3, which from many perspectives was almost a perfect camera, a rare beast in the camera world where they got nearly everything right with the Pocket 3. It’s a unique camera in the marketplace and I think I was surprised it took so long but I am hearing rumors that other people are now going to copy it in terms of the form factor. So I think Insta360 this year is also going to release their version of the Pocket 3, basically the same form factor, the gimbal, all of that 1-inch sensor. So, they’re going to make their own version of it. I’m surprised it’s taken this long because the Pocket 3 just took the camera market by storm. It feels like everybody but me had a Pocket 3. Everybody loves it. It’s so good in so many ways. I never considered the Pocket 3. Mainly because of the gimbal and the form factor. It’s just the way I shoot video. I just needed one camera that can do everything and that would be dictated by the extreme case. So with my GoPro, I mount it on my bicycle and it works on my bicycle and then I can take it off the bicycle, mount it on my hand grip, it works. I can mount it on a tripod, it works. I can go swimming with it. It works. I can go hiking with it. It basically works more or less everywhere. And what I do normally when I’m shooting video, I hold my camera in my hand 24 hours a day. It’s like glued to my hand. I just hold it on a grip. And the way the grip I use, it’s got a big jaws on it. And then if I need hands-free, I just clip it to my neck mount or I dangle the camera from my pocket. So I’m just walking through the subway system with my camera just bouncing against my leg. If I go into 7-Eleven and I’m not filming anything. I just take the GoPro and I drop it on the counter so that I can get out my phone, pay with Touch ‘n Go, get my milk, and I pick up the camera. All of those things you can’t do with the Pocket 3. I can’t put it on a bicycle. I can’t drop it on the counter. I can’t dangle it from my leg. I can’t go through a crowd and have my camera bouncing off other people because it’s hanging from my leg. So, when I tested the Pocket 3, considering how expensive it was, there just weren’t enough use cases for me to use it. Far better video quality than a GoPro, obviously, than any action camera. It looks like real video. That blurry background, I’m not that excited about it, but I could live with it. I could use it for walking and talking. But the problem is when I’m not talking anymore with the GoPro, I’m walking and I’m talking. And then when I’m finished talking and I want to just put the camera aside for a minute, I just hit stop recording and I just leave the camera in my hand. I’m just walking and swinging the camera at my side and I see something interesting. Record. Talk. It’s in my hand all the time. With the Pocket 3, I found I couldn’t do that because I’m walking along. I’m talking into the Pocket 3. And now I hit stop record, but the gimbal keeps working. It never stops. The motors are trying to keep the gimbal stable. So if I turn it upside down and I’m walking with my arm swinging, I can hear the motors trying to adjust for all this swinging motion. So you basically have to turn the camera off and put it away in between shoots. And that’s why I couldn’t use it because you’re walking along. Now I’m done. Turn it off. Wait for the gimbal to go back into position. Put it in its case. Put it away. Now you want to film something. You got to take it out of your pocket. Take it out of the case. Turn it on. Record again. And that just didn’t fit into my workflow. Plus, of course, you can’t take it to the beach. Can’t take it swimming. Can’t really take it hiking. Can’t drop it on the counter. All these things. Can’t mount it on a bicycle, can’t mount it on a scooter. So, in terms of how much it cost, how much use I would get out of it, it was never on my radar to buy one. But I constantly think about it because I can see it being so useful in so many situations. Right now, like when I go back to Malaysia, I’m going to be riding my bicycle around Malaysia and I brought my Olympus with me. So, I have my Olympus, three Olympus lenses, and I would normally use it in this situation. I would mount it on a tripod for recording these talking head videos because it gives better video quality, I think, than the GoPro does in low light. And if I go out into the night market at night, any kind of a low light situation, I can use the Olympus. But the problem with that is it weighs a lot. My Olympus, the batteries, the charger, three lenses. The main lens is a big heavy lens. I think I weighed it, but I’m adding 7 or 8 pounds to my trailer, basically to my bicycle, and I could replace all of that with the Pocket. So, if I had the Pocket, I just got this tiny thing. The video quality is as good as the Olympus, even better probably, and then I would save a lot of weight. So, that would be the main advantage for me. And now, anyway, that’s all about the Pocket series. The Pocket 4, based on all the reviews I’ve seen, all the experts are saying amazing. It’s better than the Pocket 3, but there’s no need to upgrade. If you own the Pocket 3 and you’re happy with it, you don’t need to buy the Pocket 4. It’s better than the Pocket 3. The video actually looks better and the tracking is far improved over the Pocket 3. It has an audio feature, which I love, where if you had two microphones connected, you know, me and another person, and you have the built-in mics on the Pocket itself, all of that audio is being saved with the video. So, when you copy the video into your editing program, you get like four audio tracks, one from each microphone. So, you can’t do that with a GoPro, for example. Like right now, I’m recording with the Rode Wireless Go microphone, which is here under my shirt. But if this screws up, if the battery dies, let me check that I still have battery.
Yep. So, if this microphone dies, I have no audio. But with the Pocket 4, you still have audio because you’re recording audio from all the microphones all at once and it’s all being saved embedded with the video. For someone like me, that is incredible. I love that feature. Most other people in the reviews, they don’t even pay attention to it. But for me, these convenience, usability features are far more important than, oh, 960 slow motion frames per second or, oh, the low light black saturation is slightly better or, I can use D-Log instead of D-Log M, things like that. That’s what everybody gets excited about. It’s like, better video quality. I don’t care about that. The video quality is good enough already. All cameras give amazing video quality. I don’t care what camera you’re talking about. So, you don’t have to worry about video quality anymore, unless you’re a cinematographer working for a big budget operation. But, it’s all these usability features. That’s what I’m excited about. So, the Pocket 4 looks amazing. So I was just chatting with Wander Eats, Daryl, my friend in Kuala Lumpur, and I was writing to him that man, that Pocket 4, that’s peak camera tech right there. Makes you want to go to your couch cushion, start digging around in the background looking for any extra coins, scraping up any money you can to buy one of those because that’s a pretty amazing camera even for someone like me because I would use it for this talking head. I would use it when I go out at night for low light walk and talk. I would have to have both. Of course, I would have to have the Pocket 4 and a GoPro at the same time. Clearly, but the savings in weight would be amazing compared to carrying my Olympus system. So if I had a magic wand and I could turn my Olympus into a Pocket 4, I’d probably make the switch at this point just for the advantage of having a much smaller, lighter system that gives equivalent video quality, right? But who knows, the GoPro Mission One Pro, low light capability, add that. No overheating, 1-inch sensor, amazing video quality. Assuming it works with the new Media Mod, the new microphone system, the GoPro Mission One Pro could be an amazing vlogging camera. It could be, but it really depends how they implemented that 1-inch sensor and we have to wait until we see the testing. I think the camera is being officially launched 2 days from now. It’s April 17th as I record this and I think it’s being officially launched April 19th and then the embargo will be lifted and everybody can post their initial review videos. Most of them will be positive, of course, because GoPro will have reached out to all the famous YouTubers and say, “If we send you a free camera, will you review it?” Or they pay for reviews. Who knows what they do? But of course, the early reviews are going to be overwhelmingly positive. They always are. And then I got to wait for a month or two. Regular users start posting videos and then we’ll find out. This 1-inch experiment from GoPro could be huge success, huge upside if they get it right, but it could also be a disaster. It could be a total failure. It’ll be really interesting to find out what happens in the end.
No deep dive for this topic, but I thought since I’m here, since I’m talking, talk about YouTubers a little bit, I don’t have detailed notes about any of this stuff. So, I’m just going to be talking off the top of my head. I started following Tread the Globe. That is the British couple who traveled around the world. I think they said they did an 8-year journey in their previous van. And I don’t know if they had the same van the whole time. This is the van Trudy. They’re quite well known here in Malaysia. They had one video I remember that went so viral for them where they were pulled over by some Malaysian traffic cops and then given a ticket for something. It may have been speeding, who knows? And the cop came up to their van window and in their interaction there seemed to be an opening for a bribe like, “You know, if you just pay me some money, all this can go away.” Anyway, they posted a video about that and of course it kind of went viral here in Malaysia or there in Malaysia since I’m not in Malaysia right now. And there’s a lot of talk about corruption and the police and this and that. So they became very well known because of that video. And they did a lot of traveling around Malaysia in their van that they called Trudy. And recently I noticed that they came back to Malaysia. I didn’t know they were doing this, but while they were in the UK, they had purchased a Toyota Hilux, a 4×4 truck here in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. And they had hired a local Malaysian company to convert it into a camper. So, they were starting with the base of a 4×4 truck and then putting a big camper box on the back and adding, you know, a bed and a kitchen and tables and chairs and a bathroom, air conditioning, turning it into basically a motor home. And then they started posting videos when they flew back to Malaysia and then they went to this company to check up on the work and monitor it and make suggestions. “Can we change this? Can we change that?” And they had to do quite a few things like add new beefier suspension, bigger tires, better brakes because of all the extra weight. So, I’ve been watching all these videos about them fitting out their new truck. So, that’s all kind of interesting. When you read through all the comments and watch all their videos, I think the general consensus, the take is that the final product is not that great, especially when you compare it to dedicated camper vans. Since I watched all these videos and I’ve been doing research, I’ve started getting YouTube suggestions about camper vans. So, I’ve actually watched all these videos about the new modern camper vans and they are extraordinary. BYD in China just released kind of a new all electric one. The entire roof consists of nothing but solar panels. And I’ve seen all these videos giving walking tours of how these things work and how they’re designed, and they are astonishing. The technology packed into these things is mind blowing. And then you walk into one of these things, it’s like you’re walking into a luxury apartment on wheels. Unbelievable design features. Incredible. The space inside, the beds, the tables, the kitchen, the everything, the bathroom. So beautifully designed, so much storage. I could go on and on. I had no idea camper vans had evolved to this stage. They’re incredible. And you compare that to their converted 4×4. The comparison is not good. You can’t help but think, this may have been a mistake. Especially when you get these two people, they’re not small people. The man in particular, he’s 63? He weighs a lot. He’s a big round guy. He needs a lot of space and a lot of room. And just getting in and out of the back of this camper van built out of a truck. I mean, they can’t even get into it without raising the roof. When the roof is down, which is the normal mode for driving. And I guess the reason they did that, they really wanted this roof that goes up and down because it makes it lower and that allows them to put it inside a container when they ship it from country to country by boat. These big camper vans don’t fit in containers. So they have to go on these roll-on, roll-off ferries, big ships, and then the camper van is exposed. And I guess they’ve suffered from a lot of theft when they used to ship Trudy that way. And then at some point in the journeys, people on the boat, wherever, at the docks would just open the door, go in and just steal everything. So they thought, “Enough of that. Let’s get a truck 4×4, which allows us to go more off-road, go into more remote, wilder areas, be more independent, more free because camper vans pretty much have to stay on the highway.” So, I thought, 4×4 truck, good. And being able to lower the roof, put it in a container, good. Nobody’s going to steal from us anymore. So those were their two main reasons I think for going the route they went. But even they I think were a bit taken aback at the final result when it’s so small inside. There’s no storage area. The door is so small they have to come out of it. They have to turn around and go backwards and bend over to get out the door. Getting up into the bed is very difficult. And everything about it is small and cramped. And the idea is to drive around the world for 6 years living out of this camper truck. And when you’re looking at the final product, there’s a lot of glitches too and the electronics and the systems very complicated and some elements of it didn’t turn out the way they’d hoped. Things were left out that they thought were included. Anyway, overall, I think the consensus is this may not have been the right choice. So, I’ve been watching all of these videos. I think a lot of people were saying cut your losses. This truck, it’s not good, but it’s good for somebody, not for you. So, why don’t you just sell it in Malaysia? Just get it off your hands, try to get as much of your money back as you can, and then fly to New Zealand, which is the main place they wanted to go. So, even after they outfitted the truck and converted it into a camper, the first thing they have to do is ship it to New Zealand anyway. And everybody is saying, “Just fly to New Zealand because New Zealand has a very mature, highly developed camper van industry. You’ll get something there much better than this truck for a lot less money. So, just cut your losses. Just sell it and admit this was a mistake. Fly to New Zealand and start from scratch. Just buy something new off the lot and you’ll be much happier.” Who knows, they may end up doing it, but I don’t think so. I think they’re going to stick with this truck. But in the last video, they did a question and answer. They got so many comments, so many questions. They made a whole separate video where all they did was answer questions. And to my surprise, they actually told people the total cost, how much it cost, how much did the truck cost? It was a used Toyota Hilux. How much did they pay the company to convert it to a camper van? And then they had to pay for, I thought the cost, I thought the amount they paid the company covered everything, but I guess that was just the conversion work. On top of that, they had to pay separately for everything that went into the truck. So, they had to pay to buy the refrigerator and the water filter and the toilet. They had to buy all the things that went into the truck on top of the fee they paid the company. And then they had to pay for new suspension, new brakes, new tires, on and on. And by the time you add up all of the cost, it came to almost $93,000 US. And then there was one more category where they said the suspension and the brakes and this that wasn’t included in the 93. That easily has to be another $7,000, probably more than 10,000. So you’re looking at $100,000 US that they paid to get this camper truck, which in the end doesn’t even seem that suitable. So I was really surprised. I guess I’m not familiar with money, with business, with what things cost, but I thought, man, $100,000, that was more than I expected. And I started thinking about that. $100,000 US dollars. I did the conversion. They were listing it in Malaysian ringgit and then British pounds, but then I converted it to dollars. So it’s about $100,000 to get that truck. And I’m like, man, what you can do as a backpacker with $100,000. I mean, with that much money, I’d be traveling everywhere in the world for the rest of my life, living large. That’s a lot of money to pour into a truck like that, especially when the truck isn’t really working for you. But anyway, so that’s Tread the Globe. I don’t think they’ve posted another video since they did the question and answer. Interestingly, they post one video a week, I guess, every Sunday or every Saturday. And that’s kind of interesting because in the question and answer, somebody asks them, they get this question all the time. I can’t remember their names, but the couple, married couple, the woman, she does all the driving and the man, he never drives. Well, he does drive, but he’s never driving when they’re on camera. So, people are curious about that because that’s a reversal of the normal roles. Normally, men drive and then women are generally happy to let them drive and the women will be the navigators. And then when the man is freaking out in traffic and the woman is trying to calm him down, navigating, that’s what I grew up with with my mother and father, driving around. My dad drives and gets impatient and angry and my mother’s there trying to keep things calm and relaxed. That’s the normal dynamic, but they have it reversed and people ask about that. And then he talked about how, well, the main reason we do this is because I do the filming. She doesn’t really. Maryanne, that’s her name. I think Maryanne doesn’t enjoy filming or editing. He does. So by default they divided the labor. She drives, he shoots video and does all the editing. So he says, “While she’s driving, I have so much to do.” This is the point I was getting at. He’s like, “I’m so busy filming and cameras and microphones and I have all this work to do and it’s such a huge job.” And I could relate to all of that in terms of the time commitment. But then I realized, well, they post one 30-40 minute video a week. And then I started thinking, that’s not that hard, right? It’s like one video per week and they let months go by without posting any videos at all until the new journey begins and then while they’re traveling it’s one video a week. So, how much filming is that really? So, I was thinking, I don’t think you’re nearly as busy as you say you are. I have this habit because I think of my videos more as daily journals or semi-daily journals. I’m sort of filming all the time. So, I end up with a lot of videos. So, I spend a lot of time filming. I’m filming constantly day and night and editing constantly day and night. It’s all I do with these Planet Doug videos. But when he was talking about how busy he was filming, I kind of went, “Really? I don’t know about that because one video a week, man, that would be such a nice schedule. I wouldn’t even know how to make one video a week because I’m so focused on tiny details. I’d like to film daily life and I wouldn’t like if I sat down right now and said, Planet Doug is now one video per week every Saturday and then I have a whole week to put into one video. I wouldn’t even know what to do with myself every day. It’s like, then what are you filming? You film 5 minutes of video per day. What do you do with the rest of the day? Because I’m filming all the time.” Anyway, I thought that was kind of interesting. But anyway, those are my thoughts on Tread the Globe.
The other big YouTube story for me, this may not be of wide interest, but I’m very connected with the American Hobo YouTube channel. I met Daniel in person when I was in Kuala Lumpur and I’ve been following his journey quite intently because he started cycling on a very inexpensive bicycle in northern Vietnam and he had a one-year project to cycle through Southeast Asia and post a video every single day. That was his one-year project. And he reached one year when he was in Indonesia. He went through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia. And that took him one year. And he posted, recorded at least a video every single day. Posted video nearly every single day, which is an amazing achievement when you’re cycling, shooting video, sleeping in a tent night after night after night. And when you’re not in a tent, you’re in a dorm room in a cheap hostel. It’s incredible what he was able to do. And he did have plans beyond the one year to keep cycling. So he got as far as Sulawesi in Indonesia after many difficulties, many challenges in Indonesia. He got to Makassar in Sulawesi and the plan from there was to cycle Sulawesi and then hop on a boat to Borneo, ride through Kalimantan, the Indonesian side of Borneo, then cross the border into Malaysia, cycle through Sabah, Sarawak, the Malaysian side of Borneo, and then at the far end take a ferry to Mindanao in the Philippines and then cycle through the Philippines and then on and on with his eye on Australia, New Zealand and then basically cycling around the entire world as the American Hobo and shooting videos. So that was the plan, but he decided to change course. He had a few reasons for doing this. Personal reasons, some personal stuff he had to take care of back in the United States and it would have been difficult to take care of it long distance. So when he was in Sulawesi, he was looking at the bicycle journey and he thought, “Let’s stop cycling for now.” And he gave away his bicycle. And then just now, just today, in fact, he flew back to the United States and he’s going to pivot his YouTube channel from cycling videos to classic hobo videos. So he really is a true homeless person. It’s actually kind of a lifestyle for him, which is where American Hobo comes from. So he’s actually flown back to the United States. And for the next little while at least, he’s going to be living as a homeless traveler in his own country of the United States, riding the rails perhaps, riding trains illegally as hobos do and sleeping outside. Basically being a homeless person in the United States while traveling around and he’s going to document that life, that lifestyle for his YouTube channel. So, he’s pivoting from cycling to actual hobo life, but back in the United States, and he just landed. I’ve been following all of his adventures online and so that is what the American Hobo is up to. That’s pretty interesting. It’ll be interesting to see how it works out. From my perspective, I was thinking he’s going to miss a lot about Southeast Asia. I think he knows because there’s so many good things about Southeast Asia, especially for someone on a limited budget. If you’re on a limited budget, so many more things are available to you here that you just cannot afford in the United States, Canada, like food, for example. Even on a low budget, someone traveling around Southeast Asia is able to eat outside. You buy food either at low budget markets, street snacks, even in restaurants. Food is just so much more, restaurant food is so much more affordable in Southeast Asia, especially if you do the currency conversion. And you can’t do that in the United States. I couldn’t do it in Canada. So, if I flew back to Canada right now, my entire life would be turned on its head because I would have to think about, I’d have to go shopping. I have to cook all the time. You can’t afford to buy prepared food in Canada. You just can’t. It’s too expensive. You can’t go to restaurants every day. Life here in Southeast Asia is built around eating out. Even local people do it. Sure, they cook and eat meals at home, of course, but the majority of the meals seem to be eaten outside. Even when they eat at home, they’re coming home from work and they’re buying their food from little places they know at the side of the road. And they get their rice and their veggies and their this and their that and their bakso. And then they get home and they unpack it all and that’s their dinner. And local people can afford to eat out all the time. In Canada and the United States, eating out is a luxury. It’s hugely expensive. You just can’t live that way. And I’m wondering just how much he’s going to miss it. He knew that. He’s not a dummy. He knows. “I’m not going to be able to eat out anymore and I’m going to miss that.” But I wonder if he understands just how much he is going to miss it. So it’ll be interesting to hear in his videos as he talks about that. But then again, even when he was cycling and camping out here, he was a big cold soak noodles fan. So even when he was camping out, he didn’t have a cook stove. He wasn’t cooking and he didn’t buy food often. He did sometimes, but he didn’t do it all the time, buying food and then eating it in his tent. What he would do is just get instant noodles and then he has this special hobo way of putting it into a container with water and garlic, maybe some spices, and he shakes it up and he just leaves it to get soft. And they call that cold soak noodles. I guess it’s a hobo thing. I had never heard of it before, but rather than boiling the instant noodles, you just let them get soggy and then you eat them. And that would be his dinner much of the time. And so even here in Southeast Asia, he wasn’t hitting the restaurants all the time. He was doing the cold soak noodles quite a bit as well. But of course I was thinking about that because I recently came here to Dumai from Malaysia and when I came here to Dumai, the prices just went so far down and I’m really enjoying that. So, I’m taking advantage of that and going out a lot and getting food everywhere I can. And the other day, like Luna Cafe, for example, even as a low budget YouTuber, I could afford based on support of Planet Doug subscribers and Patreon and mystery benefactors. Even I can afford to go to a place like Luna. Amazing cafe, incredibly comfortable setting, fast Wi-Fi for free, upload three videos, and then get myself an incredible gourmet burger. And I mean, that doesn’t exist in Canada except for billionaires. That’s how millionaires live in Canada in my humble opinion, in my experience. But I was contrasting that because I’m thinking of Daniel now he’s back in the United States. He’s going to be hoboing it, sleeping in hammocks. He’s got his hammock back and then cold soaked noodles. And here I am at Cafe Luna. So he’s trying to upload videos at the public library probably. He talked about that in the United States. He’s currently at the airport. He has to use the airport Wi-Fi to upload a video. And there I am at the amazing Luna Cafe in luxury, in comfort eating amazing food. And I’m thinking, you’re not doing that back in Canada or the United States. So there are a lot of advantages to being a YouTuber in this part of the world as opposed to being back in the United States. But it’ll be interesting to see how things go. Reading between the lines, I think Daniel, he was looking at other homeless videos on YouTube because there are some people, there’s a scattering of these hobo YouTubers. It’s very popular on YouTube right now. And they are basically shooting videos about being a homeless person in the UK, different countries around the world. And these YouTube channels are very popular. People are interested in that lifestyle and getting a window into the homeless world, the homeless community. So I think when he was cycling through Southeast Asia, he wasn’t really at the heart of the hobo world anymore. He was much more of a backpacker. So he was one of many, right? Thousands, tens of hundreds of thousands of backpackers, cyclists, motorcycle travelers, this modern herd of people traveling around the world various ways. He wasn’t really a hobo anymore. He was in the sense of sleeping in a tent night after night far more than backpackers do and then eating cold soaked noodles, very extreme, low budget. He was still maintaining the hobo lifestyle, but it felt more like a cyclist channel. So if you went to the American Hobo YouTube channel, here’s another cycling channel or a backpacking channel. And I think he’s curious to see, what happens now if I go back to the United States and I start posting classic hobo videos, riding the rails, sleeping outdoors, hiding from the police, the classic sort of homeless experiences. Will his videos suddenly become a thousand times more popular? So, will his YouTube channel blow up and explode and become a really popular classic hobo channel? I think he wanted to give that a try. I’ve done the cycling. I’ve done the backpacking. People have been watching my videos. He’s got a really dedicated community. People that follow him, people that support him. Things worked out pretty well for him as a YouTuber, to be honest, but he wasn’t getting 50,000 views per video, 100,000 views per video. And I think that would be more of his goal. So maybe as a true American hobo riding the rails in the United States, especially at this time when there’s so much upheaval in American society, American politics, fuel prices rising, all that stuff going on, crackdown on immigration, illegals, all this kind of stuff. His videos could take off. He could become a super popular YouTuber. And I think he wants to test the waters, find out. Let’s try this experiment and see what happens with my YouTube channel. He’s going back to basics, going back to the classic hobo lifestyle and recording it on video. So, that’ll be really interesting to see how that turns out.
I may not have as much to say about this YouTuber, but there is another YouTuber who’s often a cyclist that I’ve talked about in the past and I follow off and on, and that is Nick K. Nick K Travel. And if you click on his YouTube channel, he describes himself American travel vlogger exploring hidden and unforgettable destinations around the world. After living in Japan for 11 years, I set out on a journey of full-time travel, discovering the wonders of Asia along the way. My adventures have taken me through Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, India, and Thailand. And I check out his channel from time to time and then I forget about it. Then I go back again. I think so many of his experiences and his perspectives and everything he does and everything he talks about and his style feels, it’s different from me but it still feels like it’s in my lane. It’s in my world and since I’m sort of living that life I don’t really need to watch somebody else living the same life. It’s not different from me in really dramatic ways. Of course he’s got a totally different personality. He’s not obsessed with the trivia and minutiae of daily life that I am. So, probably more adventurous, more social than I am in many ways. But anyway, I go back and forth and the recent videos got me back to his channel. I haven’t watched all of them, but I do plan on it. And that’s because he went back to South Korea and he was in Vietnam before that. I keep intending to watch his Vietnam videos, but I just never got around to it. So, I think I’m going to go back, watch all his Vietnam videos, and then go over to his Korea videos. And in the meantime, he did something very, very smart and I’ve often thought about because he was in Vietnam. And I think what he did was he left Vietnam, flew to Korea, but instead of just hopping on the bike and cycling, he went to school to study Korean. And I think he posted a bunch of videos, maybe behind the scenes videos about going to class and learning to speak Korean. And I think he was preparing for a bike ride. So now that he has got some conversational Korean skills, now he gets on the bike and now he’s traveling through Korea. And his videos in Korea are very popular. I noticed he gets a big bump in views. Every time he goes to Korea, the views increase dramatically. So his first cycling video 6 days ago, 91,000 views. Then he had a second video called I was stopped by South Korean police. Those are always popular and I’m sure nothing happened. In the thumbnail and the title he’s making it look like the police gave him a hard time and arrested him and it was a big adventure, but I’m sure the cops just stopped him for who knows why. And, “Can we see your passport, please? Here you go. On your way.” But who knows? But anyway, if you get stopped by the police for any reason, put that in your thumbnail, your video title. He got 250,000 views for that one. And then his most recent video, 22 hours ago, he posted it. Korean lady treats me like her son. 45,000 views. So, there’s a big audience for foreigners traveling around Korea. Koreans love to watch those videos. They love to see their own country through the eyes of a foreign vlogger. So, I think most of his audience will be South Koreans themselves. Kind of similar to Malaysia. Malaysia has that as well. Malaysians are quite interested in YouTube videos from foreigners and they get to see their own country through our eyes, you know, the experiences of a foreigner. But South Korea seems to have that same effect. And I remember back in the days when I used to live in Korea as well which is why I’m interested as well. I spent like a decade off and on, like one year in Korea teaching English, editing magazines, earning money and then I would quit and go traveling for one year, then go back to Korea for one year, then travel for one year. In and out for over a decade. So, I’m in some ways quite familiar with Korea, though my Korea was very different from modern Korea. I was there a long time ago. But I remember back in those days, Canadians got a 180-day visa. Well, it’s not even a visa technically. It was like an entry stamp. You just show up at the airport, Canadian passport, 180 days. There was a reciprocal agreement between the Canadian government and the Korean government that we got good treatment. So I got 6 months on a tourist visa every time I showed up in Korea. So maybe Americans get the same thing. And that would be pretty amazing because that would make Korea a very interesting destination for a Planet Doug experience. If you got 6 months, that would feed into my slow travel habits very nicely. And I also noticed he started shooting with a 360 camera. The one video I started watching from Korea, he talked about it that he said in the video comment or something, “I’ve started using a 360 camera and it takes longer to edit the video, but he thinks the results are worth it.” So, we’ll see how long he sticks with that because 360 cameras are really incredible for a vlogger. I want to use my 360 camera all the time, but the reframing of the video is such an immense time commitment. It takes forever and I try because I see the advantages of 360 video. The video quality with my I have it right here, my X3, the video quality is poor compared to even a GoPro. So, you’ve got much poorer video quality, but the ability to reframe afterwards is so nice. There’s so many things I don’t get on video because I’m walking down the street, my GoPro isn’t running, and then somebody comes up to talk to me. It’s really awkward to try and get them to stop whatever they’re saying. “Wait a minute. Let me turn on my GoPro and hold it out here and then aim it at us.” And then I’m talking to this person and I’m constantly looking at the GoPro like, “I got to adjust where it’s pointing.” It’s like, “Are we in frame?” And it’s weird. But with a 360 camera, you don’t have to do that. You just hold the stick and your attention is entirely on the other person. You’re much more in the moment. You just let the camera record. You don’t have to think about the camera, but then you pay a penalty because the next day you spend the entire day from dawn till midnight doing nothing but reframing the 360 video. And that’s before you even start editing. It basically adds a full day of work to your editing workflow. One whole extra day per video. And that’s just too much. So, every time I’ve tried to make the 360 camera the focus of my video, I end up quitting because it’s just too much work. But he’s giving it a try. We’ll see how it goes. So, that’s Nick K.
And I think that is the last YouTuber I’m going to talk about in my morning coffee video. I’ve only had one coffee so far. This is the coffee I’m drinking, by the way. Local Indonesian brand, I think, Kapal Api. And this is different video from the norm. I normally drink instant coffee. It all dissolves in the hot water. You put in coffee, freeze-dried coffee, and you pour in hot water, and you drink it, and at the end your cup is empty. But this is the kind of real coffee grounds so that it stays in the cup.
Scared the life out of me. This hotel is very rough around the edges these days. Got a lot of slamming doors and some got a lot of action out there in the hallway. Anyway, someone just slammed a door. I thought my door was going to blow open. Anyway, you put this in your cup and then you drink it all. The coffee grounds sink to the bottom and you get a little bit floaties on top. So, you get some, it’s crunchy coffee. You’re chewing on coffee grinds, but it’s actually pretty good flavor. So, that’s what I’m drinking right now. And after I finished one cup, but now I’ve got a whole base of sludge at the bottom. I have to empty my cup and then start over. But I bought that the other day. So I think that is me winding down. I am going to have another cup of coffee, but I have more stories I could tell. This is a little bit of a hybrid of my life in Dumai video and then I wasn’t intending to, but it morphed into kind of a classic behind the scenes video talking about technology, Planet Doug videos and just my daily life stuff like that and then talking about YouTubers. I haven’t looked at the clock, but I’m assuming this video has gone on for a very long time. More like a behind the scenes video than a regular Planet Doug video. So, what I’m saying is it’s very long. So, shout out to the Crunch Club, you know who you are. Thank you for watching all the way to the end. Put CC in the comments to let me know. I love seeing the CC. The last few days, I think I owe people an apology because I’ve just been so busy since I started cycling and then when I was in Melaka and then the visa trip to come here and life here. I just have not been able to engage as much through the YouTube comments. I’m hoping to catch up with that the rest of today. Tomorrow I’m going to take a couple of days and try to get caught up with YouTube comments, chat with people online, see what’s going on there. But apologies for not being on top of that recently since I started cycling, but I just have had so much less time in the day in each individual day. So, I’ve sort of fallen behind with that. And I haven’t been posting behind the scenes videos for the same reason. I just haven’t had the time. But Crunch Club, you made it this far. Awesome. And as always, a shout out to everybody out there who has been following my small adventures on Planet Doug and supporting the channel through all the platforms that I’ve developed recently. Of course, there is a Patreon. Shout out to all of my loyal, very loyal Patreon members. Love you guys. You make all of this possible, of course. And Touch ‘n Go, my Touch ‘n Go supporters from Malaysia, you guys are amazing. You make what I’m doing possible through the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. Appreciate that very much. And I have a small but loyal coffee buddies over there on Buy Me a Coffee. I have a Planet Doug Buy Me a Coffee account set up as well. So any support I get through there, thank you very much. Much appreciated. Shutting down, getting to the end of the video. And as always, I’ll see you in the next one.