Thailand for free in 20 days - First day

11 hours. This is the distance between Barcelona and Bangkok... and this is the distance we flied stopping at Rome.

The truth is that you will not be able to think about the paradox of this globalized world until you reach a interior of a plane departing from an italian airport with chineses hostesses speaking english, and stopping in the other side of the world, without europeans and people talking in Thai. Fascinating.

Our first feeling when we reached the land was exhaustion. We spended the fly watching movies and we were not able to rest, anyway we put up with our bodies until we reach Bangkok. The first question after getting the baggage was: How can we reach the hotel?

In our condition of beginners, exhausted travelers and new boys at town, we accepted a car, also named 'limusine', that in fact was a spacious car with leather seats... the price: incredible expensive, but by the way, we wanted a way to reach the hotel and we started the travel plenty of money :-). The price included an english guide that will guide us to the best places of Bangkok, so we accepted the deal.

When we saw the international vaccine center, the doctor told us to follow the following rules about eating and drinking:

• Don't drink non-bottled water, of bottled watter not opened by us


• Don't drink anything with ices, because they can be made of tap water


• Don't eat salads or already peeled fruit


• Don't eat any cold dish at general

When we reach the hotel we broke the second law, because the receptionist offered to us a cold iced orange juice, and of course, we cannot spurn it... that was our first step to perdition. At the end of the trip we broke both all the previous laws and others that we'll explain in previous posts, but lucky of us, we didn't suffer any serious health problem.

About the hote, that was named Shangai Inn, we have to say that it was extraordinary. The rooms are decored with good taste with a succeded chinese style. Some of the details are simple, but anyway we have to say that at general is a very beautiful hotel. You can take a look at some shots in the following links: the bed, the dresser, the washbasin y the outside. The location of the hotel is also interesing, in the middle of Chinatown. You can enjoy this crowded and centric red-light district one step from the hotel.

Before leaving the baggage on the room, we spend our morning looking at Wat Arun. The building if great, and it was builded to commemorate the victory of Thai army over Burma more that a century ago. To reach it we stroll around Chinatown reaching the river. Then we catch a ferry that give you at the same Wat.

We felt so sleepy, so we ate something quick and then we sleep a good siesta back at the hotel, because at the afternoon we had a date with the guide hired at the arrival...

We met our guide an hour later. She was a kind girl with the best english all over Thailand (at least the person we met with the best), and she showed to us the most famous places of Bangkok.

We started with the reclined buddha at Wat Pho, where we found an spectacular buddha of 46 meters long and 15 meters high. Following it we visit the temple and around.

After looking a few more interesting places with our car she used her chance to 'go shopping'. This is a usual way, so they offer you a relative good price for the guide, and then they send you to a few shops around your tour. If you know it in advance there is no problem about it, but if you are not aware of that, this can be a awkward situation, as we knowed the next day with the tuk-tuk's (a motorcicle with seats at the back like a sofa). At the end of the journey we spent 300€ purchasing a suit, two pants, shirts and ties and a zafire ring.

You can found the photographies of this day at my photography blog.

Planning a trip to Thailand

Well, here we are again, packaging our stuff ready to go, this time for 20 days, to Thailand. As I posted previously, that trip is completely self-made, but with a certain level of quality (we are not teenagers with a bag on his back and a few euros in their pockets).

The planning started in the middle of august, because this year my partner was working in a tourist town for all the summer, so we choosed to travel in November. The choice of Thailand was quicker, looking for a country beautiful, safe, with sunny beaches (to replace the worked summer of my girlfriend) and with a lot of diferent things to see.

Once selected the country, it was the time to see agencies (Our first thought was to purchase a travel using agency) but we are'nt as rich as other people, and the travel was out of our budged. For those more lucky with the money, I have to recommend the following agencies (in Spain) that seemed so interesting (and both has good references from my friends): Bidon5 and Muztag.

We choose to travel alone, by our own resources and using Internet as agency... so the first thing we buy was the fly. Purchasing 2 month from the departure time we have saved 1.000€, so it's so important to do it as soon as you want to travel. The second thing to buy? Well, in our case it was a travel insurance, that can be purchased online on any major insurance company, but it's not necessary to do it soon, because it has always the same price.

One of the premises of the travel is do it safe, so we contacted the foreign office of our country to know information about the country in the health and security areas. To travel to Thailand, and specially if you do it alone, it's recommended to update your vaccine card, and compulsory if you want to reach the northern provinces of the country. In Spain you need to contact the International Vaccine center, and it's important to do it soon, because it's possible to get a meeting with them with a few weeks or month before the call.

The vaccines we get from the doctor were the yellow flu (i'm not sure of the translation from spanish, sorry), hepatitis and malaria (using the famous Malarone).

Those were our first steps to plan our travel... the next day I'll talk about the day by day planning...

I hope you enjoy it!

Traveling without agency

The first time we, my girlfriend and I, made a travel without any travel agency was two years ago, going from Barcelona (Spain) to Istambul (an incredible city everybody have to visit) for seven days.

In that travel we purchase the fly and the hotel using an agency but that was the last thing we did with it, because handling a LonelyPlanet on my hand, we discovered the city better than with any one can do. Now, thinking about that travel, my memories come to me about the people, smiles, unique situations or special places we met. No stones and history comes to me, only beautifull thoughts about the people of the city and the atmosphere of that millenial city.

Now it's time to travel again, and this time we planned to go to Thailand. We are two days from the fly that will send us to the other point of the world, and this time all our travel was plannified and executed without any agency, only Internet.

In the next post I'll explain how we plannified the travel and the required steps to do it safe.

Firefox gaining share again

Firefox is gaining share again in the browsers field versus Internet Explorer. That's not new looking the evolution of the share of the Mozilla browser, rising in a stable manner.

Meanwhile Firefox 2, the new release of the browser, is reaching the second beta release

That are good news for everyone, because it seems the future of the applications will be on the web. I think It's important to reach a balance between Microsoft and the others, and open source software is a good way to fight against the economic interests of macro-companies involved in software development.

Castle of Escornalbou

Escornalbou it's a castle and a monastery first referenced in 1153bc that can be found at 27KM from Salou. It was inhabitated until 1835bc when the religious order of Franciscans leave the place.

The complex includes the castle and his walls, a church, the buildings inside the castle and an hermitage on the top of the moutain that can be reached through a path across a beautiful forest.

On the top of the mountain, where you can found the hermitage, offers you awesome views of the 'Costa Dorada' (Golden coast in english) from Tarragona to Salou and Cambrils.


Coming back to Salou or Cambrils I advise you to reach the Parc Sama, a park builded a century ago by the philanthropist Marquis of Marianao, where you can see one of the best gardening examples of XIX romanic period.

Geocaching: Found the Cache

A few weeks ago, walking on a wild life park near La Pineda I found a family with a GPS looking for something on the middle of the trees that can be found in the area. The father aproched to me with a GPS device and he told me that they were looking for a treasure... The treasure they was looking for was a tupperware containing a notebook, a pen and one or more gifts with a plastified paper explaining what was all that stuff... in fact it was a cache.

Geocaching started a few years ago, under Clinton mandate, when he decide to enhance the civilian use of GPS satellite system allowing for that purpose the same precision as the military one, 3 meters. A few weeks from that day, the first cache was placed on the USA.

The game is so simple. All you need is a GPS device (I use a HP hw6500 that unifies cellphone, PDA and GPS) and a connection to Internet. You can start your adventure connecting to the geocaching site and registering for a new user. Then you'll be able to access the database of caches arround the world, finding the nearest to your coordinates. Each cache page give you information about the place, that it's usually a beautiful place to go, information about the coordinates where you can found the cache, and a log showing the people that have already found the cache before you.

To find the cache I recomend you to get a good topographic map of the area (In Catalunya you can get the maps for free from the Institut Cartogràfic Català saving them on the GPS device with a waypoint locating the cache.
To find it, you have to approach to the coordinates and start the finding, because it's hidden. When you get it, it's time to read a few entries from the notebook and register your found. Then look for the gifts that can be found in the tupperware and make trade with them (if you get one of the gifts you have to put another one for the next geocacher). Now take a breath and take your time exploring the nearby area, because the caches can be founded on beatifull places in order to discover to the geocachers.

I hope this post will encourage you to start this funny hobby that can give you good moments in beautiful places and can be played any place arround the world, near your residence, in a travel... Good luck with the caching.

Trekking: From Vilaplana to La Mussara

Today I will talk about a hike to know the mountains near the Costa Dorada (Golden coast in English), where you can found the tourist's popular towns of Salou, Cambrils or La Pineda.

The first mountain you found coming from the coast is La Mussara, that's a plateau of 900 meters of altitude where you can found a few towns, some of them abandoned (like the town of La Mussara, on the top of the mountain).

The hike I want to propose to you is an interesting walk from the base of the mountain to the abandoned town of La Mussara. A beautiful route where you'll see the mediterranean vegetation and a good views of the land between that mountain and the sea.

Whe start the trek from the town of Vilaplana. As an easy way to arrive to that town you can follow the route planned by ViaMichelin from Salou to Vilaplana. The trek starts crossing the small river at the end of the town, the town is small enought to found it quickly.

Our first steps give us a view of almond trees, a typical plantation of that area. the road ends on a fork and a post giving us two ways to arrive to La Mussara. Today we'll turn left to follow El camí de les campanilles. A few hundred meters from that point we found another fork where we'll turn right starting the ascension to the mountain, ending the cement road and leaving the plantations.

The path now goes inside a forest, where we'll found the tipical tree of the mediterranean forrests: the red pine. After a slope we'll found a post indicating that we need to leave the path and following the track in front of us. Our path is indicated by painted signals yellow and green, and there's no way to get lost. As usual in those marked paths, you'll found on the forks of the tracks a cross on a stone on the wrong paths.

After a hard slope inside the forest, we'll find an electrical tower, that give the name of our hike (Camí de les torres). Now we leave the forest to hike a beatiful path where we'll see the thickets with dozens of flowers (specially in spring). In that part of our hike we'll follow the electric towers a few hundred meters again.

Now the path climbs the mountain again with a hard slope (pay attention on a left curve where you'll see the way walked before), and finally the track will follow the face of the mountain with a beautiful red stone typical of that area.

A few meters and we'll found another post. That's the fork between el camí de les torres that follows the path on the same level, and el camí de les campanilles that's a hard slope that climbs the mountain and we'll use to descend of La Mussara in our return hike. We'll follow the path on the same level following again the electrical towers.

Again the path, a few hundred meters following the towers climbs the mountain. We had left the Mussara mountain on the right and now we'll start a hard slope that will give us to a path suitable for 4WD vehicles, where we'll turn on the right following that path.

Now we have found a metallic post giving us three ways: the final stage of our hike is rising the mountain to the left. It's the hardest stage of our hike and it's a good idea to rest a few minuts and eat something to get energy.

The final stage starts on the forest. The path leave the forest at the end in front of the face of the latest meters of our hike. Now we need to take care of our steps because the track is small accompanied by the face of the mountain and a precipice.

The first thing we see at the end of the track is a big stone with a metallic post in front of us that we need to climb, founding a prairie and the abandoned town of La Mussara. Take a look around and you'll see the land between the mountain and the sea.

Rear La Mussara you can wee the plateau. There is a lot of tracks that can start from that point and we'll see in a future hike. On the right, looking to the town you can see a television repeater with two towers.

Once we can take a look to the town and rested for a while, now we can take the return path. We'll to the return using a more abrupted path that will give us a reduction of the time of 30 minutes, using el camí de les campanilles. We start the return on the same way as we reach the top of the mountain until we reach the fork with the metallic post at the base of the latest stage of the hike, taking a path that starts from the fork and goes straight ahead of our way.

The path, not marked on the map I give you (click on the image to take a larger view of it), goes from point 25 to the 14 following the waypoints numbered between 22 to 25.

Finally we'll reach the path already walked with a fork marked by a wood post. Now the path is the already walked by us on the climb of the mountain.

I hope you'll try this hike, specially if you're a tourist on Salou. You'll know another kind of hollidays also interesting and beautiful.

For those that have a GPS map I give you the waypoints file to follow that hike. If you are also interested in the maps I have used to create the waypoints, feel free to send me an email.

Good luck.

OpenDocument, PDF, ISO and more

I have readed in Slashdot and Barrapunto (in spanish) that OpenDocument has been voted in as ISO/IEC 26300.

A year ago I was in a conference organized by Adobe. One of the papers talked about the problem of electronic persistence of documents, because, what will happen twenty years from now when I'll try to read a Word document created using Office 2000? How I'll read it?.

Adobe was moved to stablish an electronic document format for long term preservation, giving a way to describe a document like the paper version of it, and without any trick like macromedia flash, movies, audio or nothing else that can be saved from the time.

The problem with PDf standard is that it's not modifiable in a easy way, and that's the reason there is people trying to create an electronic standard for electronic documents. In the ring you can found two fighters: Microsoft with his new Office release using his own XML standard and OpenOffice with OpenDocument.

It's clear that the future of document management is the XML, we can see it in movements and protocols like SOAP or XHTML, but the problem is to reach a consensus to stablish only ONE standard in electronic document management.

I'm so pessimistic, I know it, but I guess the future will be an open standard (OpenDocument) used by a few of us, and a widely used format used by everybody else (MS Office). I also guess that the release 2 or 3 of that standard will get the fusion of this formats giving us a real standard used by everybody 5 or 6 years from now, like happens with HTML and the Microsoft extensions.

I'm sure that we'll need to wait for it but we'll see it.