Tag Archives: Barcamps

Phnom Penh Guide for Barcamp Attendees

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Over the next weeks, I will be in Hong Kong and then in Phnom Penh attending some tech events.

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Barcamp Phnom Penh is one of South East Asia’s premier Tech event featuring interesting people and projects from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and the wider region.

Airlines and Getting There
If you are in South East Asia, the best way to get to Phnom Penh is via the budget airlines. You can get these for less than 150USD.
AirAsia (From Malaysia and Thailand)
JetStar Asia (From Singapore)

You can also travel overland from Thailand and Vietnam.

From the airport to the city will cost you around 10USD by taxi. If you are traveling light, you can take a motor bike taxi (moto) for around 2 to 3 USD.

Visas
Visitors from Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, the Lao PDR and Vietnam do not need a visa. Most others can get it from the airport at arrival. Just get the form from the counter, fill it and submit it along with the visa fee (I think 25U SD).

You can also apply for the visa via the internet. You will have to upload your details and a photograph. Keep your credit card ready for online payment. The visa will be sent to you via email. Remember to take 2 printouts of the eVisa. You will show one when you enter and the other one when you exit. The E-visa costs USD 25 and processed in 3 days or less.
Cambodia E-Visa website

Accommodation in Phnom Penh

The barcamp venue, Paññasastra University of Cambodia is in the city and easy to get to. My favorite source of looking up hotels and guesthouses in Phnom Penh is the online guide published by Canby.

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Paññasastra University is marked with the (A) label.

The riverfront area in Phnom Penh has many reasonably priced guesthouses.

Internet and Mobile

Many guesthouses and travel cafe offer wi-fi.

In Cambodia, you need a local ID card to buy a pre-paid mobile SIM card. Usually, people get their local friends to buy one for them.

Cellcard offers a tourist 2.5 G SIM for short stay use. It costs 10$ and comes with 10$ worth of data usage. (The data rate is 1USD for 5 MB)

Money
As you can see there are wide range of hotels so depends on how fancy hotel you want you can stay from 10 USD and upwards. There is a good choice of food available and you can get by 10 USD/day. You can use ATMs to withdraw money and don’t need to carry many moneys. US currency is in wide circulation and if you are brining US$, get small denominations.

For local transport you can use inexpensive motos (motorbike taxis) and tuktuks. From the riverside to the barcamp venue should cost you 1 to 1.5 USD on moto.

Food
There is great food in Phnom Penh. Many local and international restaurants. Most restaurants by the river and city will have some English and you won’t have trouble ordering.

Halal restaurants in Phnom Penh.

Vegetarian and vegan eating in Phnom Penh.

Other resources

Wikitravel Page for Phnom Penh (has recommendations for places to stay)

TravelFish’s Phnom Penh Information and Interactive Map

Let me know if I missed anything. Another thing, the Khmer guys at the Barcamp Phnom Penh are nice and kind but be be forewarned of the Khmer girls, they like to fight and beat people.

Attending Barcamp Hong Kong?
I found a guest house just two MTR stops from the Barcamp Hong Kong Venue. Its called Yess Inn.
It is close to the Fortress hill MTR stop. The venue of the Hong Kong Barcamp is close to the Quarry Bay MTR.

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To Ghana for the Maker Faire Africa

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Figuring out getting to Ghana for this interesting event happening in Accra at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT. The events brings together inventors and unique innovations from around African continent.

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Make Faire Africa Website

I am very much interested in lost cost hacks that gets things done. There are lots of such interesting ideas world over and a lot of these ideas will work in some other region too. Let me introduce Afrigadget. This site aggregates examples of African ingenuity in solving day to day problems.

Let me show you another co-incidence. Just earlier (previous post) I was thinking of Suriname and now I am thinking of Ghana. Check out their national flags.

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Flags of Suriname and Ghana

Come to Barcamp Bangkok 3

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I have had so much fun and met so many interesting people in previous Thailand Barcamps that I will surely be there for the next one in Bangkok (May 23 to 24).

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Hotels and airfares are at all time low. And you will get to meet people from Cambodia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and hopefully from Indonesia and the Philippines too.

One special feature of Bangkok Barcamp is decent numbers of non-IT sessions. I am myself thinking of doing some DIY sessions on green living.

Bangkok Barcamp homepage

Barcamp Kuala Lumpur presentations on Travel, Twitter and Netbooks tweaks

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Last weekend I was in Malaysia for the Barcamp KL. It was good to meet friends from Malaysia as well as people from Bangkok, Phnom Penh and Singapore.  It was really a regional event.

My first presentation was on Travel, expanding on the previous presentation at the Singapore Blogout 09. This time I talked about the online resources I use while traveling.

Had to remove the images etc. for faster loading. Anyway, the gist is here. It was fun sharing travel stories and we had a fun little discussion.

Next up, for people interested in attending events in South East Asia, here is a list of Twitterer’s I follow to get updated on events.

I know there are more people twittering these. Leave a comment and I will add them to the list in the next update. 31o5 san recommends her twitter bot @BKK_Events for Bangkok events.

We had a discussion on tweaking Netbooks. Tips and tricks to make them work better. Bytebot has compiled the notes from the session, do look at the comments too. We talked about what OS, what anti-virus, how much ram, what browser etc.

Adventures of a Traveling Blogger Presentation at Blogout 09

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I was at Blogout09 on March 07, talking about my experience as a traveler and a blogger. The presentation has ideas on how to use your blog/social network to add value to your travels, save money, make friends, contribute to the place you are traveling to and have a good time generally.

Oh, yeah, pls excuse the typos in some of the slides.

Speakers from abroad present via Skype at Singapore Barcamp

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Couple of years back, at the Cambodian blogger summit at Phnom Penh, Kalyan connected to us via Skype from the US. This time we were lucky to have Kalyan in person at the Singapore Barcamp 3 last weekend. Though, two other interesting speakers, Kevin and Zibin skyped-in from the US and Norway respectively.
The speakers called my macbook which was connected to the projector. We took the audio out and gave it to the PA system in the room. The macbook (the webcam) was setup facing the audience.

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The audience in Kevin’s session on Social Media titled “Aiyah, if only you listened”

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Kevin presenting. The computer’s webcam is facing the audience. Kevin has written about his experience on his blog.

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Zibin of Opera Software came in from Oslo to talk about open standards.

Overall it was good. We should do Skype-ins more often in the future.