I have now posted some photos and videos from our trip to Phnom Penh in Cambodia and you can find them on this web page. Phnom Penh was of course filled with lots of impressions as we got to visit places like Tupl Sleng genocide museum, the Killing fields at Choeung Ek etc. But we also got to see a country celebrate as it was New Year. I’m working on the trip report and it will be posted sooner or later

Or maybe it should have said “SAS is still in trouble”. SAS is Scandinavia Airline System – the airline that is the “pride” of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The only problem is that they are loosing money…a lot of money. It seems like they lost about 140 million US $ in second quarter this year and today CEO Mats Jansson had to tell the press that they have to cut more jobs and save more money. Another 1500 jobs must be removed in addition to cuts that have been made already and the rest have to face a cut in salary of 10-20% – I wonder what that will lead to as SAS has a history filled with strikes as the unions are pretty strong within the company. I guess it is not news that airlines are struggling these days but it is sad to see how things are going with SAS. The problem seems to be that their expenses are so much higher than for e.g. Norwegian so they are not able to compete. So while Norwegian is doing great at the Oslo stock exchange, the SAS shares have dropped a lot over the last years. SAS have also had a lot of intercontinental routes (that they have lost a lot of money on) and they are being cut one by one. So what will happen to SAS? I think that when they get control over their costs they will be bought by e.g. Lufthansa and then Lufthansa can take care of the intercontinental flights while SAS can take care of the Scandinavian traffic and to/from Europe to Scandinavia. So maybe it is wise of me to spend the Eurobonus points now…it would be a tragedy to lose all of them if SAS goes bankrupt.

Have you ever seen a plane above you and wondered where it is coming from or where it is going to? Well, over Scandinavia you can actually get that info for quite a lot of the planes that you seen in the sky.  Check out flygradar.nu and click on the various planes to get more information about the flights. It is not really a radar as far as I understand but a radio signal (Mode-S/ADS-B-transpoder) that most modern planes have and it seems like it gives the position of the plane pretty accurate. Thanks to DinSide for reminding me again about this web site

A couple of years back I got a pair of Koss noise canceling headset to bring along on my flights. If you are not familiar with the noise canceling headphone technology you can read more about it on Wikipedia but in short it is a pair of headphones that filters out some of the constant noise that you get on planes from e.g. the engines. My headphones worked pretty good but I have not really used them after the first trip. The reason is of course that I chose a very bulky kind and these days I don’t really want to drag them along as it is more important to bring along the laptop, cameras etc. So my recommendation if you are going to buy is to buy a pair that can be folded together to make it fit into your backpack more easily. There are lots of consumer tests regarding this topic and it seems like Bose and Sennheiser scores pretty good. Here are some reviews that I found: reghardware.co.uk , reviews.cnet.com and seatguru.com . Do you have a pair of noise canceling headphones? What model do you have? Are you happy with the ones you have?

This is a review of a stay at Renaissance Kuala Lumpur Hotel. I stayed there in the end of June 2008 and I was in KL on a business trip. I have been to KL before (as you can see in this trip report with photos and links) and I have experience from various hotels such as Traders, Ascott, Federal and Agora. Click below to read the rest of this review.
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It seems like AirAsia has plans to move into the Middle East according to this article in The Age. Until now AirAsia has been pretty successful in Asia and they have even opened a route to London. But will they be able to move into a territory where Emirates Airlines and Ethiad have all their focus? Many of the major, traditional airlines (SAS, BA etc) seems to be struggling these days and it is weird to see how many of the low budget airlines (Norwegian, Ryanair etc) are getting by without any problems. So you never know….all of a sudden we will see AirAsia planes flying all over Europe

As a guy I normally don’t have a problem with toilets when I travel – after all guys can stand and pee. But for women I guess it can be a challenge when coming to not so nice toilets at e.g. bus stations, on buses, when going camping etc. I met this lady when I was hiking on Kilimanjaro and she had to give up on reaching the summit as she was dehydrated. She was dehydrated as she didn’t want to drink as there was nowhere to pee. Anyway, there are various products for women that can be used and one of them is p-mate (also known as p-standingup). Check out the web sites and you will get an idea of how this device work. I’m just wondering why they keep on nagging about writing names in the snow when you pee…should that really be the main selling point?

It seems like quite a few tourists have been detained at the Bangkok airport this year with allegations of shoplifting. In order to get out of this they have been forced to pay thousands of US dollars. Please read this BBC article for more information. I have been through the Bangkok airport many times over the last couple of years (see my Bangkok trip report) but I have not experienced anything like that…yet. I hope that they will sort this out or else it will be another set back for tourism in Thailand.

A few years back Nikki and I went to China and Hong Kong was one of the stops on the way (check out the Hong Kong trip report here). The only problem was that I caught a cold in Beijing and by the time we came to Hong Kong I felt miserable. And to top it off….this was in 2003 and it was just when the SARS virus hit town. All in all the visit was not a huge success to say the least. But now I’m going to check it out again – in September I will visit the city once again and hopefully I will be in better shape this time and hopefully I will be left with a more positive impression of the city. Have you been to Hong Kong? Feel free to get in touch if you have any recommendations when it comes to must see places, places to eat, bars with a view etc.

Here is one video from YouTube

Åsa Riton has won a trip trough ebookers/MrJet and now you can follow her adventure around the world. She is a Swedish girl but don’t worry…she covers all her experiences in English. Her trip will take her to places like LA, Hawaii, Thailand, Venice, Tokyo etc and I’m sure she will have a great time. Keep an eye on her travel blog as she is updating it with text, photos and videos. She is also on YouTube . Have fun Åsa and get in touch if you need some help with the travel planning