travel – Page 2 – TV Smith's Blog

Announcing A New Feature At MyCen Hotels

Agoda introduced a new search box to its affiliate partners via a webinar recently. Was the first time I sat through a webinar and found it very effective and informative. The video was clear and smooth, the audio very good. Amazing how much difference a good broadband connection makes. Another significant positive fact was that the manager answered all my questions later via e-mail. See screenshot of the new search box attached.

The new search box is claimed to provide better conversion, better precision with auto suggest, is mobile friendly and has better functionality, among other things. I am averse to making changes as the previous search panel worked. Like most web things, technical support will end eventually for the old. Tech companies call it “deprecated”.
I spent much time helping users find a specific hotel which some couldn’t because of sloppy spelling while searching. People are used to spell correction on Google Search. I don’t mind. PM or e-mail me anytime. Hopefully, the new search boxes can help alleviate this with auto suggestions. If you spelled “Xiaman”, it should suggest “Xiamen, China”

Most of my time is spent creating specific destinations to make it easier to find hotels in that area or city. I am placing the new search box on the sidebar of every page. It means a user can easily search to find over 1.4 million properties in any part of the world, many with discounted rates. Be it Sacramento, Kuala Krai, Vladivostok, Bagan or Asunción, for example.

Try it on the site. MyCen Hotels – http://www.mycen.my/

On the search results page. the rates are shown in your local currency as determined via your browser. You can change it and the language at the top of the results page. You can also change the check in / check out dates.

It takes a lot of work but it is the nature of running a business. I need to get it to work as I have no revenue for now after my hospitalization. Irony is, I have more time to work on it since I have no work. There are more challenges in the business model which I will explain later.

To the many who booked through me; thank you for your support. Please share this with a friend or friends who travel.

Update: You can now access the search box on the right hand side bar on every page of this blog. It is right on top on right.

Get A Room – Mycen Hotels – http://www.mycen.my/

#agoda #affiliate #mycenhotels #travel #newsearch #hotelbooking #hotels

History Of Travel Pics

History Of Travel Pics.

A new tray of slides are loaded to MyCen Hotels. Since the last update, I have added cities with hotels at discounts such as Hat Yai, Macau, Manila and Yangon to Deals Finder.at http://www.mycen.my/hotel-deals-finder/

A Little History:

Slide film were cut up and mounted in plastic or cardboard mounts. They were then loaded intro a carousel tray to project onto a screen at home. Before the advent of video, it was a popular way of screening a corporate AV show with soundtrack and synchronized slide changing with multiple projectors. One slide gets jammed and the entire show goes haywire.

Screening of slides was popular with travelers in the West. The travelers will arrange all the slides and invite friends and neighbors to view a show in the form of a travelogue. Poor selection and repetitive subjects left audience bored and in tears. A such people used to fear neighbours going for a holiday. Today, social media takes over the role of the loathed slide projector.

To be honest, I hate it when SOME people go on a vacation too. Why would I want to look at your passport cover or a boarding pass? Or a parked airplane on the tarmac? Assholes, get a freaking life or partner to talk to and wait for the plane to land at your destination. It gets worse. The first thing such people do is not to look for a cab. They look for a place to rent a portable wi-fi modem to torture their Fb or IG followers.

The same idiots will bombard you with a selfie or wefie every 3 second, probably without taking in the sights. Ask yourself this? Why would I like to look at the toilet bowl in your hoteI or endless lattes at cafes? I want to gain insights and knowledge about a landmark or new city. Sadly, a few decades later, travel pics are more boring than the dreaded slide shows.

Transparency film can be the types that used E6 processing or Kodachrome which included processing in Australia. They were not very popular locally as they were more expensive. And what humans will wait 2 weeks to see the results?

Veteran photographers friends such as Cy Leow, Rian Maelzer and Lee Hong Leng will remember the good old days. Lee will. He operated a E6 processing lab in Jalan Alor.

#slide #e6 #film #mycenhotels

Choo Choo To Hat Yai

Choo Choo To Hat Yai.

My lovely, beautiful and adventurous friend Marina Zakaria (@marinazakaria on IG) took a train (ETS) from KL Sentral to the northern border town of Padang Besar. It took about 5 hours, Marina (in own pic shown here) recommends the Platinum class which is RM 106 one way and faster with fewer stops. From Padang Besar, it is another one hour by taxi van ride to Hat Yai town. The electric trains no longer makes the choo choo sounds of olden days steam locomotives.

Sadly, Lonely Planet introduced the town as “Hat Yai has long been a favourite stop for Malaysian men on their weekend hooker tour”

Besides red lights, I know there is also great food and cheap shopping. I last visited the town a long time ago by flight.

Inspired by Marina, I hope to visit Hat Yai again by rail to meet my Hat Yai based friend Egg or Woranon Thitinunthakorn (@iameggg on IG). He is the active founder of the startup TuberThailand, the co working space and startup community promoter in Hat Yai. I should have introduced him to my friend, the similarly inclined Kashminder Singh when Egg visited me in KL the last time.

In researching hotels in Hat Yai, I found many good deals. I created a hotel deals page for the city at:

http://www.mycen.my/hat-yai-hotel-deals-finder/

#hatyai #thailand #mycenhotels #ets #ktm #train #padangbesar #klsentral

Got Discount Or Not Ah?

Sometimes when I try to promote my hotel booking site to a friend, and the friend will ask “can I get discounts?” That’s a very typical Malaysian response. Not just about value but friends must always give discounts, it seems.

I love to give you a discount but it is not within my control. I understand the sentiment and the desire to get maximum value as a Malaysian myself. That is why I recently launched the Hotel Deals Finder feature.

For each city featured, you can find special discounts and reduced room rates for certain properties. Save up to 50 % or more, where available. It depends on the deals made by the hotels and my affiliate partner and are subject to availability and booking dates.

I am trying out the Deals feature and am kicking off with discounted rates for hotels or deals in some of the destinations popular with Malaysians. However, any one from anywhere in the world can enjoy the discounts.

These are some of the destinations popular with Malaysians. I hope to include hotels in Taiwan, Korea and Japan soon. It is tough work and as luck would have it, I suffered an Internet outage over the weekend, slowing down the building of more pages.

You can use built-in Hotel Search and you’ll probably find some existing deals or flash sale. For your convenience, I’ll add more cities. as we go along and as I gauge usage and understand the algo better. Thank you for your support. Contact me directly, should you need help.

Since I am so tired, I didn’t use Photoshop to build a collage. Tip: I merely screen capture the directory thumbs view generated by the excellent and free Faststone Image Viewer. I like that it looked natively like cardboard-mounted travel slides from film days. Start here for discounts: http://www.mycen.my/ #mycenhotels #hotels #discounts #deals #rooms #travel

The Teapot Kingdom

When I first saw this giant teapot adorning a roundabout near Kuala Belait in Brunei, I was thinking, at the time, it must be a British hangover. After all, Brunei was a former British colony and tea drinking must be a culture it inherited from the British. The structure’s construction was sponsored by Brunei Shell Petroleum.

It is known as the Teapot Roundabout and the four cups represent the four districts of Brunei-Muara, Tutong, Belait and Temburong. The central teapot represents the central government and the benevolent Sultan. Nice symbolism but how many Malaysians can forget one man after seeing this?

Seeing it, reminded me of the famous local cult leader Ayah Pin who built a giant teapot in his Sky Kingdom in Terengganu. In 2005, the commune was ruthlessly smashed by unknown masked men.

The authorities persecuted him and and his followers, accusing them of subscribing to deviant teachings. Ayah Pin became a fugitive and died of old age on 22 April 2016, according to Wikipedia.

#brunei #teapot #kualabelait #terengganu