In regards to your segment 'Honest, Genuine Videos'; I do look at other TH-camr's experience of a certain place with a grain of salt because I understand that the arrangements could be totally different. Similar to your sharing about Mekong River experience, I had the same with my Dubai Day Tour. I was also wondering when I was on the tour why it's so different from the ones I saw on TH-cam and when I had the chance to chat with the tour guide, one part of what he said dawned on me which is tour packages or special arrangements which costs a lot lot more. So perhaps these other TH-camrs paid for those packages hence the experience is totally different and far more positive or special so to speak.
The cost of the tour is definitely a factor. And for this floating market tour in Can Tho, which tour you select and how much you pay has a big impact on the experience. If you pay more, you can have a smaller group or a private boat. And, of course, you can have an English speaking guide. And I guess you could also get hotel pickup and other services. And the experience would be tailored towards foreign visitors. I signed up for my particular tour pretty much on impulse and without much thought. I just happened to be walking by a ticket counter when I was at the night market with a local friend who spoke Vietnamese. With him as an interpreter, I just bought a ticket right then and there, and it was quite inexpensive. I knew the basic details about the tour but I didn't shop around or ask a lot of questions about it. To be honest, when I bought the ticket for the tour, it never even occurred to me that it was going to be in Vietnamese. The vast majority of the tours are in Vietnamese of course. I just didn't think of that at the time. But I wasn't that worried about the kind of tour experience I was going to have. I went into this tour quite casually. But I did assume that certain things would happen. I assumed, for example, that my boat would be leaving from the place where I bought the ticket. And that turned out not to be true. And I assumed we would get coffee and noodles from another boat in the middle of the river at the floating market. That seemed to be a standard part of the floating market experience. But with my cheaper ticket, my boat just pulled up at a dock. And all the passengers got out of the boat and went into a normal restaurant to have coffee and breakfast. I guess to have the experience of getting your coffee and breakfast from a boat, you'd have to make sure that experience is included in your particular tour. It's not automatic. That's what happened with the Fil-Viet Buddies when they hired their own private boat. I just assumed my boat would do the same thing. But without realizing it, I had signed up for the cheapest tour option and that did not include tying up next to a market boat for breakfast. Had I signed up for a tour on Klook, I would have naturally gotten an English speaking guide, and I'm sure by paying more, the boat would have been served drinks and noodles by another local boat instead of going to a dock. And I think you can hire a private boat and a speed boat and spend as much money as you want to get a more personalized experience.
You can always find a place where you can end a video and make it Part 1 and start the other half as Part 2. Then you can still do your long form video and not edit out what you don't want to leave behind.
I'm going to try that method with a few experiences that I've had here in Vietnam so far. It does get a bit complicated to divide up a video like that but still have them link up in some way that makes sense. And it adds a lot of work in terms of making multiple thumbnails and video titles and doing multiple uploads etc. But I don't mind the extra work at all if it actually makes the videos more enjoyable to perhaps a wider audience. 😎
I still enjoyed the trip, though. As I think I said in this BTS video, you just have to shift your perspective. It's not really a trip to a floating market anymore. It's a boat ride up the river to have breakfast and coffee. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's fun and worth doing. There just isn't any kind of a real local floating market anymore.
Hi Doug. Why don't you test the transfer speed of your peripheral devices by changing your destination (e.g., use your cellphone instead of your macbook). If you get better results on your phone, then you can conclude (instead of guess) that your computer is the weakest link. And if it is your computer, then what part: port, ssd, etc? To this end, it would be helpful if you gave detailed information about your macbook such as model, version, and even build year. I'm pretty sure that you provided that information in a previous video, but I don't think that many viewers are willing to search for that information.
I've actually done that to a certain extent. I've tested all of my memory card readers and memory cards on my phones and on my tablet. But it didn't really help understand what was going on. The data transfer speeds were all even much slower on those devices then on the laptop. And I assume that the phones and the tablet themselves just had slower data transfer speeds. So, they were the limiting factor and the speeds I saw had nothing to do with the memory cards or the memory card readers. And I understand what you mean about isolating exactly where the problem lies. That's a standard troubleshooting method. I do it all the time. But with the gear I have, I couldn't figure out any way of doing that. I had no way of establishing any kind of benchmark to compare anything else to. That's one problem with trying to do all these things by yourself. If I had a friend with a laptop that was working perfectly and he got blazing fast transfer speeds, I could plug one of my memory cards into his system and get an accurate read write speed test. And I could do the same thing with my memory card readers etc. I could test all my gear on someone else's system and isolate where the problem might be. But on my own with just my laptop, it gets more difficult. You kind of need a home base to figure all these things out. These are the specs for my laptop, by the way: MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports) 2.3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 8 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 1536 M
37:20 Sounds like the Seinfeld episode waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant! "How much longer?" "Maybe 5, 10 minutes" th-cam.com/video/PFKb3wA-qJQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=7PTWJgWEKCHxYNC0
Yes, that's a classic episode. I've heard Jerry and Larry talk about it in interviews over the years because when they submitted the script to the network executives, the executives all hated it. They all pointed out that nothing happens in the episode. All they do is wait for a table at the restaurant and they never even get a table. And the network executives didn't understand how this could be entertaining. Yet it continues to be one of the most popular and talked-about episodes of the whole series. And I guess its popularity comes from the fact that we can all relate to it. We all find ourselves in those situations, as I did while waiting for my boat to the floating market. I guess I was better off than in the Seinfeld episode because after being told many times to just wait 5-10 minutes, I did eventually get on a boat to the floating market and had an interesting experience. Poor Jerry and George and Elaine never even got to have a meal.
That's very logical, and I have to agree with you. Even if you are joking. 🤪 Lately, I seem to have problems with technology that no one else ever encounters. The one common denominator is me. So I must be the source of all the problems.
As a subscriber for 5 years, i, and i think most of us, do enjoy ur long videos (i commented on this a few years back). We don't enjoy short videos like what the other youtuber did. Thus i think if ur video of an outing is too long, perhaps u can split it into a few parts (like ur recent videos). So just upload everything, really.
Thank you for that feedback. I appreciate it. As I've talked about in this video and others, the long-form videos come naturally to me. And I enjoy that style of shooting video and telling stories. Maybe keeping the long-form style but dividing videos into several parts would be a reasonable compromise. I'll see how that goes and try it out in a couple of videos. 👍
You might consider live streaming instead of editing long videos if you like sharing the entire experience with continuous conversation. It would save you from editing and you just focus on chat.
I've thought about live streaming. I'd like to do it in some fashion. I've just never come up with the time to figure out how to do it. My sense is that the technology required would be complicated and it would take a long time to work out the kinks. Most people seem to struggle with setting it up. And then half of the live stream seems to be taken up with them staring at their laptop and trying to figure out why certain things are not working. 😁 And for this type of behind-the-scenes video, I'm not sure that a live stream would work, however. I often need to stop in the middle to look up some information or get something to show or change a battery or deal with some other problem or just make a cup of coffee or a half dozen other things. It feels like this type of video still needs to be recorded and then edited in order to get all the details right. But it's an interesting idea, assuming that the Wi-Fi connection and all of the livestream technical specifications can be figured out and I could get it to work. I don't have a lot of confidence about any of that, however. 😅
I certainly think of Ho Chi Minh City as a safe place. Of course, I'm a guy and a guy with a lot of experience overseas, so I generally feel quite confident and safe everywhere I go. But I had no concerns at all about being in Saigon.
I could. 😀 But I tend to let these things go, assuming it isn't a really big problem. I can live with the ice build-up in the freezer. Quite often, when I tell people about things that are broken or not working, it ends up making my life worse, not better. Then I end up with people knocking on my door and coming in and out all day long to look at things and try to fix them (and usually fail) etc. It just makes life so complicated, so I just put up with broken things, find workarounds, or fix things myself.
In regards to your segment 'Honest, Genuine Videos'; I do look at other TH-camr's experience of a certain place with a grain of salt because I understand that the arrangements could be totally different. Similar to your sharing about Mekong River experience, I had the same with my Dubai Day Tour. I was also wondering when I was on the tour why it's so different from the ones I saw on TH-cam and when I had the chance to chat with the tour guide, one part of what he said dawned on me which is tour packages or special arrangements which costs a lot lot more.
So perhaps these other TH-camrs paid for those packages hence the experience is totally different and far more positive or special so to speak.
The cost of the tour is definitely a factor. And for this floating market tour in Can Tho, which tour you select and how much you pay has a big impact on the experience.
If you pay more, you can have a smaller group or a private boat. And, of course, you can have an English speaking guide. And I guess you could also get hotel pickup and other services. And the experience would be tailored towards foreign visitors.
I signed up for my particular tour pretty much on impulse and without much thought. I just happened to be walking by a ticket counter when I was at the night market with a local friend who spoke Vietnamese. With him as an interpreter, I just bought a ticket right then and there, and it was quite inexpensive. I knew the basic details about the tour but I didn't shop around or ask a lot of questions about it.
To be honest, when I bought the ticket for the tour, it never even occurred to me that it was going to be in Vietnamese. The vast majority of the tours are in Vietnamese of course. I just didn't think of that at the time. But I wasn't that worried about the kind of tour experience I was going to have. I went into this tour quite casually.
But I did assume that certain things would happen. I assumed, for example, that my boat would be leaving from the place where I bought the ticket. And that turned out not to be true. And I assumed we would get coffee and noodles from another boat in the middle of the river at the floating market. That seemed to be a standard part of the floating market experience.
But with my cheaper ticket, my boat just pulled up at a dock. And all the passengers got out of the boat and went into a normal restaurant to have coffee and breakfast. I guess to have the experience of getting your coffee and breakfast from a boat, you'd have to make sure that experience is included in your particular tour. It's not automatic.
That's what happened with the Fil-Viet Buddies when they hired their own private boat. I just assumed my boat would do the same thing. But without realizing it, I had signed up for the cheapest tour option and that did not include tying up next to a market boat for breakfast.
Had I signed up for a tour on Klook, I would have naturally gotten an English speaking guide, and I'm sure by paying more, the boat would have been served drinks and noodles by another local boat instead of going to a dock.
And I think you can hire a private boat and a speed boat and spend as much money as you want to get a more personalized experience.
Is your planet. You do you.
You can always find a place where you can end a video and make it Part 1 and start the other half as Part 2. Then you can still do your long form video and not edit out what you don't want to leave behind.
I'm going to try that method with a few experiences that I've had here in Vietnam so far. It does get a bit complicated to divide up a video like that but still have them link up in some way that makes sense. And it adds a lot of work in terms of making multiple thumbnails and video titles and doing multiple uploads etc.
But I don't mind the extra work at all if it actually makes the videos more enjoyable to perhaps a wider audience. 😎
43:14 true, there is no market there any more as a floating market is no longer needed. We both went there too late.
I still enjoyed the trip, though. As I think I said in this BTS video, you just have to shift your perspective. It's not really a trip to a floating market anymore. It's a boat ride up the river to have breakfast and coffee. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's fun and worth doing. There just isn't any kind of a real local floating market anymore.
That is why I watch your videos. I want to know everything, warts and all.
Hi Doug. Why don't you test the transfer speed of your peripheral devices by changing your destination (e.g., use your cellphone instead of your macbook). If you get better results on your phone, then you can conclude (instead of guess) that your computer is the weakest link. And if it is your computer, then what part: port, ssd, etc? To this end, it would be helpful if you gave detailed information about your macbook such as model, version, and even build year. I'm pretty sure that you provided that information in a previous video, but I don't think that many viewers are willing to search for that information.
I've actually done that to a certain extent. I've tested all of my memory card readers and memory cards on my phones and on my tablet. But it didn't really help understand what was going on. The data transfer speeds were all even much slower on those devices then on the laptop. And I assume that the phones and the tablet themselves just had slower data transfer speeds. So, they were the limiting factor and the speeds I saw had nothing to do with the memory cards or the memory card readers.
And I understand what you mean about isolating exactly where the problem lies. That's a standard troubleshooting method. I do it all the time. But with the gear I have, I couldn't figure out any way of doing that. I had no way of establishing any kind of benchmark to compare anything else to.
That's one problem with trying to do all these things by yourself. If I had a friend with a laptop that was working perfectly and he got blazing fast transfer speeds, I could plug one of my memory cards into his system and get an accurate read write speed test. And I could do the same thing with my memory card readers etc. I could test all my gear on someone else's system and isolate where the problem might be.
But on my own with just my laptop, it gets more difficult. You kind of need a home base to figure all these things out.
These are the specs for my laptop, by the way:
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports)
2.3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
8 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3
Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 1536 M
37:20 Sounds like the Seinfeld episode waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant! "How much longer?" "Maybe 5, 10 minutes" th-cam.com/video/PFKb3wA-qJQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=7PTWJgWEKCHxYNC0
Yes, that's a classic episode. I've heard Jerry and Larry talk about it in interviews over the years because when they submitted the script to the network executives, the executives all hated it. They all pointed out that nothing happens in the episode. All they do is wait for a table at the restaurant and they never even get a table. And the network executives didn't understand how this could be entertaining. Yet it continues to be one of the most popular and talked-about episodes of the whole series. And I guess its popularity comes from the fact that we can all relate to it. We all find ourselves in those situations, as I did while waiting for my boat to the floating market.
I guess I was better off than in the Seinfeld episode because after being told many times to just wait 5-10 minutes, I did eventually get on a boat to the floating market and had an interesting experience. Poor Jerry and George and Elaine never even got to have a meal.
Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. So I think it is you. 😂
Just joking Doug.
That's very logical, and I have to agree with you. Even if you are joking. 🤪 Lately, I seem to have problems with technology that no one else ever encounters. The one common denominator is me. So I must be the source of all the problems.
As a subscriber for 5 years, i, and i think most of us, do enjoy ur long videos (i commented on this a few years back). We don't enjoy short videos like what the other youtuber did. Thus i think if ur video of an outing is too long, perhaps u can split it into a few parts (like ur recent videos). So just upload everything, really.
Thank you for that feedback. I appreciate it.
As I've talked about in this video and others, the long-form videos come naturally to me. And I enjoy that style of shooting video and telling stories.
Maybe keeping the long-form style but dividing videos into several parts would be a reasonable compromise. I'll see how that goes and try it out in a couple of videos. 👍
You might consider live streaming instead of editing long videos if you like sharing the entire experience with continuous conversation. It would save you from editing and you just focus on chat.
I've thought about live streaming. I'd like to do it in some fashion. I've just never come up with the time to figure out how to do it. My sense is that the technology required would be complicated and it would take a long time to work out the kinks. Most people seem to struggle with setting it up. And then half of the live stream seems to be taken up with them staring at their laptop and trying to figure out why certain things are not working. 😁
And for this type of behind-the-scenes video, I'm not sure that a live stream would work, however. I often need to stop in the middle to look up some information or get something to show or change a battery or deal with some other problem or just make a cup of coffee or a half dozen other things. It feels like this type of video still needs to be recorded and then edited in order to get all the details right.
But it's an interesting idea, assuming that the Wi-Fi connection and all of the livestream technical specifications can be figured out and I could get it to work. I don't have a lot of confidence about any of that, however. 😅
Do you consider HCM as a safe city?
I certainly think of Ho Chi Minh City as a safe place. Of course, I'm a guy and a guy with a lot of experience overseas, so I generally feel quite confident and safe everywhere I go. But I had no concerns at all about being in Saigon.
Just tell the hotel about the door problem and ice
I could. 😀 But I tend to let these things go, assuming it isn't a really big problem. I can live with the ice build-up in the freezer. Quite often, when I tell people about things that are broken or not working, it ends up making my life worse, not better. Then I end up with people knocking on my door and coming in and out all day long to look at things and try to fix them (and usually fail) etc. It just makes life so complicated, so I just put up with broken things, find workarounds, or fix things myself.
CC