Travel

How to buy France SNCF TGV Train Online, in French!

When you want to arrange your travel itinerary in France or across Europe, you may stuck into France SNCF website to buy train tickets.

Before I continue about this, let's see what options do we have to buy Europe Train Ticket online:

  • www.raileurope.com - Use this if you live in USA
  • www.raileurope.co.uk - if you live in UK
  • www.raileurope.ca - for Canadian
  • www.raileurope.co.au - for Australia / NZ
  • www.raileurope.com.sg - for Singaporean
  • or contact your authorized local agent. For example is Pantravel in Indonesia, for more click here : To find out your local country travel agent

Those sites sell all train tickets inside Europe, e.g London to Paris Eurostar train, Paris-Amsterdam trains, etc. But querying these site (especially UK site) from time to time, I find that the ticket price quoted in the site is standard price, I seldom get promo fares. This means RailEurope may be offering you higher quote price.

Uncategorized

Buying Used Books

Buying used books? Why not. It's a cheap way to afford a book not by its cover but its content.

Living in Indonesia, usually we are accustomed to buying brand new books, glossy cover, and white color paper. Although paper is cheap here, but sometimes we need to think about saving money as well as saving the earth. We are not ready yet for buying second products, books in this case.

Local produced books are always cheaper than imported books, but you only get about half the knowledge because local writers don't have time and effort to write hundreds of pages book. If they write 200+ pages, editor will kick their ass and ask them to trim into less than less than 100 pages. Yeah, thick books don't sell well in Indonesia.

For online book shopping, we can use Gramedia Online, pay with credit card or transfer, and it will be shipped within 3-4 days to any Indonesia address. This online stores in not comprehensive, not all titles available as they are available in Gramedia stores in malls.

Now, if you are interested in imported books (a.k.a English written books), the most famous one is Amazon.com. Not only they sell books, they sell everything from electronics to house related things. And may be you don't know this, Amazon also sells used items.

Just like this example, a brand new book of DK Eyewitness London is sold at USD 16.50, while used books (if available) can be purchased only with USD 5.00. That's a great saving!

Uncategorized

Smart Internet Unlimited

Tired of using lame Indosat 3.5G Unlimited, I searched for alternative and cheap Internet mobile solutions. Tried Telkomsel Flashvolume based (300MB for IDR 100K) it worked pretty good aside from its price.

Since May 1st, 2009, Smart Telecom launches new Internet unlimited packages with affordable price. Smart nge-Jump Unlimited Internet is their full name. Wow, I should try then... FYI, Smart Telecom is a CDMA mobile phone carrier therefore its Internet feature requires CDMA mobile phone or CDMA Modem phone to operate, in short:you cannot use GSM-based modem like Huawei E220.

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Smart Jump Packages

Smart Internet Unlimited has some packages to choose:

Package Downstream (up to) Upstream (up to) Price (per month)
Regular 153.6 Kbps 128 Kbps n/a (15,000 / week)
1\. Silver 512 Kbps 128 Kbps 75,000
2\. Gold 1 Mbps 384 Kbps 120,000
3\. Platinum 3.1 Mbps 384 Kbps 150,000
4\. Ultimate 3.1 Mbps with public IP 1.8 Mbps 225,000

Those packages are available for postpaid and prepaid customers. For prepaid, even there are 1-day, 7-day, and 1-month packages.

Uncategorized

Travelling to Iceland

As one of European counties, Iceland has ben ranked as one of the most expensive destination for Americans and rest of the world. No wonder usually Iceland is not included in people's itinerary.

But recently as its economy collapse in late 2008, prices in Iceland have been falling up to 50 percent from normal.

Iceland
(image from www.smh.com.au)
What is Iceland capital city? Prepare your tongue to spell Reykjavik. It is quite big at you need several days to explore it. Car rental which started at USD 200 last year now is less 30%, not to mention lodging and hotels.

City

Get Ready for Soekarno Hatta Airport Terminal 3

If you drive from Soekarno Hatta Jakarta Airport back to city, just after Terminal 2 - in the left side you'll see a new building ready to operate. That is the brand new Terminal 3 of Soekarno Hatta Airport (a.k.a CGK - Cengkareng Airport).

The building is ready to open this month and solely used by Indonesia AirAsia for domestic flights. Mandala Airlines will also operate from Terminal 3 in near future. This minimalistic and full of glass building is kind of smaller compared to Terminal 1, but adequate for low-cost airlines base. The design is also different from existing terminals, leaving the old and culture-rich style design to modern-look design, just like Sultan Hassanudin Airport in Makassar.

This airport is said to be able to host Airbus A380 (reaaallly?), let's see later.

Mobile, Travel & Technology

Newcomers in Indonesia: Nokia E75 and E55

Nokia brand is really hot in Indonesia, especially its E series mobile phone targeted for business consumers. The E series are known as replacement of old 9000 communicators, and we have E71 and E63 currently in Indonesia market.

And now get ready for the launch of Nokia E75, set as next generation of E71. Designed with side-sliding to reveal its QWERTY keyboard, typing sms and email will be very quick and fun.

Nokia E75 Review

Nokia E75
As told in its model number, this mobile phone is equipped with latest Nokia Messaging, with HTML-formated email support. One can also categorize email by date, sender, and file size. Yup, for email lover (push-email or pull pop3 email), this gadget is cool huh?.

City, My Journey, Travel

New Travel Blog Series: Guide to Hong Kong

After I completed my long and exhausting posts about Panduan Jalan Hemat ke Eropa (Europe Travel Guide), I suddenly felt lost of motivation to blog. My aim was achieved by writing about 18 pages of travel guide to european cities, of course in Indonesian language. While English translation is still …

City, Mobile, Travel, Travel & Technology

Jakarta Street Map now available in Google Map

It seems that Google is working really hard to make its Google Map accessible to everyone, even for Indonesian. As I check today, Google Map now showing Jakarta street map in detail, including offering driving direction if possible.

Jakarta streets (as we know) is messy and very narrow in some …

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