Today was our trip to James Bond Island. It was going to be a long boat ride to the island, so I decided to take two sea sick tablets. Although it is great at ensuring I don’t get sea sick, they do cause drowsiness. It was a one hour drive to the pier and we were picked up from the resort by car at 7:30am. Within five minutes of being the car, I had fallen asleep and didn’t wake up until we arrived at the pier.

I must have looked pretty tired as we sat and waited, as on of the hosts of our tour came up and asked if I was tired. We waited another half an hour until the rest of the tour participants arrived. They were mainly from Germany. We climbed onto the boat (I am slowly getting less uncoordinated). The boat was a traditional Sea Junk. It was a lot bigger than the speed boat on the Phi Phi Island tour. It was a two and a half hour journey to our first location, which we slept through most of. I definitely wasn’t getting sea sick, the tablets had knocked me out pretty well. Our first destination was surrounded by shallow waters and the group split into two (English and German speaking).

We climbed/fell into a smaller boat which took us to a floating village. We were in for a bit of a shock. ‘The James Bond Island Tour’ sounded pretty glossy and we were not expecting the poverty we came across while visiting the floating village. The first thing that hit us was the smell. We thought Patong was pretty bad, this floating village literally smelt like a ‘floater’. We felt very out of place, being the only group of foreigners on the island. It was an amazing experience seeing the way they lived. The tour guide took us through the local school. It felt a little wrong and intrusive that we were just walking around their school. I didn’t take my camera out, as it didn’t feel right, like it was an invasion of privacy. The tour guide encouraged me to take my camera out. As soon as I did, the school children were intrigued. Gathering around me as I showed them some of the photos I had taken. They would stand in front of my camera, I would take the photo and then they would quickly run behind the camera to see the shot. They were laughing and enjoying themselves, which eased my mind that it was okay that we were there. We didn’t stay long at the floating village. We fell in to the small boat and drove to our larger boat further out. When in the smaller boat, we were drenched by the water hitting the side of the boat. The water was really salty and our eyes were burning. It was now time to see James Bond Island.

We arrived at James Bond island around mid day. There was a small market, with mainly Muslim women. They were selling sea shells and jewellery and were a lot pushier and grumpier than the sellers in Patong. I guess I understand why. They are stuck on an island, relying on our sales for their next meal. Bree and I bought ice cream from a local man. I opened my Magnum with Almond. Crunch. I nearly broke a tooth. He was obviously worried that the ice creams would melt. He had his freezer so cold that the ice cream was rock hard. After an hour on the island, we went back on the boat, where we had lunch. Lunch was nice. A mix of thai curries, salad and seafood. It was time to return to the main island. We stopped at some calm water, where we could go for a swim. We were both pretty zonked from the tablets and spent the time watching the funny fat Germans jumping off the boat in their speedos. It was another memorable experience and one that contrasted our previous experience in Thailand. The tour guides were lovely and were very informative throughout the day. We headed back to the resort where we had dinner at one of the resorts restaurants ‘Into The Beach.’

Sawadee Krap! We woke up at 7:15am today, which would have been fine, if we didn’t have to be at the lobby by 7:30am to leave for the day’s adventures. We skipped breakfast and made it just in time. We were driven to a location fifteen minutes away, where we were then greeted by Tam. “My name is Tam, like Tim Tam. Welcome to the land of smiles” He said as he grinned ear to ear. We sat and waited as other people from our group arrived from different hotels.

There were ten of us in our group. We  all stepped inside the minivan, getting comfortable for the one and a half hour drive to the mountains. On the way, Tam spoke to us about what to expect. Today, we were Elephant Trekking and White Water Rafting. Bree and I were unsure of what to expect in relation to the white water rafting as it was our first time. As Tam was speaking to us, I couldn’t help but be impressed by his intelligence. English wasn’t his first language, but he was able to articulate himself so well. Not only that, but after speaking to us in English, he turned to others and spoke in German!

I slept for half the drive to the mountain, as I had taken two motion sickness tablets, which made me a little drowsy. We arrived at the Sealand camp site and our first activity was Elephant Trekking. Tam had pointed out the different words to yell if we wanted the elephant to move forward (OYYYY) or stop (OHWWW). We were directed to an elevated platform, where we hopped on the elephant. We had been told that if the elephant is wagging its ears and tale it means its happy. “Great! Its happy!”.  Our Elephant driver yelled “OYYYY” and the elephant began walking. It reminded me of camel riding in Central Australia I did a few years ago. We went through a forest, which had mud paths throughout. Ten minutes into our adventure, the driver yelled “OHWWW”. He jumped off the elephant and told me to drive him. I got out of my seat and move slowly onto the neck of the elephant.

For twenty minutes we went through the forest, with our elephant driver walking next to the elephant in bare feet and hand rolled cigarette in mouth. He took photos as we went. I tried to get the elephant to stop “OHWWW”, but he didn’t respond to me. I even tried a little bit of a Thai accent. I was tempted to yell “OYYY, OYYY, OYYY”. Tam told us, if you say it lots, the elephant would go faster, up to forty kilometres and hour!

It was now time for white water rafting. There were some Australians with us. Whenever traveling its always interesting to see who introduces who and who speaks first. “Where are you from?” I said, as we sat in the back of a ute.”Melbourne” the couple responded. “oh, cool, same, we’re from the south eastern suburbs”. “So are we – Narre Warren”  They said. Wow, it really is a small world. The girl had gone to the same high school as me, only 10 years earlier. I began to list names and it turned out she knew the same people as me!

White water rafting time, Tam went through some safety guidelines with us. We put on helmets and life jackets and entered the raft. Inside the raft was Bree, myself and the ‘Nazza Wazza couple’. For forty five minutes we paddled and bounced as we went down the rapids. At one stage, we jumped out and went for a short swim.

Forty five minutes later, we went back to the ute and drove to a waterfall at the top of the mountain. It reminded me a lot of the waterfalls in Vanuatu. There were a few local kids jumping off the rocks, which was a perfect opportunity for me to experiment with high shutter speed photography.
We drove back down to the camp side and had a lovely lunch of tradition Thai food. Fish and a sea food soup.

It was the end of a massive day at the Sealand campsite and was now time to go back to our resort. A one and a half hour drive and we were back. Pat had told us that elephants bring good luck and that we should buy a lotto ticket, win and then bring him to Australia.

We ate at the resort again tonight. Although, it is a little more expensive, we save money by not having to get a taxi.

Tomorrow, we head to Phi Phi Island!

PS: Sorry for any poor grammar, spelling or sentence structure. It is late here and I don’t have time to proof read!

If you have any suggestions on what else we should do while we’re in Phuket, please leave a comment below!

Josh

Is there something i’m missing? Let me know!

Also, on the subject of packing for travel, I found a great video by Timothy Ferriss on travel packing tips:

What would you do for five dollars? Well, from what I can see, a lot of people will do a bit for the cost of a coffee and donut. A couple of days ago, I was listening to the Small Business Big Marketing Podcast. Host Tim Reid spoke about his recent addiction to Fiverr.com. A service where people can submit tasks that they are willing to do for five dollars. It got me thinking about outsourcing, particularly the things I had read in 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss.

There are a lot of thought provoking ideas in 4HWW, but my main problem with the book was implementation. I tried using Elance, which he had recommended, but I found that it wasn’t suited to me. It was a little too time consuming dealing with proposals and a bit counter intuitive. I was spending more time finding someone to do a job, than just me doing it myself. This might be my own fault, although I have found a couple of fantastic services I have used in my business throughout the years which i’ll get to later.

After hearing Tim Reid speak about Fiverr, I decided it was time to check it out. I spent an hour or so on the website. There were so many people willing to do stuff! From video testimonials to dropping 30 business cards in a random city in the US. A lot of the ‘service providers’ on fiverr were well spoken and I found it surprising that they were doing things for $5! It even made me feel a little sad when I thought that these people had families and kids to feed. Then I thought about it a little more ‘hey, they aren’t doing too badly! They have a house, a computer, a HD Mino and an Internet connection! They’ll be fine.’

I decided to get a video testimonial done for this post, purely to show you what can be done using fiver.
I found someone that had done a fair few testimonials and decided to contact her.

Heya! Just doing a blog post about fiverr and I am planning on using your video as a demo. I want it to be laid back and bubbly.
Below is a script. Feel free to improv, but just thought I would give you some ideas. Its meant to be funny.
THANKS
“Hi everyone, I was surfing the net the other night and I stumbled across this guys website. His name is Josh Janssen and he is from Australia. Anyway, I started reading his blog and couldn’t believe how much cool stuff was on there. I keep on visting it over and over again. He is really funny and has great posts about technology. His blog is joshjanssen.com and… yeah, I just think its really awesome and think you should check him out!”

About five hours later I received the finished video! That was quick. I probably should have let her know that my blog isn’t really THAT funny:

I love the idea that I can get someone, on the other side of the world to do work and have it done over night! I would have loved to use Fiverr when I was in high school. Not for work, but for getting paid for school work. Students doing subjects like Multimedia could build their portfolio and at the same time, get five bucks each time they do a piece of work. Get to the end of the year, and someone could easily have a few thousand dollars for just doing their school work. In saying that, when I was in high school, I was doing corporate videos to finance my year 12 film.

The service Fiverr, reminds me of my favourite website that I have been using in my business since 2008. I have kept it a bit of a secret, as it really does provide an amazing edge to any multimedia business. Its called Voice123.com. If you have a podcast or a media business, you should definitely check it out! Voices123 has a massive database of Voice Over artists. All you have to do is setup a project. Outlining what you are after, with a sample script and within a day, you will have dozens of auditions. Thats right! Auditions using the sample script you provided. Then you just choose which VO Artist you liked best to do the full job. You choose how much you want to pay and they will only audition if they accept the amount.

When I was in high school, I wanted to impress everyone with my movie trailer. I went to Voice123, had auditions from dozens of voice over artists and chose a nice guy in California. When he found out that I was just a student and saw my work, he waived the $50 i offered for the voice over. Here is the trailer:

(The trailer didn’t have the final color grade at that stage, so ignore the quality of the footage)

Through Voices123 I have found a Voiceover artist in Melbourne that I use whenever I can and I now only need to go to Voice123 when I need an international/ or different voice.

I do have a concern with these websites. Do they cheapen the job? I can get a voiceover done on Voice123 for $100 that I would pay $400 if I was to go through an agency. It’s not too bad in video production yet, but as editing software gets easier to use, every tom dick and harry will think they’re an editor. It’s going to be an interesting few years.

Would love to get your thoughts. Do you think these services are good for the industry? This is also relevant in the design industry I believe.

It’s very common to use the start of a new year as motivation for change. Most people will only establish goals once a year, the New Years Resolution. Although I think it is fantastic to make positive change and set goals, it hit me the other day; Why wait until the end of the year to implement your goals?

Thats why I have decided to start now! Its a fact that it takes time to create good habits. It can take well over a month before something feels natural in your life. In 2008 I lost over 30KG by implementing simple rules to follow. These rules included:

- Run Daily: I decided to run after 10pm most nights, as I found I could run for longer without the beaming sun.

- No Soft drink: Drinking soft drink is another habit common to a lot of people. It is something that I had trained myself to ‘need’. Every time I was thirsty I would have a glass of Coke. It took me about a month of drinking water to un-train myself from this.

Thats really it. It seems that everything is strongly connected and by eliminating small issues in my life, a lot of other things fell in to place. Because I was running, I didn’t want to eat big rich meals. I was happy with small portions and a lot of fruit.

So, I ended up gaining a lot of the weight back two years later, however it taught me a number of things about goal setting. Which I will do differently in the future.

Are my goals transferable when my lifestyle changes?
I went from being at school, where I would finish at 3pm everyday. To being a freelancer where I was always close to a fridge/food and was working late nights.

Goals need to be updated regularly.
Circumstances change, which I discussed above. If you setup a key weight target, then what happens when you reach it? For me, the idea of goals is for long term happiness, not short term. This means reassessing goals as you go. It should be really a movable goal post. The mistake I made first time around was I lost focus of what I was wanting. In the end I want a LIFESTYLE CHANGE, not a quick fix.

Priorities
Goals need to be set high in the priority list. When other things are taking up your time, like work, don’t let that get in the way of your personal goals. The more priorities you have, the harder it is. You know how I said earlier that it takes about a month to get out of bad habits? Well it takes about 3 days to get out of good habits.

So, now my 3 goals before 2011. The idea: Give myself just a couple of months to achieve these goals, then reassess in January, when I am in the middle of good habits!

1. Run 10 kilometres non-stop
Better than how much I can run at the moment. 1KM if i’m lucky!
This has a lot of benefits. To do this I will have to be exercising regularly and improve my diet.

2. Write a 90 page feature film script
I have been meaning to do this for a long time!

3. Go on an overseas holiday
This seems like a silly one. But when you have your own business, there is no ‘perfect time’ to take a holiday.
So I want to do it sometime before christmas!

So, there you have it! The goals before 2011. WIll post blogs of anything interesting I learn on the way!

Feel free to leave a comment with film suggestions/your thoughts!

TEENAGE PAPARAZZO

Greater Union Cinema 6 – Fri 23 Jul 7:00 PM

PICTURE ME: A MODEL’S DIARY

Greater Union Cinema 3 – Fri 23 Jul 9:15 PM

THE ACTRESSES

Forum Theatre – Sun 25 Jul 2:30 PM

AND EVERYTHING IS GOING FINE

Greater Union Cinema 5 – Sun 25 Jul 4:45 PM

THE GHOST WRITER

Greater Union Cinema 6 – Sun 25 Jul 7:00 PM

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED

Forum Theatre – Sun 25 Jul 9:15 PM

THE MESSENGER

Forum Theatre – Mon 26 Jul 2:30 PM

WORLD’S GREATEST DAD

Greater Union Cinema 6 – Mon 26 Jul 7:00 PM

WELCOME TO THE RILEYS

Greater Union Cinema 6 – Mon 26 Jul 9:15 PM

1981

ACMI 2 – Tue 27 Jul 12:30 PM

THE GENIUS AND THE BOYS

ACMI 2 – Tue 27 Jul 4:45 PM

THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

Greater Union Cinema 6 – Tue 27 Jul 7:00 PM

FUCK OFF POLICE CAR

Greater Union Cinema 4 – Tue 27 Jul 9:15 PM

THE UNLOVED

ACMI 2 – Wed 28 Jul 2:30 PM

HOW MUCH DOES YOUR BUILDING WEIGH, MR. FOSTER?

Greater Union Cinema 5 – Wed 28 Jul 6:45 PM

CHLOE

Greater Union Cinema 6 – Wed 28 Jul 9:15 PM

KARAOKE

Forum Theatre – Thu 29 Jul 2:30 PM

THE KILLER INSIDE ME

Greater Union Cinema 6 – Thu 29 Jul 7:00 PM

CELL 211

Greater Union Cinema 6 – Thu 29 Jul 9:15 PM

PIGGIES

Forum Theatre – Fri 30 Jul 12:15 PM

AUSTRALIAN SHORTS

Greater Union Cinema 5 – Fri 30 Jul 7:00 PM

MY JOY

Greater Union Cinema 5 – Fri 30 Jul 9:15 PM

SPACE TOURISTS

Greater Union Cinema 4 – Sat 31 Jul 12:15 PM

APART TOGETHER

Greater Union Cinema 3 – Sat 31 Jul 2:30 PM

THE WEDDING PARTY

Greater Union Cinema 6 – Sat 31 Jul 7:00 PM

THEY ALL LIE

ACMI 2 – Sat 31 Jul 9:15 PM

WOMEN WITHOUT MEN

Forum Theatre – Sun 1 Aug 2:00 PM

LIKE A DREAM

ACMI 2 – Sun 1 Aug 6:45 PM

AIR DOLL

Greater Union Cinema 3 – Sun 1 Aug 9:15 PM

THE ROBBER

Forum Theatre – Mon 2 Aug 2:30 PM

WILD TARGET

Forum Theatre – Mon 2 Aug 4:45 PM

THE FAMILY JAMS

Greater Union Cinema 4 – Mon 2 Aug 7:00 PM

THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER

Greater Union Cinema 5 – Tue 3 Aug 7:00 PM

I KILLED MY MOTHER

Greater Union Cinema 3 – Tue 3 Aug 9:15 PM

MATCHING JACK

Cinema Nova – Wed 4 Aug 11:00 AM

SUMMER CODA

ACMI 2 – Wed 4 Aug 7:00 PM

WHEN YOU’RE STRANGE: A FILM ABOUT THE DOORS

Greater Union Cinema 3 – Wed 4 Aug 9:15 PM

BEESWAX

Greater Union Cinema 5 – Thu 5 Aug 7:00 PM

I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS

Greater Union Cinema 6 – Thu 5 Aug 9:15 PM

STRANGE BIRDS IN PARADISE – A WEST PAPUAN STORY

ACMI 2 – Fri 6 Aug 2:30 PM

MOTHER OF ROCK: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LILLIAN ROXON

ACMI 2 – Fri 6 Aug 7:00 PM

CATFISH

Greater Union Cinema 6 – Sat 7 Aug 12:15 PM

FILM SOCIALISME

ACMI 2 – Sat 7 Aug 4:45 PM

SEX&DRUGS&ROCK&ROLL

Greater Union Cinema 6 – Sun 8 Aug 4:45 PM

Keep up to date with the Melbourne International Film Festival