Pokemon travel – Bali and Gili islands (Indonesia)

This is my second post in the series of Pokemon travel blogs, and this time we are going to explore Indonesia, in particular the island of Bali.

The first thing I found out in Bali was that the speed and availability of mobile Internet connection should not be taken for granted. In fact, it was so bad that I ended up playing the game almost exclusively when a wifi was available. Also, every single time I attempted to open the application, it failed on the first try and worked on the second.

Kuta

Kuta is the rowdy tourist capital of Bali, but really the pokemons don’t seem to be any different from everywhere else. This comes with one caveat – there was a picachu in my hotel room!

Balangan

After Kuta, I went south to the more rural Balangan with high hopes about finding some rarer pokemons for my collection. However, the sad truth is that there was almost never a good enough Internet connection for the game to work. Not even with wifi. So I’d recommend not going there if the sole purpose of your trip is to catch pokemon. If not, it’s a great place for surfing.

Ubud

The most immediately noticeable thing about Ubud was that only the blue team seems to operate there.The gyms were all blue and level 10, which was very boring as I’m a member of the Mystic team myself. Only fitting for the yoga capital of Bali though.

The Internet connection was tolerably good in Ubud, so it was even possible to play on the street. I didn’t see many pokemons on my walks however, which was a bit disappointing. Even those were not anything worth mentioning. 

It does make you wonder what happened there. Where have all the good pokemons gone and how did the Mystic revolution take place? I’d like to know how long it will last.

Gili islands

I also went to Gili Trawangan, which is the biggest one of the small islands on the northeast coast of Lombok (Lombok being the island east of Bali). Again, the mobile Internet connection let me down so I had to satisfy myself with only playing when in wifi.

The Gili pokemon looked angry for some reason, but the island was a lovely place. I was starting to see a pattern and based on my very limited sample of the Indonesian pokemon, I would dare to say that voltorbs and psyducks seem to be quite a common sight on the islands.

 

Pokemon travel – Southern Spain

Maybe you have wondered how different the Pokemon in different countries really are. So far, I’ve only explored the virtual fauna in UK, but now it’s time to see what other parts of the world have to offer. Our first visit is to Southern Spain. Playing is cheap and cheerful there, at least as a European since the roaming costs are tolerable and Internet connections and server availability are good enough.

Common Pokemons

Just like in UK, rattatas, pidgeys and spearows are abundant and can be found everywhere. However, after that things get interesting. Based on my subjective experiences, Ekanses and growlithes seem to be the next most common types. This is great news for UK visitors that have been struggling to accumulate enough candy for evolving those. The same applies to meaowthes.

To my delight, I also found quite a few of more rare types that I had only encountered two or three times previously, such as cubones, omanytes and kabutos.

I might have just been lucky, but it also seemed like eevees and its evolved forms were easier to find than back home. I found a beautiful jolteon next to a fountain, soon to be followed by an eevee.

I was also very lucky to find some other special individuals like doduos, pinsirs, rhyhorns and a very fine bulbasaur.

 

Pokestops and gyms

The main difficulty of playing Pokemon Go was the relative lack of pokestops, at least compared to London. You constantly run out of great balls and ultra balls, which of course is not ideal when encountering the creature you’ve been chasing for months! However, pokemons themselves seem to be plentiful even outside of heavily pokestopped areas.

No need to despair if you find yourself on an empty map like the one in the picture. You may still find some interesting ones to catch.

This picture is actually from an urbanisation, so it would seem strange that there are no pokestops at all, but I suppose it has to do with  the lack of notable landmarks to align the pokestops with.

I found gyms to be quite busy, and generally higher level than in London. Red team seemed to be dominating the town of Fuengirola, whilst Malaga was more yellow at the time of my visit. Whilst in London there is always a person around to populate the empty slot when a gym is taken over, it happened very often in Spain that blue team members were not around and I ended up losing the gym.

The most common occupants in gyms were by far Arcanines.

What Pokemons have you encountered on your travels? I’d love to hear about other poke tourists!

Confirmed hacks and tips for Pokemon Go

I’ll only include here the hacks that I’ve seen or experienced working first hand.I’m sure there are more, and I’ll keep adding to the list as I discover them.

The Picachu easter egg

When you first start playing the game, three pokemons appear. Keep walking away and ignoring them until a Picachu appears. When that happens, catch Picachu.

People actually keep asking me why they should get Picachu, when the other pokemons available look more exotic and appealing! Well you don’t have to, but it will be difficult to find later as it’s quite rare. There are also medals (achievements) in the game that you can gain, and one of them is catching three Picachus.

How to catch a Zubat or Golbat

Know those annoying bats? They flap, move around and are generally very hard to hit. As you advance in the game, they only get more annoying be continuously escaping from the pokeball after having been caught.

The process of catching a bat is threefold:

• If you have raspberries, feed it one. You will have to do this again every time the thing escapes from the ball. This reduces the flapping and might help to keep the bat in the ball too (although the latter is difficult to test).
• Use a better ball if you have them (Great Ball or Ultra Ball, not sure if there are even better than those). The creature is less likely to escape from those.
• Aim for an imaginary tail end. This requires some explaining. Imagine that the bat has hind legs like a dog, and think where its bottom would be if that was the case. Now aim to hit that bit with the ball from above, instead of the creature’s head.

Upgrading Eevee to Jolteon, Flareon or Vaporeon

This works at least for the first Eevee that you upgrade. I have only tried it for one so I don’t know what happens for the next ones. The nickname you give to the pokemon impacts what it will evolve to, as follows:

• Sparky evolves to Jolteon
• Pyro evolves to Flareon
• Rainer evolves to Vaporeon

How to level up quicker

As you get to a higher level, you will encounter higher level pokemons. Every time you catch a pokemon or evolve them, you will gain experience points. It’s worth saving all the evolvable pokemons and do them at once when you’ve got an lucky egg in effect. That will double the experience points gained from the upgrades. To maximise the benefit from the lucky egg, use it near a lure so that all the pokemons caught will also earn you double experience points.

Pokewalk diaries #1

Somehow, I ended up walking 19 km yesterday. I’ve got to admit that almost half of it was commuting to work, but what would be a better opportunity to catch a pokemon or a few!

Most of the players probably hate Zubats by now. They are common, flutter annoyingly and are difficult to catch. But I had more interesting findings too and collected some new species on the way.

When you randomly take pictures on the street, there will inevitably be some funny shots. This one about Jynx is my favourite one so far. See the lady in the background?

Also a nice level Jynx, but I guess they are getting better anyway when you level up. It seems that the Jynx hang out near theatres which would make sense based on their decorative appearance. I’m not sure about this though and it would be good to hear about other players’ experiences on it.

Also, this morning I finally got a Picachu! I missed the initial one which you can get if you ignore the three starting pokemons, because at that point of time no one knew that you have to ignore them three times before Picachu appears. Since nothing happened, I dismissed the piece of advice as an Internet prank. The one I  found was near an office building and a park, so I can’t make too many conclusions about their natural habitat at this stage. Hopefully there will be more where that came from.

I also ventured to the local gym again. First time I visited it, I had no idea what I was doing, my pokemons were really low level, and the servers kept crashing. As expected, my first fights were pretty much a disaster. Now I managed to take over the local gym though, and left a Hypno behind (not my best one which had fainted anyway).

I still think the fighting is a bit confusing. Based on what I’ve read, you can use a special attack if you hold your finger down but I’m not sure if I actually got it to work as intended.

It’s a shame the gym nearest to my house is in a very dodgy park, which is currently inhabited by drunks and junkies. You basically need to stand across the road at night time if you don’t want to risk getting some undesirable company. That may well be a reason why the level of the pokemons there wasn’t too high yet.

This weekend, I’m intending to do a little stroll  near River Thames to see if I can catch some more water pokemons. I made a good start with those by walking back and forth a nearby stream. At the moment I’m looking forward to evolving my Squirtle.

10 everyday problems that Pokemon Go resolves

Your life is just about to get better. No more socially awkward situations, clinging to addictions or loneliness.

Augmented Reality (AR) gaming is now longer the future but present, and here’s how it can improve your experience of the boring reality. These life hacks are based on the Pokemon Go game, but may well apply to any new similar applications.

1. Unhealthy bus stop routine

   Ever tried to stop smoking? Hopefully you never started in the first place, but if you did and have tried to get rid of this expensive and unhealthy habit, you may have found that waiting for a bus can be very difficult without having a cigarette while doing so. The level of difficulty of this task increases if it’s a part of your daily routine and you have conditioned yourself to light up as soon as you arrive on the bus stop.

   Congratulations, you can stop smoking now, as the most natural thing to do on the bus stop will be to catch the virtual animals that will inevitably wonder by the nearby pokestop.

2. Waiting for a friend

   No more awkward standing in street corners while your friend is late again! It is now perfectly normal to loiter around staring at the screen of your mobile device. As an additional bonus, you are less likely to be mistaken as a tourist who will surely need help with reading the map from their phone.

3. Breaks at work

   In the office environment, it’s recommendable to get up and move around regularly. However, many people say that they find it difficult to find a reason to take a short break as there is nothing meaningful to do. Well, why not have a quick walk around the block, maybe you’ll catch a Picachu!

4. Having to exercise (but not that keen)

   You know you need to, but you hate sports. It’s so much trouble and you’ve got no idea how to get started. Instead of joining the gym, you can now sign up your pokemons to fight on the virtual gym for you. All that walking around to catch them and taking them to the gym regularly is sure to improve your fitness levels.

5. Commuting to work

   The game is an amazing incentive to walk to work. But even if you don’t, the bus rides just got more interesting as you are trying to collect all the pokestops while they are swirling by.

6. Meeting new people

   Tired of Tinder? Looking for friends? Starting a conversation with a stranger was never this easy. Just walk to the nearest dude(ss) who’s loitering around the lure module, and ask what level they are, or if they have seen the most amazing thing that you just caught.

7. Finding a hobby

   Everyone else has their ‘thing’, be it karate or growing wild water lilies. If you ever felt like mobile gaming as a hobby wasn’t quite a justified thing to list on your CV, then you are right. It still isn’t. But you can try ‘Augmented Reality enthusiast’.

8. Going to the pub

   Sometimes it’s a struggle to find anything else to do with your friends than sitting in a pub. Maybe they don’t all want to join your karate lesson or the Fifteenth Annual Symposium of Growing Wild Water Lilies. But worry not, setting up a pokemon gathering is now a fun, if not a respectable option. (Or you can play in the pub if you set a lure module on the nearby pokestop.)

9. Exploring new neighbourhoods

   I’m talking about the feeling when you’ve just moved houses and have no idea where the nearest grocery store/gym/park/pub is and if it would be worth taking your auntie there next Sunday. Instead of just walking aimlessly down the streets for hours until you have established the locations and qualities of said places, you can now catch pokemons when doing so. If you are lucky, the neighbours are also less likely to report your suspicious behaviour to the police.

10. Spying/stalking

    Stalking other people is not nice. You should not do it. But if you happen to be a spy/undercover cop/ just really interested about your neighbours’ love lives, then following people around just got really easy. All you have to do is to keep staring at your screen and muttering something incomprehensible about Bulbasaur.

Rats in the park

So it started on Friday. The reality has now been augmented with the virtual for the masses. I’ve been passionate about Augmented Reality (AR) for over ten years, and cannot help but being excited by the breakthrough of the Pokemon Go game. I’ve got to admit though that I never saw it coming as global revolution like this, and even less as a comeback of a retro children’s TV series. But hey ho, anything goes.

Furthermore, all my intentions of remaining as a curious, yet passive bystander were thrown out of the window by the sheer addictiveness of wondering around town on a hunting mission. Despite of the multi-hour server meltdowns, I’ve now got a moderate tan, sore feet and a respectable number and variety of creatures registered in ‘Pokedex’, the game’s pokemon database.

The game is based on the player walking around, which makes the avatar walk around on the map which represents the real world. That map is however augmented with virtual objects, which can be ‘pokestops'(stations for collecting game related goods) which are visible from distance, or actual pokemons which only appear when the player is close enough. Upon an encounter with a pokemon, the player can see it through her or his phone’s camera, and can attempt to catch it inside a ‘pokeball’. There are also gyms where players can fight their pokemons against other players. Pokemons can also be made to evolve to more powerful ones, being fed a sufficient amount of candy.

Different pokemons can be found in different locations. I found a nice variety of water pokemons around the nearby canal, and quite a few grass type and flying pokemons in a park. And rats, they are everywhere! Apart from the virtual creatures, there were various amusing encounters with total strangers either wandering sheepishly around with their cellphones or running around shouting. It turned out one guy had been cycling around the city the entire day on the chase. In some occasions, there were tens of people hanging around a spot that was known to lure the virtual fauna (or, in some cases, flora). The players seemed to be anything between 10 and 40 years old, male and female more or less equal in numbers.

So, what’s next? The popularity of the game has lead to the servers going down in every country, and I imagine there are some rather unhappy engineers somewhere trying to frantically get them back up again. If the problems continue past these initial hiccups, it could leave the game in the history as a brave but brief failure. If not, something big might have just started.

Pokemon Go official website

Augmented Reality in Wikipedia