The first stop is a food market not far from where we stayed. The curry dish isn’t as spicy as it looks and is very flavourful. The beef noodles is pretty similar to pho, but with their Thai spin on it with the herbs that they use. I’d say it had a bit more umami than the typical pho. The Pad Thai I thought wasn’t as flavourful as I liked, and was actually kind of plain. The other two dishes are highly recommended though!

As far as fruit smoothies go, the fruit seemed to be so much more flavourful. I know that with bananas they are harvested before they’re riped so they can last for a few weeks as they are transported, so it’s possible the same thing is happening with these fruits. But since these fruits are local, they get to fully ripen on the tree.

I also saw them add a little bit of salt to enhance the existing sweetness and acidity of the smoothies. It made it perfectly sweet, without being overpowering.

Next is probably the most famous dish in northern Thailand: Khao Soi. It’s a noodle dish with soft noodles in the soup and deep fried noodles on top. The soup itself can vary in spiciness, but is made of a curry-like sauce with meat, chilis, lime, and coconut milk.

The main attraction about this dish for me is the spiciness of the soup. It isn’t just a big spicy attack on the senses, but rather it’s nuanced because it’s balanced by the coconut milk.

Last but not least, we had some tom yum, yellow curry, and morning glory. This place is an actual restaurant with western style ambience, so naturally there was a price premium to that.

It’s kind of difficult to comment on how the yellow curry and tom yum tasted because it was way too spicy for our senses. I definitely tasted the spiciness and sourness of the soup, but the spiciness overpowered me quickly. The best by far as the morning glory. I just really like leafy greens with crunchy stems. The chilis added gave it a slight zing.

As usual, Mike has made a video!

The food I miss most is definitely the fruit smoothies. When I came back home, I had constant cravings for those smoothies for weeks. To see the other parts of my trip in Chiang Mai, click here.

We took a Grab (the Southeast Asia version of Uber/Lyft), which costed only ~$15 USD for some 30 km, which is super cheap. I have no idea how the economics of that even work since the cost of a car is about the same everywhere. The driver dropped us off at the base of the temple and we had to walk up a long flight to stairs in the burning heat.

The temple grounds has a lot of rooms like this for worshipping. They all have big golden statues in them too.

The Thai royalty is also a big deal too.

Not far from the temple was the palace gardens of Bhubing Palace. It was a nice scenic walk, but otherwise there isn’t much to see.

As usual, Mike has made a video about this part of the trip. Check it out!

On the way back, the same driver who took us here to begin with was still hanging around, apparently looking for people to drive back. When he bumped into us, he offered to drive us back for a rate less than what Grab charged (way to cut out the middle man)!

That ends our touristy day trip. See more of my trip to Chiang Mai here.

They had different sized crickets, grasshoppers, silkworm larvae, and water beetles. Having already tried the latter two, we got a bag of crickets and grasshoppers.

They honestly don’t taste like much. They’re crunchy and have a texture like a potato chip, but without the deep fried potato flavour. It’s got a pretty neutral taste. I can’t say I like it though since I really can’t ignore the fact that I’m eating a literal bug. My buddy Mike has summarized it really well in his video.

That’s about it for this post. See the rest of my trip to Chiang Mai here.

Each elephant has a story of what it spent its life doing while in captivity such as elephant riding, or illegal logging, etc. Some even have injuries like broken hips from their past abuse. But now they get to live out the rest of their lives in the sanctuary.

The santuary is not just for elephants, but for cats too! There are also dogs lazing about as well.

We started the tour off with feeding the younger elephants. Even though they’re only a few years old, they’re still huge. It was cool to feel the elephant grab an entire bunch of bananas with its trunk and put it in its mouth. For a brief moment, I felt the scaly skin of its trunk, covered in dirt, brush against my hand. The reason elephants are covered in dirt is because the dirt protects their skin from the sun.

We got to pet a few of these elephants. I learned that elephants actually have hair! Some elephants had less hair due to their abuse. The guide explained that when they are used as riding elephants, they tend to lose a lot of hair from people climbing on and off of them. Their skin feels scaly as one might expect, but the sparse hairs are quite stiff – kind of like the bristles on a toothbrush.

It was so hot that day, they went playing in the river. It was probably the hottest day of the trip so far. So hot that I really didn’t want to move out in the sun.

This guy came running right for us. The guide said some of these elephants were the same ones we fed, and so it was possible they recognized our scents thinking we had more food. There are no fences in between humans and elephants, and there are attendants everywhere that the elephants listen to.

The guide told us that the more sunken in the elephant’s head is at its temple, the older it is. As it ages, the air inside the elephants skull slowly leaves, which causes the sunkeness. I definitely noticed this between the smaller/younger elephants and the larger/old ones.

Be sure to check out Mike’s video about the elephant park. It’s got clips of us feeding the elephants and us trying to dodge them as they charge toward us. There’s even an elephant that peels the bananas before eating them!

Going to this place was totally awesome and I definitely recommend it for anybody travelling to Chiang Mai. For the rest of the pictures of the elephant sanctuary click here.

There are even drag queens! I thought that was a thing that people went to Bangkok for.

I finally found deep fried insects!! It seems kind of strange to buy food from vendors where their food appear to have been just sitting out in the open for hours in the burning heat, but that seems to be the norm here.

Would you like some rubber poop?

When the rainstorm hit, the shopkeepers were fully prepared. We weren’t. I walked around drenched wearing a T-shirt and shorts.

But I don’t think they were prepared for the wind…

My buddy’s YouTube video gives a pretty good tour of the street markets too. Check it out!

Otherwise, that’s it for street markets in Chiang Mai.
See all the photos here

And now for the dish we came here for…

When the lid is opened, the shrimp immediately try to jump out, so the lid can’t be opened for very long. They’re hard to grab too because they keep wiggling.

They taste like eating small pieces of shrimp sashimi, but at the same time I had to chew through the shells. There’s a little bit of flavour from the spice and herbs that were added, but it’s subtle. We were given some chili sauce on the side to give it more flavour. The spicy sauce is what you’d expect from chilis and cilantro.

I have no idea how “clean” this dish was since it’s raw… I could only bring myself to eat a couple for fear of getting parasites or some other foodborne illness. My friends on the other hand were completely grossed out by this even though they initially wanted to eat it. To be fair, this is the first time I considered shrimps to be like bugs at all.

My buddy made a video summarizing the entire experience. See below.

Otherwise, that’s it for eating live shrimp!
See all the photos here

We had spent a whole year upgrading everything.  I designed a new ball kicking system that was more durable, more maintenance free, and more powerful than the year before.  The other mechanical systems were more robust as well.  The electrical system also had a huge upgrade.  Burning and smoking electrical boards were a thing of the past!  We have never had a design this robust – ever!

What is RoboCup?

For those who don’t know what RoboCup is, RoboCup is an international robotics competition aimed to further robotics research.  Their long-term goal is to have robots beat the World Cup Soccer team winners by 2050. There are various leagues within RoboCup, such as in robotic soccer (where we participate), home care, rescue, simulation, etc.  Our team, the UBC Thunderbots, compete in the small-size soccer league, which is probably has the fastest game play of all the different leagues.  The robots are generally cylinders with a diameter of about 18 cm and a height of 15 cm.  They can move at around 4 m/s and kick a golf ball at 8 m/s.

One of the other leagues, the Standard Platform League competes with standardized robots for all teams and the key difference between each is the software that is written for the robots.

Another league, the mid-size league in RoboCup Soccer competes with robots that are about a 1/3 of the size of a person. The game isn’t as quick as the small-size league game and they play with a real soccer ball instead of a golf ball. During the competition, it gathered quite the crowd too.

Preparing for the Games

Most teams arrived at the venue when it opened to get to work right away. Everybody wanted their robots in tip-top shape. Our team did the same. Even though our robots were ready mechanically and electrically, the key game changer was seeing which team had better artificial intelligence for their robots. Whenever got time to test on the field, we took advantage of it to make sure our AI was working well too.

Round Robin

In the round robin stage, each team gets four games against other teams in their bracket. Each bracket is made up of five teams and the skill level is spread out based on the rankings of the previous year.

We lost our first two games against a team called KIKS from the Toyota National College of Technology in Japan, and a team called STOx’s from the Universidad Santo Tomás in Colombia. In both of those games, we were simply outplayed because the other team had better software than we did. At the end of the game against the Japanese team, I spoke a bit of my horrible Japanese to them and they were super surprised and impressed that I knew a bit of Japanese!

Because our robots were finished not long before the competition began, the software team did not get a chance to test the code that was written, and so we found out the problems during the competition. Our robots were never able to drive up to a ball and take possession of it. The robots somehow always missed the ball. When the robot had the ball, it didn’t know what to do with it. It sat there holding onto the ball doing nothing. This was so frustrating for our team and even more so for the software team who wished they had more time to test.

We won our next two games against two lower tier teams. One is called RoboFEI, from the Centro Universitário da FEI in Brazil, and a team called RFC Cambridge from Harvard and MIT. It’s nice to be able to say that we beat a team from these two ivy league schools. Looks good when we look for sponsors too!

Lucky Loser Round

Because we had a 2-2 record during the group stage, we played a fifth game, the so-called Lucky Loser Round, to see if we could qualify for the quarter finals. Our match up was against a team called ODENS from the Osaka Electro-Communication University in Japan.  The game was so close that there was a dispute about the rules and whether what our team did was legitimate. Because our robots were not able to move up to a ball and shoot it at the net during the shootout, the referee introduced a workaround that the other team disputed.

Our referee’s native tongue was Portuguese, we spoke English, and the other team spoke Japanese. I didn’t know enough Japanese to translate. Eventually, members from other teams like the Thai and Chinese team came to help with the dispute. During the discussion that took about an hour, I heard people speak English, Japanese, Portuguese, Thai, Japanese, and Mandarin all at the same time. It seemed like nobody had the full picture of what was happening and how to resolve it.

The dispute was resolved when both teams agreed to a specific workaround that made it possible for our robots to do shootouts.  The game ended with a shootout and we lost on the very last shot of the shootout unfortunately. We almost made it to 8th place.  Still, achieving 9th place out of 22 teams was the best that the team has ever done before.

The Competition Ends

Skuba, from Kasetsart University in Thailand, had won the competition for four years in a row since 2009, but this year they had a surprising finish that was not even the top 4.  The second place team, ZJUNlict from Zhejiang University in China had beat them early in the quarterfinals.  ZJUNlict’s strongest opponent this year was CMDragons, from Carnegie Mellon University in USA.  In the final round, they were tied for the entire game and the game went to shootouts where CMDragons lost by one goal.  ZJUNlict had made first place in the RoboCup 2013 in the Small Size League.

As the competition came to a close, we said goodbye to the people on other teams that we met and as a parting gift from the German team ER-Force, they gave us a German flag with the names of all their team members signed onto it, with the message, “for our amazing friends, the Thunderbots, from team ER-Force”.

I realized now that the competition is over, I probably wouldn’t be going to competitions in the future because I’ve graduated from university. It made me feel a little bit sad that I couldn’t compete anymore, but at least I can still help out the team wherever they need it.

Link to photo album here

Flying to Mexico City

When we got to Dallas Airport, we had a stopover of few hours, so we decided to have some Texan steak – or at least as Texan as we tried to get without leaving the airport.  We ended up at TGI Fridays.  It was the first steak that I’ve had in a long time, and I definitely could use another one.  The steak even came with “Jack Daniel’s Sauce”, which made it that much better.

After eating, we met up with two others on the team who had flown from San Jose and Toronto.  After a four hour flight to Dallas, and other few hours of stopover there, we had to fly for another two and a half hours to get to Mexico City.

As my friend said, “it’s like China happened”.  The Benito Juárez International Airport was probably the most disorganized airport I’ve ever seen.  It’s as if every single flight landed at the same time.  The lineup to grow through customs took at least forty-five minutes.  During this whole time, everyone was tired and wanted get their sleep.  A lot of the people on the team hadn’t slept the night before (rather than sleep 2 or 3 hours to wake up early for the flight right?).  While in this lineup, we saw a couple of other RoboCup teams landing as well (Skuba, MRL, among others).  After finally getting through customs and a security check, we got a ride to our hostel via transportation that we organized with the hostel prior to our departure.

Hostel Mundo Joven Catedral

The hostel we stayed had very nice staff that really cared about making its guests feel safe there.  It’s a common feeling among travelers to think that Mexico City is definitely not one of the safer places to travel to.  To combat that, the hostel had its own security guards, security cameras, and they even called legitimate taxi’s for its guests.  They even told us which direction to walk when leaving the hostel to avoid going to the shadier parts of town.  Furthermore, it was situated in the historic center of Mexico City, within walking distance of the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary of Mexico City and the Plaza de la Constitución.  From some of the rooms at the hostel, there was a nice view of the cathedral.

Work Day

We spent the next day working on the robots to make sure none of the mechanical parts had been affected during the flight from Vancouver.  We had packed all the robots in a regular suitcase with packing foam all around it to protect it.  Looking over the mechanical parts, everything was in order.  The main things we had to fix were tightening screws, adjusting the wiring etc.  The software team had very little to do because they’ve written all the code they could, and just needed robots to test with.  The electrical team on the other hand, toiled tirelessly to troubleshoot all the boards and make sure they were all functioning properly.

RoboCup Begins!

We arrived at the competition venue, the World Trade Center at 8 AM to find a slew of other teams patiently waiting to register.  After probably an hour long wait, we all finally moved in and set up our work places.  When we looked at the field the robots would be playing on, we noticed that the organizers hadn’t yet set up the cameras yet (required for the robots to “see” where they’re going).  This meant that no teams could test.  Teams that were ready could only wait until the organizers got those set up.  Because of this delay, the games had to be delayed as well.  This gave us more time to get the robots ready.  For the next little while, we were the first team to arrive and the last team to leave everyday.  The electrical team needed all the time they could get to finish everything.

Because we had already finished most our maintenance work the day before, there wasn’t a whole lot we could do.  The electrical team had to continue working on their stuff to get as many robots ready as possible.  For the next day and a half, we let the electrical team do their work and we’d help them along the way by replacing parts that were broken (encoders and such).  Otherwise, there wasn’t much we could help with.

Food for the next Week

When we got hungry during the competition, we did a little bit of exploration to find food.  Eventually, all the teams wound up at the same shopping mall for food.  There was a supermarket downstairs to buy water and a food court upstairs with a variety of foods.  We went to this mall pretty much everyday for as long as we were at the World Trade Center.  One day we’d try Mexican food, other days we’d try plain-old hamburgers and other days we’d try even Chinese food (at least the white person’s interpretation of it).  It wasn’t really healthy for us, but we figured it was only for a week.

For dinner, most teams ended up ordering pizza from the nearby Domino’s.  We ate it so much that everybody got sick of having pizza.  Sometimes, we’d have dinner with other teams at our hostel restaurant so we could get to know them a little bit better.  After all, the competition is more about mutual learning and robotics advancement rather than about winning.

Let the Games Begin

Because our team wasn’t that ready to begin with, we had to forfeit our first game against the Immortals from Iran.  By the time we got three robots up and running, we played against the RoboJackets from Georgia Tech.  They only fielded five robots out of the total six.  For most of the game, both teams played pretty evenly, despite their two-robot advantage.  All was going well until one of the opponent’s robots chipped the ball that hit the top of one of our robots, bounced off and rolled into the goal.  In that particular situation, the referee had called an “indirect free kick”, meaning the shot, even if it went in the net, would not count.  But unfortunately, that rule was not applicable because it hit off of another robot.  It was an unlucky goal for us, and we definitely could not score a goal to tie up the game.  We ended up losing one-nil.  For the next few days, we kept complaining about that goal.

In our third game, we played against RoboFEI from Brazil.  There were so many good scoring chances in this game from both our teams that made this game so intense.  Even though we were only watching machines play, everybody cheered them on.  We had four robots on the field this game and they all worked like a charm.  The mechanical system, electrical system, and the artificial intelligence worked so well together.  It was a great feeling for everyone on our team – to see our design work.  After almost a year of hard work, this was it.  We saw our robots move, intercept balls, shoot on the goal, etc.  A lot of the robot shortcomings from the North American Open were also dealt with, such as the problem of the break beam sensors not working, and the robot not moving accurately on the field.  When we scored, we cheered so loud that every single person in the room could hear us (there were probably about 1000 people in that room).  We all got an immense feeling of satisfaction in seeing our working robots score their first goal.  A few minutes later, the other team scored a goal.  It didn’t matter to us, we were still high in the clouds in terms of our mood.  The game ended 1-1.  Despite the tie game, everyone on the team was so happy in seeing our robots work, it didn’t matter what the result was.

This was a great morale boost for the team because for our forth and last game, we played against BRocks from Turkey.  This time, we had our full fleet of robots.  We played our first six on six game.  Yet again, we saw our robots work.  Nothing broke down during the game and everything just worked.  It was quite rare for us to just put our robots on the field and have nothing go wrong.  At one point, our robot shot the ball into the opposing robot and a piece fell off of it.  We knew our design worked when stuff like this happens.  This game was less intense for us than our previous game, but we did end up winning.  That put our record at 1 win, 1 tie, and 2 losses – a total of 4 points.  Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough for us to advance to the next round of the competition and as a result we finished 13th out of 20 teams in the league.  Not so bad for having zero working robots when we got to Mexico.

After the official games, we played a couple friendly games with other teams.  The first game we played was against the Mannheim Tigers.  The game was going well, until we found problems where some of the screws on the robot weren’t tightened sufficiently.  As a result, things well off the robot when we played.  It was quite embarrassing to see.  At least it was only  something minor like putting in a screw, and not something major like a design problem.  In our second friendly game, this time against ER-Force from Erlangen, we found some electrical parts frying randomly on the board, which wasn’t good either.  Out of six working robots, we now had three – still a net gain I guess.

After we were done playing, we watched the other teams play for first place.  From watching their games, it was clear that they played on a way higher level than we did.  Everything that their robots did were way better than ours.  Shooting was faster, chipping went further, robots moved faster, kicks were more accurate, etc.  Everything about their robots was just better.  There is definitely a lot we could learn from these teams.  The final winner of this year’s competition ended up being Skuba from Thailand, who beat ZJUNLict from China.  Both teams analyzed each others strategies for days, but only one team could come out on top.  And now for the fourth year in a row, Skuba remains the undefeated winner of the competition.

Other Leagues in RoboCup

During our idle time, we walked around the other rooms to see how the other teams were working.  RoboCup has many different competitions under its name, while our Small Size League competition is only one small part of it.  Leagues range from soccer robots, rescue, simulation, to even home care robotics.  In the home care robotics league, the competition involved a robotic navigating through a mock house to perform certain chores such as picking up objects to hand to people, speaking and hearing instructions, etc.  It was an admittedly difficult task to do for these robots, but many teams were quite successful at it.

Accidents Happen

Just like in the North American Open, there was yet again another accident involving batteries.  Except this time, nobody noticed and the whole battery lit up in flames.  Somebody just yelled “fire, fire!” and started trying to pat it down with something.  Knowing that I was too far away to do anything, I just took out my camera and snapped a picture of the whole thing.  Eventually, someone just poured lots of water over it to put our the fire.  In retrospect, that might not have been a good idea since water in an electrical fire is not really a good thing.  Nobody got hurt though, which is good.  Afterward, the organizers didn’t let us charge batteries nearby our work space anymore.

Some Design Shortcomings

Knowing that our ball kicker would be able to withstand impacts of the ball, what we had forgotten to analyze was how well the kicker would hold up if it hit a object fixed to the ground.  We found out the hard way at the competition after a few games when we discovered that our robot kicker head was bent out of shape.  We also had a lot of turf buildup inside the robot that was enough to slow down the wheel during the game.  This turf had to be cleaned out after every match.

For the kicking mechanism, the robot uses a solenoid/plunger mechanism.  Activating the coil would cause the plunger inside the core to move quickly to hit the ball.  A rubber band secured to the end of it would allow the plunger to return to its initial position.  The problem with this setup was that the rubber band would easily break and had to be replaced after every game.  When we took out the rubber band, we could always see cut marks along it.  In another instance, a chipper solenoid on a robot almost popped out.  It’s not really clear why this happened at all, but it could have been a screw that was not very tight to begin with.

RoboCup Closing

To close the competition, there was a soccer game where humans played against the middle size league robots.  It was pretty funny to see the robots struggle to take the ball away from people who could handle the ball way better.  At the same time, the humans were really scared of the robots since if a human ever got hit by the kicker head from the robot, it would break bones.  The robot goalie however, proved quite competent in blocking shots – better than the human goal from what I saw.  Or maybe the human goalie wasn’t trying very hard.  I’m not sure who won the game since I didn’t watch the whole thing, but it was still really interesting to see.

Afterward, all the teams packed up their things and waited for the closing banquet.  At the closing banquet, they served a standard meal for everyone.  It was a really good chance for teams to celebrate their achievements and finally relax a little bit after the competition.  Everyone deserved a rest after all of that.

First Real Tour of Mexico – Teotihuacan

After the competitions ended, most teams stayed an extra day or two to see the sights in Mexico City.  The organizers of the Small Size League were nice enough to organize a tour for everyone the day after the competition ended.  Most of the SSL teams went with us to the Aztec pyramids in Teotihuacan.  The tour first showed us how their predecessors used different plants and minerals to make tools such as knives and sewing thread.  That part was interesting at first, but I think what a lot of us really wanted to see were the pyramids.  Afterward, the tour guide led us to the gift shop.  For some reason, most of the people were so interested there, it took about an hour for everyone to finish so that we could move on with the tour.  After the gift shop, we finally made it to the pyramids.

After walking up and down the pyramids, we had lunch and went back to Mexico City to see the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  This was one of the most visited Catholic shrines in the world.  But because I had already visited so many churchs and cathedrals from my tour around Europe, this part of the tour was less interesting for me.

Historic City Center

The team would fly back to Vancouver on the day after visiting the pyramids.  But before leaving, we made sure to visit the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary of Mexico City and the Plaza de la Constitución.  In the plaza, hung a giant flag of Mexico.  This is where the city center used to be, at least during the 19th century.

Going Home

After 10 days in Mexico, we all longed to go home.  It had been a long week – full of stress, adrenaline pumping excitement and overall a good experience.  But after all that, we were ready to go.  We flew out in the afternoon from Mexico City.  Apparently, at around the same time that we were at the airport in Mexico City, three cops had been shot to death.  While we were there though, we didn’t hear anything of it.  We safely arrived in Dallas for a brief stopover and arrived back in Vancouver at about 8:30 PM, just in time to go home, wash up and go to bed.

More photos here