Category: SE Asia | RocketNews24

SE Asia

JSDF’s new helicopter may or may not be fake, a real-life transformer

2 days ago by Mike
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All this anime is clearly getting to Japanese people’s heads. Japanese media has fallen hook, line and sinker for this seemingly impossible, anime-inspired helicopter design, breathlessly reporting that Ghost in the Shell-style vehicles are being designed by the (Japan Self Defence Force) JSDF right now.

3 days ago by Oona McGee
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With the next Star Wars movie due for release sometime in 2015, it’s an anxious wait before fans get to see their favourite characters once again. And who knows what will happen to Yoda and the gang now they’re owned by the house that made Mickey? For now, though, you can put those worries aside because we’ve found something to take your mind off things. It’s part Death Star, part Chinese warrior and 100 percent totally awesome. Check out six famous Star Wars characters who look like they’ve stepped back into the Six Dynasties of ancient China!

6 days ago by Casey Baseel
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When you’re a kid, theme parks are a place where your dream can come to life. Wouldn’t it be great to feel that excitement once again?

In search of that childlike wonder, one of RocketNews24’s reporters recently visited the Lecian Grand Carnaval amusement park in Mandaue City on Cebu Island, in the Philippines. While it doesn’t have the high-tech animatronics and pyrotechnics of Disneyland, it offers plenty of old-fashioned attractions like a tilt-a-whirl and haunted house, plus a life-endangering roller coaster and very lenient napping policy. Read More

Trapped in a Glass Cage in the Philippines, Mario Has No Mouth with which to Scream – The Shocking World of Knock-Off Plush Dolls

May 18, 2013 by Casey Baseel
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Recently, one of our correspondents was strolling through a shopping mall in Mandaue City on Cebu Island in the Philippines. As he passed an arcade, one of the attendants flagged him down, asking if he wanted to try to win a stuffed doll in one of their crane games.

Intrigued by the offer, our reporter peered into the machine’s glass case, at first thinking he saw popular Japanese anime characters Doraemon and Testuwan Atom (also know as Astro Boy internationally). Closer investigation though, revealed that the arcade was filled with cheap, yet somehow incredibly endearing, knock-offs.

May 15, 2013 by Cara Clegg
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Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, has a ton of internet cafes. There are also coffee shops with wi-fi, and places where you can plug into the net directly, so our intrepid author had no trouble getting online when he was there. He tells us about his experience. Read More

Heavy Industry without the Heavy Equipment

May 12, 2013 by Preston Phro
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Here at RocketNews24, we like to bring you the latest and greatest, whether it’s (potentially) killer mechs or adorable new fonts! But sometimes it’s nice to take a moment to appreciate the beauty of raw human ingenuity. Read More

Gyu-Kaku Philippines Now Open, Serving Up Excellent Seafood

May 6, 2013 by Oona McGee
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Mariah Carey’s done it. Lindsay Lohan did it too. Megan Fox even does it with her husband. And in Japan, practically everyone’s doing it. It’s yakiniku, barbecuing meat on a charcoal flame, and the hottest place to do it is at the popular Japanese restaurant chain Gyu-Kaku.

Now people in the Philippines are getting a taste of the celebrity-endorsed outlet, with the April 5 opening of their first branch in metropolitan Manila. Already, it’s proving to be very popular with the locals. But when we heard that the star of this Gyu-Kaku (“Bull’s Horn”) wasn’t the meat but the seafood, we had to pay them a visit to see what was going on.

May 6, 2013 by Preston Phro
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Just as hidari no ko vs migi no ko is dividing Japan, iPhone vs Android has divided the world. And that division is most clear in the ceaseless battle between Apple and Samsung. Where patent lawsuits once captured our attention, stealth marketing and negative campaigns have suddenly sprung up. And today’s news out of Thailand is all the more bizarre for its tactlessness. Read More

We Try a “One-Piece Chicken McDo With McSpaghetti” at McDonald’s in the Philippines

May 4, 2013 by Master Blaster
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In our continuing endeavor to visit McDonald’s restaurants around the world we sample the unique regional offerings the international chain creates to appease the locals and delight tourists.

This time RocketNews24 sent a reporter to a McDonald’s in the Philippines to sample one of their localized combos centered by a heap of McSpaghetti. The following is their report.

May 4, 2013 by Oona McGee
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From office buildings to towers to hotels, urban environments across the world have seen huge improvements in vertical design over the years. But in amongst all this creativity and innovation, there was always one building left waiting for a look-in: the humble multi-storey car park.

Now, thanks to an international architectural competition, there’s a futuristic new proposal set to revolutionise the way we park our cars. It’s called the “CarPARK”, and it aims to provide a great day out parking for the whole family.

May 4, 2013 by Preston Phro
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When traveling overseas, we like to check out the nearby shopping malls and amusement parks, too, whenever we can. But we don’t waste our time with the famous amusement parks that everyone and their mother has been to. For us, it’s the local, never-before-heard-of amusement parks that we love. Why? Because that’s where you can really see the way the local people live… and some of the clever stuff they’ve come up.

So, this time around, we headed to “Happy World” in Yangon, Myanmar (Burma), located right in front of the world-famous Shwedagon Pagoda.

May 3, 2013 by Philip Kendall
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If you’re a superhero fan living in North America, today very likely means only one thing: the launch of Iron Man 3. Perhaps waiting for a more suitable date to release the title, Marvel and Walt Disney Studios hung on until May 3 to unleash Tony Stark’s newest — and, according to some, best — supersuit-powered adventure, and millions of fans are champing at the bit to see it.

Despite having opened in Japan surprisingly early (Japanese releases are notoriously late, with movie fans forced to wait until this March for both Django Unchained and Wreck it Ralph alone), tongues are wagging all across the country today about Iron Man 3, but for an entirely different reason.

Put together by a clearly passionate and creative team of fans in Thailand, the following video recreates the official Iron Man 3 pre-release trailer shot by shot using little more than hand-crafted props, questionable make-up and models dangling from strings. Even so, it is nothing short of wonderful.

May 1, 2013 by Master Blaster
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The two boys seen above are Aldrich Lloyd Taloding and James Walter Bucong from the Philippines. Their video having been uploaded to YouTube about a week ago is already nearing one million views and comments such as “Freaking beautiful!” and “I got goosebumps.”

May 1, 2013 by Rachel Tackett
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This is slowly turning out to be quite a week for sightings of unlicensed use of videogame characters. Just yesterday we brought you news of a smartphone game whose lead character looked so much like Nintendo’s green dinosaur Yoshi that the company stepped in and demanded that changes be made, and now our overseas RocketNews24 representative brings us photos of a food vendor in the Philippines whose stand and wares are plastered with a name and character that bear an uncanny likeness to Japan’s beloved dot-munching arcade hero, Pac-Man!

This boxed chocolates vendor was spotted selling from a small booth in the middle of a shopping center in the Philippines’ capital city of Manila. Unless the vendor is somehow affiliated with Namco, this has got to be brand theft! Smelling a story among all of the tasty-looking sweets, our courageous reporter went forth and confronted the sales clerk. Read More

Is That Really a Starbucks?【Photo Gallery】

Apr 28, 2013 by Michelle
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Most Starbucks coffee houses are easily identified by their oversized green umbrellas out on the patio, a huge green and white cap-locked name sign and a twin-tailed mermaid emblem beckoning the caffeine-deprived masses in for a cup of joe. But the following Starbucks coffee houses, some with wooden signs and earth-tone color schemes, are hardly recognizable. In fact, many of these unique Starbucks stores were created in response to opposition from local residents who were concerned that the addition of a cookie-cutter corporate monstrosity would ruin the area’s original ambiance. Take a look at these surprisingly beautiful Starbucks stores throughout Asia.

Apr 27, 2013 by Casey Baseel
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Over the years, Thailand has gone by many names. Until 1939 it was Siam, and the country’s friendly citizens have earned it the nickname “The Land of Smiles.”

For a few days each year though, Thailand is also “The Land of the City-Wide Splash Fights.” Read More

We Visit the A ple Sto e in Myanmar: Where Everything is a Little Off (In a Good Way)

Apr 26, 2013 by Master Blaster
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RocketNews24 writer GO is an avid Apple fan and user of all things whose names possess a lower case “i” or the word “Mac”. As such, whenever he’s travelling it’s comforting for him to find an Apple store nearby. He can feel relieved that there’s a place to go if one of his gadgets gets out of sorts, and it’s fun to see if there are any differences in other countries.

So after checking out the f@cebook clothing store and Ronald McDonald Duck, he was pleased to see something resembling Apple’s unmistakable logo. GO rushed in, not knowing what lay in store.

Apr 25, 2013 by Rachel Tackett
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The other day, a group of friends made an offer to one of our RocketNews24 reporters, inviting him to go mountain climbing with them in the Philippines. Worried about his physical ability to actually complete the journey, he tried to make excuses about needing to water his cactus. But, when told that there would be real-life girls present, he decided to take one for the team and accompany the group on their mountain trek. After all, it would have been bad form to leave a lady unattended!

That was before he found out that they would be climbing Mt. Pulag, the second highest peak in the Philippines. It measures in at just over 9,586 feet tall! On second thought, that cactus did look really thirsty…. Read More

We Try the Most Grotesque Boiled Egg in the World

Apr 23, 2013 by Oona McGee
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Surely, this has to be one of the most grotesque-looking boiled eggs in the world. In case you can’t make it out properly, we ought to explain that this is a duck egg. With a duck embryo inside. And that strip of black there is indeed baby duck fur. It’s an image so frightful to some that eating it became a featured challenge on TV shows like Survivor and Fear Factor. To others, however, this is simply a delicious Filipino street delicacy.

Keeping an open mind, we plucked up the courage to try one of these babies (pun very much intended) while on a recent trip to the Philippines with one of our Filipino friends. But what did it taste like? And what does a whole baby duck feel like inside your mouth? We give you everything you need to know, complete with mouth-watering photos.

Apr 22, 2013 by Oona McGee
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Starbucks is well-known for taking up residence in some unusual places. They’ve had a pop-up store in Tokyo and they even have a historical western-style house house in Kobe. But in the beautiful mountain village of Ubud, Bali, there’s a more subdued Starbucks. Set up in an old storehouse, and blending perfectly with the environment, you wouldn’t instantly think this was part of a global coffee franchise.

We went to check out this unique coffeehouse and found it to be incredibly beautiful and serene. Out of all the Starbucks stores we’ve visited across the world, this is by far the one we recommend the most. With an exceptionally unique atmosphere, we bring you four reasons why this may very well be the best Starbucks in the world.