Travel Forum / Destinations / Asia / October 2005

I've stayed in many different hotels in Thailand, and it usually works
fine. The only problem I've had is in a couple hotels I used the phone
connection was hard-wired, with no plugs and sockets to connect a
modem to.

Chris

I have used dial-up and it worked fine. Normallly they have US type phone
plugs though, as the first reply says, some are hard wired to the wall
socket (though in those cases you can often unplug the cable from the phone
itself). Cheaper hotels may have no phone in the room.
Does your ISP have a roaming agreement so you can call a local number in
Thailand? If not an international call is expenisve and line quality may be
lower.
There are international roaming services available or you may be able to get
a prepaid ISP service in Thailand.
Check that the ISP service includes local calls for the areas you are going
to.

I would certainly not use an internet cafe PC for financial transactions.
But some cafes will let you connect your own PC direct to their LAN router;
I just did that in Beijing, paying the same rate as using their PCs, and ran
it with my firewall on high protection level.

I just returned from a three weeks trip to Taiwan, South Korea, China
and Thailand and everywhere I stayed (except Thailand) I had a fast
Internet connection in the hotel room, accessible via a network cable.
The hotels were mainly mid-range ones, with a couple of high-end ones.
As for Thailand, you might check before booking if the hotel offers
Internet access in the room.

Thailand is the easiest country in the world to get your own
connection. Just go to the first 7-eleven store you find and buy a
Loxinfo prepaid internet card. It has different values, are very cheep,
and work for a year. You will be given access phone number to call
throughout the country, one for each region, a user ID and a password.
It works very well and is a no hazzle solution. You need a modem port
on your laptop, and a lot of patience in the provinces due to poor
speed.
A better solution which always work well is to take your laptop to an
internet cafe and hook it up from there. I've done that in Ubon
Rachathani, Chiang Mai, Koh Samui and Bangkok, so you should be able to
do that too.

I'm not sure what you mean by top-end hotels, but in Bangkok you can get a
room with in-room broadband for about US$40 and up. You will need to book
through a travel agent in Asia (e.g., www.asiahotels.com) to get that kind
of price.

Otherwise, there is a growiing number of wifi hotspots in the larger cities.

I have used dialup from hotels on occasion in Thailand and it has worked
fine, but of course it is slow and you are paying by the minute.

miguel

Another possibility is finding a Starbucks or other wi-fi hotspot and
doing all your on-line work that way.

Many thanks for all the comments here. To clarify, what I can't find are
reasonably priced hotels with a broadband connection in each room. Those
I found that mentions it, tend to be in the top-end category, or at
least way beyond my budget. I'm looking for rooms less than 25 USD. WiFi
hotspots is one possibility I didn't think of.

Gustaf