I know someone who is going to Asia soon. They made a real dumb decision on a weird question I seem to get whn going East. This question is how do I use my cell phone while in Asia? We forget that there is some preparing needed to use a cell phone in Asia. Since in the states its seems to be a standard privilege using the cell phone. Especially since we live in the days of having access to social media and take dope pictures to post. Here are a few options that you need to consider when using your cell phone in Asia.
Option 1: Using your own cell phone company
The most crucial advice is Make sure your cell phone is unlocked for international roaming. The biggest caveat is to knowing your cell phone company has an international cell phone plan. My friend has Verizon which seems to not provide data internationally unless you pay $10 a day. That is WAY TOO expensive. We happened to use Sprint and T mobile respectively, but we made sure we had the international roaming already on there. That usually means you can have unlimited data at 2g and sometimes 3g speed and unlimited texts. What's always charged per minute was voice calling. You could get around that by using the Wifi to call on google hangouts or facetime or Facebook messenger. Two countries we were just fine using our own phone was Japan, which I couldn’t believe the speed of Sprint. Also Bali for some reason we made it fine without a sim card, mostly cause you should be living in the moments.
Option 2: Buying a second Cell phone
Once again, I will repeat the most important advice... if are to buy a cheap burner phone, Make sure your cell phone is unlocked for international roaming. Buying a second phone before you leave off craigslist is an option. This is good because you wont mind if it gets lost or stolen. We did this option and it worked great when we traveled to multiple countries. The biggest reason to buy/bring a second UNLOCKED phone is because you will be able to purchase cell phone data cards at the countries you visit. Usually this is just in case your cell phone isn’t working up to your preference. Some countries have really fast Sim cards which were needed. A Thailand sim card speed was awesome! Were able to tether and share the wifi, just didn’t work well on the islands (Koh's). Also in the Philippines there was many choices with the data cards, once again it didn’t work well in remote areas but was good enough to get some entertainment on long voyages.
Option 3: Buy there
You have two avenues with this option. That is buying either a burner/rental cell phone or a Wifi ‘egg’. I would recommend the latter. The reason to pick the egg or an external WIFI device is you can connect multiple devices. This way you can get your cell phone and computer connected using the wifi. The only way you wouldn’t get the ‘egg’ is if you don’t have a cell phone to connect to it. Then you would have to consider getting a burner phone. You can rent phones at a cellular company which are located everywhere even out of the airport. Either way when considering these options you will have to visit a store and place a deposit to use the device and return them once you are finished.
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