MOBILE INTERNET AND SIM CARD IN ASIA
Easy guide for mobile service
Thailand
Quick information: A SIM card holds a phone number and it has a mobile data plan
attached to it (the plan can vary from few days to a full month).
We got our SIM card directly from an airport kiosk outside the gate (they speak english
and it’s easier if you need more information) , it cost us 500 baht (21$ at the time).
For that price we got a phone number, 100 minutes of call, unlimited text message and
15G of data. (We figured a little bit less of 1G of data per day of our stay was
perfect. We were wrong but I will come back to that later) Our plan was for 20 days but
you have the option to get a plan for 5/10/20/30 days. You also have the possibility to
have more or less data according to your needs.
You may need more data than you had thought at first due to the lack of reliable Wifi in
hotel room. Internet data on the other hand is strong and steady. Also, anytime that you
need more, you can add data to your plan using the service provider mobile application.
In our case we had a plan with dtac, so we downloaded the dtac app, attached our new
phone number to it, then proceeded to add a little bit more data to our plan (100 baht
for 4G of data). It’s easy and fast!
Indonesia
For sim card in Indonesia, you have multiple choices. But from what we have seen, it’s
pretty rare to find Sim card for one month plan. Again I think it’s important to mention
that we weren’t searching for a Sim card in a touristic area. Normally airport have easy
and different options for tourist.
The option we had was Smartfren for one month and cost around 7$ CAD for unlimited
internet (1 Gigabyte of data per day)
Important: There are SIM card that only work in specific area. If you are
traveling in multiple town or island (Remember that Indonesia is a rather large country)
We almost bought a SIM card that was only working in Jakarta…
Philippines
To be completely honest I don’t remember much about SIM card in the Philippines. We
arrived in the morning after an overnight flight.
Here’s what we remember: We bought the sim card directly at Puerto Princesa Airport.
They didn’t have a lot of option you had to choose from 3-4 different plan and that was
it. We took a 7 days plan with data 550 PHP for 5Gb.
Warning: Make sure your phone is unlocked before buying a new sim (if you’re unsure,
simply call you local service provider and ask them to unlock your phone. It’s now
free in Canada). Finally, make sure the SIM card & internet work fine before you
leave the kiosk where you bought it… customer service is not their strong suit over
the phone…