Too many SIM cards - Prepaid internet while traveling

Getting a mobile internet connection when you're traveling outside your own country is not always easy: it can be a hassle to find prepaid SIM cards. And the free wifi you get in some restaurants is not as convenient and secure as having your own portable always-on connection.

I’m still using a Huawei to share 3G internet between the iPhone/iPad/Macbook. The iPhone has my regular UK SIM, useful to be reached on my normal number.

I managed to find prepaid SIM cards for 3G in almost all countries I visited except Japan. Every time the SIM card I bought was compatible with my unlocked Huawey. Often I had to manually configure the APN to get internet working on the Huawey.

Here are the details, country by country.

• Singapore, M1 broadband

Bought a SIM card at the airport immediately after arrival from an M1 stand. Unlimited data for a set number of days. When registering you need to show your passport and they keep a record of your passport number.

When the card expires, you need a separate connection to top it up, either with a credit card of with a voucher. You can buy the voucher in 7-11. You need to remember your broadband mobile number, you’ll need it to top-up.

5 days of unlimited data cost SGD18.

To top-up, go here.

• Taiwan, Chungwa Telecom

Went to the store in the shopping area near Taipei 101, had to bring two photo IDs with me. The Chungwa store was crowded, I had to wait about half an hour. There is a number calling system so once you have your ticket you can walk around the other shops before coming back so it wasn't that bad.

The vendor spoke English, the price of the card was reasonable.

• Hong Kong, one2free

Went to the one2free shop outside Fortress Hill MTR station. No ID required, no registration, the connection is entirely anonymous unlike in Beijing, Taiwan or Singapore. Unlimited data, you pay for a number of days. When your credit expires, your browser automatically prompts you to recharge. You don’t need a separate internet connection to recharge an expired card which is good.

If the one2free card was a beer...

To top-up

• get $100 vouchers in 7-11 (it's just a receipt paper with a number on it)
• top-up your balance online with the voucher number
• Buy more days (7 days of unlimited data costs HKD78)

• Beijing, China Unicom

Went to the China Unicom store located right outside the Dongdan subway station. Google map here. The passport is required. Only one employee spoke English in the store, which allowed me to skip the queue. The price for the card was reasonable.

This is not unlimited data, they charge you per KB so it's fine for Twitter/Email/FourSquare but no more. To buy recharges, go to any newsagent kiosk and buy a China Unicom recharge card. Topping up is a bit convoluted: you do it from a mobile phone. You call their phone number and type in the voucher number. You can call from a different SIM than the one you are recharging.

Important: you have to set the APN manually for the SIM to work correctly.

Warning! Not all China Unicom stores sell the SIM card. I also went to the main store in Wangfujing, which is the Beijing equivalent of London's Oxford Street. They sell much more expensive cards that do both voice and data, the price is ridiculous.

Twitter and Facebook are blocked in China (at least they were at the time I was there). US sites are a bit slow, Whatsapp and Wechat work fine. I haven't tried using VPNs there but here is a list of VPNs that are supposed to work in China.

• USA, T-Mobile

In Los Angeles T-Mobile sells a data-only SIM that works just fine. I went to the Santa Monica store and paid $35.95 for a SIM that kept me running for the remaining 8 days of my US trip.

Warning: don't get the card sold at LAX airport, it's way too expensive.

• Philippines, Global

I bought a Global data SIM card at a kiosk for PHP600 at MNL airport terminal 1 (Manila). This gives you 7 days of unlimited data. No document required, activation is anonymous. As the nice Filipino lady at the kiosk said "it's more fun in the Philippines".

You have to set up the APN manually.

To top up put the SIM in a mobile phone and dial a number to access a WAP menu. Then you have to:

• recharge your account using a prepaid card (I bought one for PHP300).
• create a 'promo' to choose the plan (I chose another 7 days).

• Japan, no luck

I found nothing in Japan!

My plane landed too late for the airport kiosk. None of the phone shops I visited in Osaka had any prepaid 3G SIM card - they told me the only place to get it was the airport.

I found free wifi in some bars (not so much in coffee shops, tea rooms or restaurants).

How to travel and study at the same time

I left London 5 months ago, preparing for a financial exam I'll take in May. The exam requires on average somewhere between 200 and 300 hours of study time. It turns out you don't have to do it in front a white wall.

Equipment

• Macbookpro 15’’
• iPad mini
• iPhone 4S with extra battery
• Huawey E586 with extra battery.

I don’t always walk around with a Macbook pro of course. Whether I take it with me or not depends on several things including how safe it is to leave it in my hotel room. A 15’’ is not ideal for travel, it's clearly heavy. An Air would be easier on my shoulders but it’s ok. Sometimes hotel safes are big enough to accommodate an MBP, sometimes I take the risk of just leaving it in my locked suitcase. When I can leave the MBP behind, I carry only the iPad mini in a small satchel.
The smallest bag I could find to carry the MBP 15’’ is a Samsonite rucksack. The 15’’ retina fits in just right.

Study material

I read books using a combination of

• Amazon Kindle
• Apple iBooks
• Dropbox (for PDF files)
• Public libraries: for books that are not accessible in electronic form. The National Library in Singapore has plenty of reference books, is open to non students (as long as you don’t borrow the books) and is laptop-friendly.

Dedicating time to study

The technical bit is not really the problem. The hardest part is to put time aside and dedicate it to study. Traveling is full of distractions. One of them is doing tourism. When I’m in London I’m not stuffing my days with trips to Mme Tussaud or the British Museum so I don’t feel like doing this either while I’m in another country. Local attractions are not a must-do, they will still be there the next time you come back.

The biggest factor of wasted time while traveling is decision making and exploration - by wasted I mean in relation to the objective of studying, of course it's not wasted time if you actually enjoy exploring. Where should I go today? Where are the good places? Rather than doing extensive and time-consuming research or walking around at random, it’s quicker to rely on a few recommendations from friends/locals/hotel receptionists or even suggestions from FourSquare.

Here are the top 3 questions I ask FourSquare:

• where can I have breakfast now?
• where is a good coffee place to sit down and open my laptop?
• where can I eat now?

Based on where you are FourSquare returns a single list of suggestions. This list includes places you stumbled upon at random before, places recommended by friends and places recommended by FourSquare users.

Dealing with travel overhead

Then another factor is the travel overhead: taking a plane, booking trips, booking hotels, checking in, checking out, washing clothes, etc… Now I do most of my bookings with the Expedia iPhone app. It has a very clean flow and allows quick sorting by deals first. When booking a flight or hotel, it doesn't ask you to type in your life story, just the 3 digits at the back of your credit card. Some airline web booking forms are just horrendous: they have too many pages, ask for way too much info sometimes redundant... It happened to me to spend up to an hour to complete a booking process because of slow websites that crash in the middle. None of this with Expedia for iPhone. Another nice thing: the search shows you the total price for stay as opposed to a misleading nightly rate that excludes taxes...

The drawback of Expedia: it shows only the hotels connected to Expedia. That excludes a lot of smaller more obscure hotels that can be perfectly OK and sometimes very cheap.
I wash my clothes in places that wash, dry and fold them for you, not in launderettes. I try and avoid moving around too much: I prefer staying in the same place for 1 or 2 weeks. After two weeks in the same city you’re pretty much a local: you have your favorite hangouts, you know the good places to eat or study, you have your data SIM card sorted out, you know the cheap local wash&fold laundry service, you can get around in the MTR/subway/metro/tube without a map and you can order a latte in the native language.

Although I spent most of my time in big cities (Taipei, Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, San Francisco, Los Angeles), I found that for studying sleepy resorts are the best because they remove all distractions. No invites from friends, no dating, no travel, no tourism, no time wasted in transport - it’s a quick walk from the bungalow to the pool. It also removes choice: there is only one restaurant, one cafe, one swimming pool and only 10 items on the menu. I clocked in at least 10 hours daily of intensive study while in Malaysia/Thailand, whereas I struggled to reach 5 hours when I was preparing for the Microsoft exam in Taipei.

See also:
Keep your data safe while traveling
Study plan for a 6-month break

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