Mobile Internet Settings for South East Asia
Monks with Camera phones, Luang Prabang, LaosThroughout South East Asia, we've been purchasing local SIM cards to use in our iPhones. Obviously using data roaming on our UK mobile contract is out of the question due to the prohibitive cost. If you've got an unlocked phone, using Pay-As-You-Go Mobile Internet is one of the cheapest and easiest ways of getting online.
Another great reason to use it is security. Some of the internet cafes you’ll use have got the dodgiest computers imaginable, full of viruses, key-loggers and who-knows-what-else. Every time you type your email, banking or Facebook login details into one of these PCs you’re opening yourself up to attack.
We’ve found that purchasing and activating SIM cards very easy to do. International airports will always have excellent choice for buying a SIM as will border towns. Unfortunately language barriers and the relative newness of 3G in some countries means that getting all the details you need to get online can sometimes be difficult.
For that reason, we’ve compiled a list of all the mobile service providers we’ve used and (nearly) all the details you need to connect, in that hope that other people may find them useful.
Seven Really Useful iPhone Apps for Round-the-World Travel
An iPhone isn’t an immediately obvious choice as the phone to take with you when backpacking your way around the world: it’s limited battery life, fragility and the fact that it will attract unwanted attention all work against it. However, the fact that it is so much more versatile than a normal phone more than makes up for this.
Taking an iPhone can save you having to take an ipod, GPS, Guidebooks, language guides, maps, printed itineraries and it even works pretty well as a phone!
If you do decide to take your iPhone along with you, here are a few applications which I’ve found to be pretty useful:
Offmaps by Felix Lamouroux
Offmaps is an offline map viewer for the iphone. Unlike the Apple Maps app, Offmaps will cache the map tiles so that you can view maps when a data connection is unavailable (or indeed, to expensive to use!). Offmaps also claims to allow access to WikiTravel articles from within the application, but I’ve found that this only works when in online mode.
Unlike the Apple mapping app, which uses Google Maps, Offmaps uses OpenStreetMap.org, a sort of wikipedia for maps.
Download Offmaps from 
ICOON Global Picture Dictionary by Amberpress
Amberpress are the producers of the popular ICOON “wordless universal phrase book”, that is: a book of pictures which you can point at when you’re trying to communicate with someone who shares no common language with you. ICOON have now also brought out an iPhone app containing the same content as the book. On opening the application, you’re presented with a number of categories, for example: Health, Money, Accommodation, etc. Each of these categories contains set of easily understood images, which can be viewed in landscape or portrait mode.
Download ICOON Global Picture Dictionary from
World Facts by Fuzzy Peach LLC
World Facts is an offline iPhone version of the CIA World Fact Book. It contains all sorts of information about every country in the world. It also contains useful high-level maps. While this app would not be useful for everyone, anyone who’s a bit of an anorak will love it.
Download World Facts from
PayBack by Andrew Cunningham
You’ll find this app incredibly useful if you ever travel in a group – especially when there’s more that two of you. PayBack allows you to keep track of all the expenses incurred on your trip, who paid the expense, and who was involved. This means that not everyone shares each expense. PayBack will also work out the minimum number of transactions needed to settle all debts. As the author says: “If you have friends and you go on trips, and you want to keep your friends, then you need PayBack”.
Download PayBack from
Trails by Felix Lamouroux
Trails is a great application for recording your route, whether you’re hiking, skiing, cycling or doing any number of other activities. It provides statistics such as distance, average speed, ascent, descent and many more. It also allows you to publish your route via email, everytrail or trailrunner. You can even view your routes in Google Earth by importing the GPX file.
Download Trails from
TripIt by TripIt Inc.
I use the TripIt website to help plan my travels. It’s especially useful for the “bigger”, scheduled bits, like airline or railway travel. The TripIt app will synchronize with the website and keep a copy of your itinerary on your phone, which will then be available offline.
Once synchronized, you’ll have access to directions, maps, booking confirmation numbers and most of the other information you’ve got on the TripIt website.
Download TripIt from
1Password by Agile Web Solutions
I use 1Password on my Mac and find it incredibly useful for saving passwords and other sensitive information in a secure way. The makers of 1Password have also brought out an iPhone application, which lets me store credit card numbers, account numbers and login information for all the websites I use in a single, password protected application. Having this information is invaluable: you never know when you may need to call you bank and cancel a card.
Download 1Password from
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