How I Contact the Philippines when on International Travel

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How I Contact the Philippines when on International Travel

Published on 20 Nov 2007 at 7:18 am. No Comments.
Filed under TechTips.

I got an email from Jeremy Wagstaff, “Loosewire” technology columnist of the Wallstreet Journal (www.jeremywagstaff.com). He gets inputs from some of his contacts for some of his articles.

Here’s a reply I sent to him about how I communicate while travelling:

hi jeremy,

i use chikka.com to sms for free to my friends and family in the philippines.
i use chikka javalite so that i can access it on the web on any public internet pc.

i also use yahoo webmessenger when i’m on a public internet pc (or any pc of a friend).
http://webmessenger.yahoo.com/
not many people know of this online service because they’re so used to the installed program.

For Philippine subscribers, there’s a service called G-Webcall:
It’s basically a VOIP service tied-in to a post-paid cellphone subscription.

in malaysia, i observed that they re-use pre-paid SIMs.

in Canada, i used a fido pre-paid sim. that was convenient for me making calls to local (canada) contacts.

For cellphone roaming, my general rules are:

a.) bring my roaming cellphone to receive SMS messages.

b.) don’t answer any un-scheduled calls (they’re too expensive).

c.) if the call is important, i expect to receive and SMS message explaining what the caller needs from me.

d.) for extended stays at a foreign country, i get a pre-paid sim to send SMS replies to selected contacts.

e.) bring along a second handset so that I have my philippine SIM and the local (foreign country) SIM at the same time.

These rules of thumb have generally saved me from huge roaming charges.

These rules have worked for me at Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, the US, Canada.

My two centavos .

edwin