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Internet Cafés Asia Style

The traveler's link to home and hearth

By Jacqueline Renee Cohen

 

IF YOU WALKED into a small storefront in Bangkok and saw ten foreigners bent over computers typing furiously away, what would you think? Are they journalists rushing to meet a deadline? No they are ordinary travelers keeping in touch with home at one of the many popular Internet cafés that have sprouted up around the world in the past few years.

Major tourist destinations in the U.S. are equipped with U.S. Post Offices and many pay phones so travelers can keep in touch with friends and family. In many Third World countries, Internet cafes flourish in these areas to meet the same needs.

The U.S. offers the least-expensive Internet access in the world. Americans take for granted free local telephone access and provider rates that average less than $20 a month for unlimited access. Local ISP charges in most Third World countries, by contrast, where many people are without electricity or ground phone lines, run higher than the average monthly wage. But even these constraints haven't deterred Internet service entrepreneurs from setting up shop in such heavily touristed Asian destinations as Bangkok, Kathmandu, Saigon, and Hanoi, and even in small beach resorts.

Backpacking through Asia has changed in the past 30 years. No longer does it mean sacrificing all Western amenities and communicating with home by slow surface mail. Five years ago, every travel agency on Kho San Road, the Bangkok street so popular with backpackers, offered fax services. Now more than 20 businesses on this road alone offer Internet services. Kathmandu is no different, nor is Saigon or any other destination on the tourist route in Asia. Even the small beach areas, access to which is limited by the business hours of the long-tail boat, are online with servers that are ready to send and receive your e-mail.

Most of these providers charge you in one of three different ways or a combination:

  • Online Rate. You are charged for each minute you are online. Once on the Net, you can access your personal e-mail account (Hotmail, Yahoo) or surf the Web. In Bangkok this will cost you 2 Thai Bhat per minute or 100 Thai Bhat per hour (36 Thai Bhat = 1 US$). Small beach resorts are more expensive, at 100 Thai Bhat for 15 minutes.
  • Offline Rate. You are charged per minute for offline use. You can write mail through the host's e-mail account offline, and the provider will send it later. If you want to receive mail, you will have to pay for reading it on screen or printing it out. The offline rates at a small beach resort were 50 Thai Bhat for ten minutes or 100 Thai Bhat for 30 minutes. In Bangkok, there was no difference between online and offline rates.
  • Per Line Rate. In Kathmandu in 1996, it was only possible to work offline, and I was charged approximately 1 US$ per 12 lines of text. I learned how to type with abbreviations and without spaces!

These Internet services are a lifeline. Not only do they provide a link to family and friends; they also offer the many travelers who have their own Websites a way to update them regularly so people back home can follow their travels.

No longer do you have to lug a laptop around the world with you! A friend who has recently started a 3,000 mile bicycle trip around Thailand, Laos, and Southeast China has managed to update his Website quite regularly so far but expects he will not be so lucky to find access in some parts of Laos.

These services are also growing rapidly in popularity. A sign over the computer in one Internet café in Hanoi entreats users to "Please finish as soon as possible because others are waiting"!

Internet café's have sprung up in cities worldwide, providing travelers with access in New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, London, and Hong Kong, and even in the smaller cities of DACS home state of Connecticut (Seattle Espresso in Danbury and the Online Internet Café in Norwalk). Most of these charge by the minute and will sell you decent refreshments to tide you through your surf and tempt you to linger.

In Hong Kong, some coffee shops and juice bars have taken a unique approach: free Internet access with the purchase of a drink. Given the astronomical price of a coffee here, one can assume this carrot is more the lure for well-heeled travelers than for lean-budgeted backpackers!

In the future, perhaps Internet cafés will spread throughout America. On your next trip to the Grand Canyon, instead of mailing a postcard home you will sign on, send an e-mail, and never again have to worry about arriving home before your message reaches its destination.


JACQUELINE RENEE COHEN is currently teaching English as a Foreign Language at Cognitio College in Hong Kong. Jackie is attempting to integrate Internet technology into her lessons. Please send your comments to her at JAQATAC@iname.com. Watch for more news from Hong Kong in the coming issues of dacs.doc.


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