Hi, does anyone no of a cheap sim to call thailand(pattaya) from uk ...mobile to mobile getting abit fedup putting sometimes in excess of 1500bht per week to fone the misses. i use LYCAMOBILE at present.

No cheap way with a sim (you are using telephone company)using computer look up Smartvoip.com clear connections and from

Thailand is is free to all of Thailand, USA, UK and many other countries.

If you had access to a UK land line it would be considerably cheaper. Dialling Phonecheap, calls are 1p a minute with a network connection charge through BT of about 10p per call. Plus VAT. So your charge for a 15 minute phone call (say) on your BT bill would be 30p inc VAT. See caveat below about additional cost though.

Not as cheap as using your computer and Skype et al, but a useful standby if you have no computer access.

The phone number is 0844 8613838. That is a premium number so unfortunately you cannot use free minutes on your own mobile. 30p using my Orange mobile gets me 3 or 4 minutes (I'm not so clued up on the basis of charging). I use it occasionally for short calls to my wife.

Using Skype, VOIP or the other cheap phonelines like Phonecheap, which are only another form of access to VOIP I guess, is quite a frustrating experience to the sticks of Issaan. It is not unusual for calls to connect but the quality is too poor or for calls to drop. Even engaged calls seem to attract the network charge for having dialled the UK number. In May I made 15 calls that ran their full course; the average time per call was 12 minutes (was probably double that in the early days!) and the average total price of each of those calls was 25p. But if you add in all the low minute calls that represent engaged numbers, wrong numbers by the Thai network, missed connections and dropped lines the average cost per 12 minutes of a good call went up to 46p.

[All the above is up to date and actual per my latest BT usage; prices include VAT - I am on BTs most basic 'unlimited weekend' plan.Anal or what? ]