Hello

I am coming to Thailand with a friend in late August for a 3 week holiday. We arrive in Bangkok and fly straight to Chiang Mai with Phuket and Samui the other areas we’ll visit

I live in England and have a iPhone 4 on an O2 business contract (via work). I also have a iPhone 3gs, which I was using before the 4. Both are unlocked thus free to use on any network. The 4 handset uses a micro SIM card whereas the 3gs uses a traditional ‘large’ SIM card. I was given the 4 handset ‘SIM free’ and manually cut (literally) the existing SIM to make it fit in the 4, which worked perfectly

I want to bring a mobile to Thailand in August. When I was there last year, it was rarely used, but when it was, it became invaluable. Last year I took a standard Nokia with the emphasis being on the ability to make phone calls. This year, having seen how widely available WiFi is, I am thinking of taking a smartphone

Ideally I would like to take my 3gs, as it does more or less the same thing as the 4 and should it become lost, damaged or stolen, I would rather it happened to that handset than my newer one.

My question is (and I apologise if this is fairly trivial), am I best to purchase a pay as you go SIM from here in England and take that with me. Or, should I take the 3gs with no SIM installed and purchase one there?

The only people I will call is my friend travelling with me, who will have his UK based mobile phone and SIM with him. We may also trade SMS messages. I will inevitably also call back home to England, although very rarely, maybe 2-3 times during my whole visit. In re to data, I do not at all wish to use the 3g/roaming data facility whilst in Thailand

Your help and advice would be highly appreciated

Also, a slightly different query if I may ask; last year, my friend and I took our UK based mobiles with us. For some reason, whilst in Samui, we could not call each other (directly, mobile to mobile). Admittedly we only tried a couple of times, only to receive a Thai speaking automated message. We were however able to text each other (when I was in Phuket and he Samui) and also text each other again whilst both of us were in Bangkok. Is there any reason behind this?

I ask as we got split up whilst in Samui on our bikes and not being able to call each other was very frustrating. We concede we didn’t really look into it properly before hand and probably made a silly mistake. It would be handy to avoid this scenario again this year

Many thanks again

Or, should I take the 3gs with no SIM installed and purchase one there?

Yes, do this. Buy a SIM here: AIS/One-2-Call or DTAC/Happy are recommended. A SIM is like 50 baht, then add money, choose a calling plan , ~ 1.50 baht.min avg. You can even buy SIMs at the airport, level 2, o arrival, or at one of the million 7-11's, mobile phone shops here.

Also, a slightly different query if I may ask; last year, my friend and I took our UK based mobiles with us. For some reason, whilst in Samui, we could not call each other (directly, mobile to mobile). Admittedly we only tried a couple of times, only to receive a Thai speaking automated message. We were however able to text each other (when I was in Phuket and he Samui) and also text each other again whilst both of us were in Bangkok. Is there any reason behind this?

Not sure, were you using Thai SIMs? same provider? Maybe just radio capacity issues on the island? Or interconnect issues?

Thank you for your reply lomatopo

I will purchase a AIS/One-2-Call or DTAC/Happy SIM as you have recommended (I did think this would be the wisest option). Sorry to sound so naive, but will I be able to 'choose a calling plan' myself via the handset once the SIM is installed, i.e will the automated menu process be in English? I will struggle somewhat badly if it's in Thai!

For my other query, we were not using Thai SIMs, we had our UK handsets with UK SIMs installed. We did not try calling eachother at any time during the rest of our holiday so I cannot conclude whether the issue was related to Samui specifically.

As long as I can text/call via my UK handset with Thai SIM to my friends UK handset with UK SIM, all will be ok

Just buy a SIM, add money. If you can't find someone to help you go with the default plan. With AIS-One-2-Call you can dial *777 to get into the IVR system, quite simple. Or... http://www.ais.co.th/12call/en/promotion.html

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It might be best if your friend got a local SIM too, but maybe that's not possible? If you call your friends' UK phone, even if he is Thailand, you will pay ~ 80 baht/min. SMSes would be 10 baht per.

Your previous issues probably had more to do with intl-intl roaming?

Like the other said, get a SIM card here to use for your trip.

For the issue with not being able to call each other last time, do you store your numbers like 07.... etc or +447....? Please note I'm not from the UK so don't know how your numbers start but you should get the point. If you store them in the 07 format, then when you tried to call it from inside Thailand (or any other country) the network would be looking for that number in Thailand which won't exist as it is a UK number. You need to put the +44 and drop the leading 0 to specify it is a mobile from the UK.

That would explain the message you got in Thai, it would be the the equivalent of "The number you are calling is not connected..."

do you store your numbers like 07.... etc or +447....?

Thanks for your reply We tried both methods, by using the numbers as they were saved by default or with international dialling codes

No worries, just a thought but if you tried it I've got no idea then sorry.

Hello again

I have decided to take my iPhone4 as I do not wish to take a seperate camera and can therefore utilise the 5 megapixel iPhone camera (as well as the pretty decent 720p video)

Can I assume micro SIM cards (which the i4 uses) are as commonly available as the standard ones?

Thanks again