Internet Cafes Around the World
We are not Internet experts. In fact, are relatively new to cyberspace compared to many people out there. Neither can we tell you how to find access wherever or whenever you may need it. However, we can share our experience as we circled the globe and looked for ways to take care of personal business and keep in touch with family, friends and people we would be joining along the way. Sometimes that was possible and other times it wasn't.
Prior to leaving home we had put our itinerary on the Internet so that people at home would be able to vicariously accompany us on our trip. It also made it possible for them to have email addresses and phone numbers in case they needed to reach us at any of our locations. In addition, each of the people that we planned to visit or catch up with in our travels would be easier to contact if we had our itinerary, along with their email addresses, available to us. It was easier than carrying address books and paperwork. It would also save us the money for phone calls if we needed to reach any of our international friends about schedule changes or other difficulties along the way.
We weren't certain exactly what we would find in the way of Internet access as we traveled, but we knew that we didn't want our computer as a constant companion. We didn't want to add a computer to our baggage. Besides, we didn't want to be too connected to the outside world in places where we hoped to immerse ourselves in the culture.
So as we left home we knew we were taking our chances but saw it as part of the adventure.
ROME
When we arrived in Rome we knew that our hostess had email as we had communicated with her quite a bit by email before our trip. We also knew that she has generated all of her business for her Bed and Breakfast, the Villa Paola, through the Internet. Therefore, we thought it would be easy to check email there. What we were not aware of prior to our trip is that we would find it difficult to ask people to use their computers to check our email. Fabiana was very, very busy, her computer was in her private quarters, and even though she would be gracious enough to let us use it, it just didn't seem right to ask. We also were aware that one of our fellow travelers did ask her, and since we found him to be a little more intrusive than we wanted to be, that also set the stage for our being reluctant to ask friends or acquaintances for this favor.
As we traveled around the city we didn't see any Internet cafes. Although there may be some of which we are not aware they clearly are not as available or accessible as those in other places we would visit later. Thus we didn't check our email in Rome and that was fine since we were only a week into our trip.
SPAIN
When we arrived in Spain we thought that we might be able to check our email at one of the four-star hotels, according to our tour company's advance information, where we would be staying. This assumption of ours also turned out to be inaccurate. The one hotel where we saw computers, the very modern hotel in Seville, we asked someone at the desk if they were for guests to use.
The response that we got surprised us. The woman shook her finger at us and shouted, "You may not use!" We still don't know what that was about or who the computers in the very open area in the lobby were for, but we definitely were put in our place.
Another aspect of finding Internet access in Spain was related to being part of an organized tour. We didn't realize how busy we would be throughout our tour, often being on a bus from morning to evening and being herded from one spot to another -- at least if we didn't want to miss anything exciting or interesting. Thus, although we did see one Internet cafe in Madrid, as our bus passed it, we still didn't check our email while in Spain. There was no access at any of hotels themselves nor any places nearby that had the services available. That was okay with us because we had decided to hang loose with the whole thing -- and we had still only been traveling for 2 or 3 weeks. Friends or family who tried to reach us could do so by calling us at the hotels where we would be staying.
(We didn't find out until days later that the husband of one of our good friends had died. When people tried to contact us by phoning the hotel where we were lying resting in our beds at the time of the call, they were told we were not staying there. The phone calls several days later at another hotel who was were more successful in reaching us. Whoever answered the phone was more receptive to ringing our extension.)
LONDON
We were fairly certain that we would have better access in London and we were pleased to find out that we were right. What surprised us was their accessibility. They were perhaps six within just a couple of blocks of us, but two very close. One of the coupons we found in our hotel was for a full hour of use at one of these cafes for about $4.00. Otherwise it would have been about $2.00 for the first 10 minutes and and a little less than for each additional 10 minutes.
We had planned to spend these three days catching up with email, mailing our packages of things from Spain and Rome, and doing our laundry that we were not able to handwash in our sinks in hotels. That is exactly what we did. We were surprised that we had 41 messages, even though we had taken our names off of all the mailing lists and friends and family knew we would be gone. A majority of the messages were from people who were attempting to contact us regarding our book or other things we had on the Internet. They didn't know we were traveling at the time. Others were distant friends sending us their new email addresses or new mailing addresses. All of them were people to whom we wanted to respond. So we saved all their messages "as new," planning to respond to them when we returned home.
(We continued to save our messages that way along our trip and found them accessible as we traveled and checked our email. They didn't disappear until we returned home and wanted to look at them again so that we could respond to them!! We contacted AOL but no one got back to us about the problem. Consequently we were not able to respond to people who had asked for our input and that was upsetting. And beyond that, we have no idea how to prevent that from happening in the future.)
London was definitely the easiest place to access the Internet so far, and would remain so until we arrived in Australia where access was much cheaper and even more plentiful.
Meanwhile we were heading to the Far East where there would be language barriers and less access.
KOREA
Korea was a whole different story. We did see one Internet cafe in Seoul near the downtown area but didn't have time to check it out when we were nearby. So we can't report on the cost or access in English. We didn't see any others in our stay in the country although we were looking for them. We would guess that there may be easier access in the areas of Seoul where so many of our military are stationed or in the more modern tourist areas. We would guess that the finer hotels have them. We, on the other hand, were staying in places that were more traditional so we don't know for certain.
Of course we wouldn't have expected to find any facilities in Kyongju, the ancient capital or Korea, and we didn't. We also knew we wouldn't be able to get money there and we were correct about that also.
Thus, we asked our friend if we could check our messages on his computer the last day in Korea, when we were staying in his home. He was gracious, and walked us through the directions that were in Korean, even after we had accessed the AOL site. We were concerned that the cost of using the computer might be quite a bit more than we are used to paying, and since Korea is in the midst of dire economic conditions, we didn't want to take advantage of our friend's generosity. We also knew that we would have more accessibility when we arrived in Japan. So we quickly checked to see if there were any vital messages regarding connections or problems for the next leg or our trip. And then we signed off.
JAPAN
Japan is known around that world as being "high-tech." The first thing we need to advise you is that, in some areas, this cannot be further from the truth. While a friend told us that our cell phones in US are like "bricks" while theirs are more modern and compact, it is incredible that this is the same country where we were not able to find an ATM machine for cash most places we visited. We write more about that in our Travel Tips page. Even more tangentially, that is in direct contrast to the incredibly high tech toilets we found there. It was also amazing to us that we had to travel almost 4 hours by train and spend $92.00 in order to receive our rail passes, when it would be so much easier to have the whole system computerized. With that background it is little wonder that we had no idea what to expect with Internet access.
Although a couple of our Japanese daughters are quite gifted with computer technology the schools that we are familiar with still don't offer courses in using computers except to the science majors and and most homes don't have personal computers. A few of our friends do have computer access now and the number has significantly increased in just the last year. So it seems that they are on the way to catching up.
We are pretty certain that one might find computer cafes in the western or modern places in Tokyo and we were able to access our email at the Hilton on our last day in Japan. However, we don't spend a lot of time in Tokyo as we find a lot of other areas more interesting. Consequently, we did not see one computer cafe any place the almost-month we were in Japan and as traveled around the country.
Instead, we used the computer in the hotel in Hamamatsu, which had a good set up, and checked our email a couple of times using friend's computers. First we tried to check with our friends to make certain that it wouldn't cost them extra money. We were aware that there are different packages for getting email service in Japan and none of them are as reasonable as ours. From what we could piece together, one package is cheaper but allows use only in the late night and early morning hours. Thus some businesses that use the Internet operate their businesses only from midnight until 7:00 AM. Another package allows 24 hour access but costs significantly more. Finally there is one package that charges so much per month and then so much for each amount of time that the Internet is accessed. That is a gross simplification of Internet access in Japan as we understand it. We just knew that we didn't want to cost our friends more money than they were already spending on us and we didn't want to take advantage of them in any way. (In the back of our mind we have the memory of people who visited us from Japan and wanted to call home every day on our bill!)
Nevertheless, although we are certain they exist, we didn't see a computer cafe anywhere we traveled in all of Japan. And we thank all of our friends who gave us the opportunity to use their computers to access our email. We hope it wasn't inconvenient for you in any way!
(Update 9/2/00 -- We just read in the newspaper that the rates for Internet access in Japan are 10 times what they are in the US, while the technology with cell phone access to the Internet is about 2 years ahead of us. We have several friends in Japan who receive their email via their cell phones and we find it very frustrating since messages are preferred in kanji and are very limited to number of characters they will accept.)
AUSTRALIA
Our friend, Emma, had visited us for a month just about three months before we embarked on our trip. She told us they were far behind us in computer technology and accessibility. Many of the things we, who consider ourselves computer novices, take for granted and do everyday were almost unheard of in Australia. She herself had access to a computer but only through her job and that was also true of most of her friends and acquaintances.
By the time we arrived in Australia, that had changed drastically. We don't know if things had progressed so quickly because the whole country was busy getting ready for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, as we suspected, or whether they just suddenly became a more active player in the Internet community. Whichever, we were delighted to find that in both Sydney and Melbourne we saw many Internet cafes wherever we traveled -- at the best prices we found anywhere. Where we stayed in Sydney, in the Chinatown area, there were probably a dozen computer access businesses within a block or two. Here we could have unlimited access for about $4.00 and for the first time in our trip we didn't feel any time pressure to quickly check our messages and sign off. Consequently, we could relax and take our time to really catch up.
HAWAII
Soon after we checked into our hotel in Hawaii in Waikiki, right in the heart of tourist heaven, we found an ad for a computer cafe within about half a block. This was the only one that we noticed in that heavy tourist area throughout our week there. The hours were listed on the brochure but not the rate. However, each time we went there during the advertised business hours, we found a sign indicating it was closed and someone would be back soon. When we finally did find someone in, after about three or four tries, we found the rates higher than we hoped (can't remember what they were exactly, but think they were about $2.00 for each ten minutes), and decided to try to find another place to see our email.
That was when we found our first real computer "cafe." It was about a two-mile walk from our hotel toward downtown Honolulu. While the other Internet places that we visited around the world were small warehouse type rooms with computers lined up in rows, the cafe in Hawaii offered drinks for sipping and snacks to munch on while one surfs the net. However the price was $1.00 for each ten minutes or $4.00 for the first half-hour plus $!.00 for each ten minutes after that. Although that may not seem all that high, we had been spoiled in Australia. Consequently we quickly took care of our business and were on our way. We were glad to know the cafe was there if we needed it but, as it turned out, it was the last time we used the Internet before returning home.
We can't conclude this section without mentioning how nice it was to receive email messages from friends around the world as we traveled. At most stops, our most faithful email friend, Gunny, and his wife, Norma, sent us greetings and best wishes through our international friends. Others also wished us well -- long distance. Thanks to all of you.
TURKEY
Access to computers and the price range was inconsistent in Turkey. We paid as much as $7 US for a half hour in our hotel in Istanbul to as little as $1 US for an hour in an internet cafe in Urfa. The biggest problem in using the computers was the keyboard which included Turkish characters and we found when we returned to the US that our emails home contained some gibberish. In addition, in the private internet cafes the screens were often in Turkish so it was more difficult to follow instructions. We had to rely on our memory of the placement of options for Windows 95 or 98. Also the computers were extremely slow and it sometimes took us an hour just to read four or five emails and respond to them. The western owned hotels did have access to the internet in their offices or had business centers for guests, while the other hotels might not have any access. And since most of our hotels were located at a distance from towns and populated areas it often was several days before we could check messages.
For others, we hope that this page helps you in some way as you see the world and attempt to keep lines of communication open in this new age of ours!!
