My parents just returned from a month-long trip to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. They’ve got lots of great stories but one thing that struck was their experiences using Internet cafes (My Luddite mother, who insists on asking for our “e-mail numbers” shocked us by creating a Hotmail account by herself). While North American consumers are spoiled by access to ubiquitous broadband, Wi-Fi, etc., many people in Asian countries still frequent Internet cafes to get their Web fixes. My father said the price of an hour of high-speed access in Vietnam was 25 cents, while he had to pay a 75 cents in Cambodia. These are bargins to us but I suspect they are less so for the locals.
Great story, thanks for sharing. Even in third-world countries, far away, the Internet is there to connect us with our lives back home.
The Internet in these countries is convenient for us travellers, but more importantly, it needs to become part of the lives of those living in these countries.
Industrialized nations and the corporate world can make a difference by providing the necessary infrastructure to make the web accessible to more people. The Internet can be leveraged to facilitate social, political and economical development. Education, healthcare, NGOs, small businesses, political processes, etc, can all benefit from the Internet.
Give a man a fish…
It will be interesting to see how wireless Internet accss is adopted in developing countries as a less expensive alternative – and whether the experience is different given the differences in network speed (at least in the short term).
I lived in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from 2004-6 and in the short time I was there, high speed internet access became more stable, more affordable, and more widely available. A number of restaurants and cafes in the city offer free wi-fi access. Far better than what you’d find here in London, UK!
Of course, the average citizen in Ho Chi Minh City earns just over US $100 a month, so chances are they’re still frequenting Internet cafes but a significant proportion of the population have spending power and can afford decent laptops for wi-fi fun.