I'm back from the Hanoi trip and as promised I'm upating my experience of obtaining internet access on my iPhone. The first thing upon arriving there, I asked our tour guide which telco offers the best prepaid packages that has data usage included. I made a point of telling her my main usage is for data and not for phone calls. She told me not to purchase any prepaid sims because our hotel will have free wifi.
More after the break...
Of course I was still skeptical as to how stable or fast their wifi is going to be. But I thought that if their wifi is not fast, their mobile internet ain't going to be any better. So I decided to wait till I get back to our hotel and try first. And yes, you guessed it, the moment we checked in our hotel I wasn't wasting much time. I looked for wifi, got connected (no password required) in a jiffy.
To my surprise, the internet was stable and the speed was decent. I was able to access my emails, my IM and all other stuff I can do on my iPhone. I even uploaded some pictures I took on my way to the hotel to my Facebook profile.
For the next three days, anywhere I go, I just tried searching for wifi spot and they are everywhere. In more up-market cafes and near hotels. So there really isn't much need for getting a prepaid sim data package if you are doing casual internet usage like me. My only problem was when I was trying to use Google maps (being a tourist and all...) together with GPS. Obviously if I'm constantly moving, I'm not going to get stable wifi. But what I did was to load the maps I needed near a wifi spot first and then go roaming with the GPS. That works as long as you have loaded all the areas you need. Or better still, get a point-to-point GPS app like TomTom or PaPaGO! that has preloaded Vietnam maps and you're good to go!
Oh, by the way, I should mention I was on a Junk (Halong Bay) for a night. And on the junk, there is no wifi whatsoever. So I went dark for a day and a night :)
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