This is my story about how I am accessing the Internet at my current location, which is Ayutthaya, Thailand. I spend most of the year in Vienna, Austria, where I was born more than half a century ago. But I certainly can do without the European winter and therefore enjoy spending time together with my wife on her home turf. If you want to see pictures, please check this link. Sorry, the captions of the pictures are in German only.

When I was staying here before, I used to go to an Internet Café that was open 24/7, and the hourly charge is only 15 Baht (some 35 Euro-Cents). So, in a sleepless night, I showed up there at 4:00 A.M. “CLOSE” said the sign. Drove back home (5 kms), had another coffee, continued reading a book. At around 9 A.M. I went back to the Café. “OPEN 24/7” the sign said. Sure Before they used to have a guy there who had something like the faintest idea what a PC was and how it was supposed to be used. Now they have a bouncer. You might ask, why in the world would they have a bouncer in an Internet Café? Well, there is a reason. These Cafés primarily cater to schoolboys who skip school and have a prolonged PC game instead at the Café. All of
the 50 PCs in this particular Café have popular games installed. They are running on Windows ME (yuck!) and are protected by “Norton Go Back” or a program called similarly. You cannot even change the mouse orientation without entering a PW. Very annoying for a leftie like me. The bouncer is there to keep the schoolboys under control. Whoever encounters a group of school kids these days anywhere on this planet will know that they can get quite rude and nasty at times. Therefore the bouncer is present.

So I am sitting there, checking my email, checking my website, reading the news from back there in Austria. Speed is not overwhelming but serves the purpose. I want to access the cpanel of my website, enter the URL, and there Norton Go Back shows up and asks me for a PW. I close the window. Norton closes the browser window. I try again, same result. I call the bouncer. “What is this?” He looks, than shouts, “No downloads!” - "I'm not downloading; I just want to access my website. See, this is my website. This is my work!" Screams he, "NO DOWNLOADS!!!" Now, for
those of you who don’t know, it’s not for nothing that Thai people are well known the world over for their kindness, friendliness and their willingness to help each other and others in every situation that might occur. Therefore, screaming and shouting is seen as extremely rude and impolite. Shouting at someone is equivalent to putting a huge knife’s tip at your throat in a western country. The school boys started watching. I got up and pointed my index finger at him (consciously using this gesture which is also considered very rude here) and said, “You don’t shout with me, boy! How much?” with an angry look on my face. “15 Baht” he said, I put the money on the table and left. On my way out it occurred to him that I might not be a rude school boy but just an unhappy customer and he said “Sorry!” I went to another Internet Café, run by
the owner himself, friendly, but this was next to the market, and therefore has a lack of parking space.

Considering my options, I faintly remembered that my Nokia 7650, (the first one with a camera built in, 3 ½ years old) has a modem built in. So I went to AIS, Thailand’s largest mobile phone operator, and inquired there, if I can use my phone to access the Internet. The friendly lady said, “Sure!” – “So how much would that cost?” – “One Baht per minute, but we have GPRS packages, for instance 25 hours per month for 100 Baht.” 100 Baht are Euro 2,16. Heaven! “All you have to do is make sure that there are enough funds on your prepaid phone.” They were. “Shall we help you to set it up?” – “I don’t have my notebook with me, so I’ll try and if I fail, I’ll come back” – “All right. Thanks for coming.”

To make a long story short, I am somewhat knowledgeable when it comes to computers, but I am totally clueless when it comes to setting up a GPRS phone, plus she had not given me the necessary data one needs to set it up in a working manner. I took the trip back to the AIS store twice, at the other end of town, but it was worth the effort. Nominally, the speed is 56 kilobits, but what actually gets through is 32 kilobits at best. But I work and surf at the environment of my choice, no bouncer bothers me here and I would spend more money for gas going to the Internet Café alone than the phone company charges me per hour! So a happy end to this story, and an end to my 26 days of posting silence on this fine board.

Nice story. I mean, interesting, not amusing. I live in America, and I see how privleged I really am. It's good to have what I have, which is public libraries with good internet access, internet cafes that only charge for drinks, a good setup at home.

I can see how it must be frustrating for you... I would lose my mind.