Thai sim cad & numbers for a UK mobile?

[paulfort]

I am heading back to Thailand for a couple of weeks of fun, in the past I find I spend a fortune in very simple text messages and calls between my UK mobile and a wide variety of Thai numbers depending on whom I meet!

Is it possible to simply purchase a Thai sim card with a phone number, perhaps on a top up credit system to insert into a UK mobile phone ideally that can be retained for future trips and to alleviate the hassle and expense of using a UK based number? Any experience or advice from any of you guys on this would be really welcome?

Yes, no problem, easy and just as you describe, just walk into just about any 7-11 or mobile phone store and you can buy a Thai SIM card giving you a Thai phone number and giving you lots of cheap calls and texts - and if you smile nicely the shop assistant might just insert yet sim for you, activate the sim for you and top up your account as well and when you get home you can just swap back to your UK sim again.

Maybe just dont go to mad and top up too much ( 500 baht might do) as I seem to recall a lot of sim are time restricted so if you come back a year later the credit may have vanished - so time to buy a new sim
again just.

[ceejay]

It's possibly worth considering buying a mobile while you are here as well. If all you want is to make calls and texts you can get a perfectly adequate one for less than 1000 baht (┬г20). If that goes missing in a bar, its no great loss - and you don't lose all the data on your UK phone either.

[Patexpat]

Ensure your UK mobile is unlocked otherwise the Thai SIM will not work ...

[arsenal]

I agree with ceejay, buy a cheap one and care not if it's lost or stolen. China Southern Airlines give you a Thai simcard as you get off the plane. A nice gesture I think.

Ceejay makes a good point about buying a cheap phone asif its lost its not the end of the world - however I have to say over the years I've went both ways - new cheap phone and bringing my own and found the following to be true - exactly because it was a cheap and different phone than my normal phone it felt "out of place" and I wasn't used to thinking about it / picking it up again in bars of I sat it down so I actually ended up losing that one ! Whereas when I brought my own (iPhone) as it feels more like part of me ( so far) I've never walked out of somewhere without out as its just like being back at home and hence i usually check my pockets before I leave somewhere as i know how my pockets should feel etc, I now ( after my yearly auto upgrade) bring my spare iPhone and also then pack a second UK iphone in my secure case "just in case" so I've a backup if I lose my first phone.

Another reason I do just carry my iPhone was that with the other cheap phone a) the phone was usually an old model that I had to "learn" again, which resulted in my having to note down and resave a host of UK must have numbers into my new phine and text those UK contacts to give them my new thai number ( which ironically cost me money over my trip as i ended up texting UK friends which defeated the whole money saving purpose) plus usually either had no ( or a crap) camera and either had no Internet or took forever to set up, so when I looked at all the pros and cons and realised I would then have a) my own phone, complete with good camera, photos being auto stored and auto backed up to my home computer ( via the cloud) and I could access the internet and get my emails and facebook without having to remember passwords etc etc and also access all pf my itunes music and saved videos I could watch anytime ( in the airport etc) at the click of a button and also then could keep my UK number so work and friends could still get me I figured it was worth the hassle / risk and so far so good re losing it.

Sorry I should have added that to offset any increase in texts etc ( which I found wasn't to bad cost wise anyway over the trip?) I bought a "bolt on" from orange before I left which gives quite a saving so that might help you in that regard. Oh and one last thing, if you DO decide to just use your UK phone whatever maybe ensure that its insured for loss / theft ( about a fiver a month and good value if you ask me as you have replacemrnt phone within 24 hours( in the UK) Thailand slightly longer I guess and with cloud based storage now ( if you're using a smart phone / iPhone etc) you can reinstall your last back up directly from the cloud so thats you back up and running again within minutes with all your contacts back in place again - so don't like me forget to back it up before you leave the UK :-)

[pong]

It's possibly worth considering buying a mobile while you are here as well. If all you want is to make calls and texts you can get a perfectly adequate one for less than 1000 baht (┬г20). If that goes missing in a bar, its no great loss - and you don't lose all the data on your UK phone either.
Big C now sells those-radio incl, for 495 bt=around 10 ''quids''. The trick is of coruse it has to be UNLocked-all Thai mobuys are. 1-2-call and dtac are TH main proders-both have several plans-the time your SIM keeps valid varies with plan.

[Halfhansum]

If i bought a sim card in 7/11, to go into a UK smart phone, Would it give me internet access as well ?
Or would i have to get a special sim ? :dontknow:

There two different issues to be aware of here - if your smart phone is a iPhone I know it ( not sure about the rest) actually uses a "mini" sim which as the name implies is a lot smaller than the usual older sims and in my experience not many ( if any! ) 7-11's sell the mini sim and this is something you may have to go to a mobile phone stall to get (tukcom or at the airport possibly and the likes etc), then the second question - a) yes the one sim does everything - data and calls ( assuming you buy a sim card with "data" and calls on it of course as you can buy calls only if you preferred )- so if you purchase a sim card with a "data" package - data basically being the technical name for whatever you need re the amount of time and how you get you access to the internet / your email / sending pictures / using gayromeo etc etc BUT !!!!! when using your phones data it can either be expensive and or quite slow depending on your connection if you can't find a 3G connection depending where you are and what area you are in etc - hence why I would suggest that you should ALWAYS try to find and access WIFI first and only use your phones "data" connection as the secondary resort as wifi will be much faster and once you're connected is free for as long as you're using it normally ( some places are tight and charge for 30 mins / one hours access etc but they are getting less and less) and in your hotel ( assuming it's free - but do be sure to check that before going mad every day on it in case it's not !) you can log in to their wifi the first time ( by simply entering a password they'll give you in your phones "wifi settings" box and your phone "should" then remember that connection for you each time you arrive back to your hotel and go to use it - and if it doesn't just bang in the password again. Likewise in many bars as I can now walk round a lot of my usual haunts in Bkk and my iphone picks up their wifi from my previous trips there which is very handy - and if it doesn't you simply ask for and re-enter their new password again.]

Oh sorry one more thing as I've just realised why you're maybe asking - don't forget that you don't necessarily need to buy a Thai sim card at all !!! ( I don't anymore and I never need it ) as as I'd mentioned before just buy a "bolt on" additional text package from whoever your UK phone provider is ( they all do them so just ring them and they can add it instantly over the phone - mine was something like a fiver for what would have been ┬г30 quids worth of texts or something), then simply use your UK sim in your phone as normal ( which means all your UK people can still get hold of you if they need to / or you want to call them in the numbers on your UK sims contact list ( which saves you writing out loads of important numbers) and if necessary you can still text and receive texts from Thai numbers etc no problem and it really doesn't cost that much ( maybe 0.20 - 30p or something - ring your UK provider and they can tell you??) but you can then simply use your normal UK phone's (free) wifi when you find it and do all the other stuff you need to do - I think in 4 weeks on my last trip my UK sim phone cost was about ┬г25 a week and that was me calling the Uk a bit for work as well as texts to various Thai guys etc, which when weighted up versus the hassles of changing your sim UK etc I thought wasn't too bad overall - but again ring your UK provide and ask them about their costs ( they can quite you EXACTLY what it costs for call on your UK sim to and from Thailand including texting etc as phone contracts of course differ in their call charges.

Hope that helps.

[dab69]

Most Iphones have sim cards.Unfortunately I bought an 8 Gb in July that does not.
(wouldn't have unlocked it anyway- lose the warranty)

?????? @dab69 - to the best of my knowledge ( and I've just did a quick google search which backs up my belief) ALL phones ( iphone 8gb included) have a sim card - they HAVE to have to enable them to work on different networks and allow you to legally change your number etc, perhaps ( and I'm not implying your draft but I made this same mistake when I got my phone) - but perhaps you're looking for the usual slide off rear door workings with the big sim card sitting behind it that all phones have / had - if so you won't find that but there is a tiny sim built into the side edge of the phone which you access ( frustratingly) using something like a small pin or paper clip, you'll just see a small hole, stick the paper clip into it and a spring loaded door with open displaying your sim ( it's not as hard as it sounds) enabling you to change it in a second effortlessly.

By the way (and maybe you know this already but just in case others reading don't) changing your sim card is not the same as unlocking your phone - if your phone is supplied by orange ( for instance) then they will "lock" it to their network to try and force keep your business - but you can get it unlocked at many places ( make sure to take a back up first though ! ) which will allow you to chose and use ANY network and also load on other software you may wish to ( personally I don't see much benefit re that part from using the other networks etc) and once your phone is outside it's years warranty personally if I'm travelling I always getting it unlocked ( which is a simple two minute job in any phone store and is cheap) as it opens up the opportunity to use any sim card ( Dtac etc in Thailand) anywhere in the world which needless to say can be very useful rather than being forced to pay your UK suppliers charges always.

[Halfhansum]

Thanks for the info Nirish...
I certainly wont be making the same mistake that i made on my first jaunt to Phuket, when i just carried on using my uk phone, as if i was in UK.
Got home to a ┬г300. Vodafone bill .. I was expecting it to be dearer, but 300 squids ?? :dontknow:
And there was me feeling very experienced, cus i avoided being ripped off by the jet ski guys of Patong.. lol

[ainamor]

A couple of points from the earlier posts.

Some US i phones do not have sim cards, dependent on the carrier and contract.

You can get a monthly data contract from AIS for 550 Baht a month, this gives you 3g dropping to 2G after a certain limit.

If you unlock an iPhone other than through the supplying network that is just hacking the os. If you try to update it with the latest software at a later date the phone will relock itself and you risk bricking the phone.

You can extend the life of your AIS Thai number so that it remains live by topping it up with 500 Baht which extends it for one year. You can top up AIS sim from anywhere in the world by using the AIS website.