Sim Cards for China

furythree on 07/07/2017 - 01:47

Hi

Im heading to china next month (possibly s Korea or japan too)

Just wondering if its possible to buy a sim pack with at least 1.5gb of data so i can check my email while im over there? last time i was there i had trouble getting a compatible sim for my galaxy S7 also some places didnt want to sell sims cause you had to have local id cards or something. its so confusing

anyway, i did a quick search on ebay to get some ideas. but im not sure if china unicom is the way to go.

Also are there good websites to buy from directly? and what price is decent for 1.5-2gb of data? im away for about 2 weeks

if the sim works for Skorea and Japan that would be a bonus

That singapore sim card deal from the other day sounded awesome but i wont be going to Singapore to pick one up unfortunately

cheers

Travel

Comments

  • Marcsie on 07/07/2017 - 06:11

    Why need SIM card ? I spent 5 weeks travelling Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam last December, just using Hotel free Wi Fi and Whatsapp to check email and made phone call back home :)

    • idonotknowwhy on 07/07/2017 - 10:45

      China is a different beast. Half the 'free wifi' requires wechat or a Chinese phone number.

    • furythree on 07/07/2017 - 10:47
      +2

      Note how your list doesnt include china?

  • idonotknowwhy on 07/07/2017 - 10:46

    Unicom is definitely the way to go for international phones.

    • furythree on 07/07/2017 - 10:48

      i did a bit of googling after this post

      Unicom HK is better for breaching that great firewall right?

      • idonotknowwhy on 07/07/2017 - 11:04

        Just setup a socks tunnel
        edit: https://shadowsocks.org/en/index.html worked for me in January
        Also, Signal messenger works without the VPN

        • furythree on 07/07/2017 - 11:19

          do you need to have your own vpn server for this socks5 proxy?

        • idonotknowwhy on 07/07/2017 - 12:32

          @furythree: Yeah,I used a free linode server (google for $20 referral codes)
          Just installed python-pip (python package manager), then installed shadowsocks via pip, edited 1 config file (/etc/shadowsocks.json)

          Regarding the sim card, I've tried a few over the years. Unicom is the only one which works with my Australian phones. China Mobile is the worst for customer services in terms of politeness and competence.

          I normally get my sims within China. You have to provide your passport, and make sure the account will freeze once the money is depleted (otherwise you have to go back and cancel, in person, on your last day there, to avoid raking up a debt).

          I've never tried arranging a sim before departing for China, but if you can get a Unicom sim, you should be fine.

          Obviously make sure your handset isn't locked to a local network like Telstra first.

  • Diesmile on 07/07/2017 - 11:11

    go into a local tele shop, ask to try one of their sim card to see if you can get 4G network since they use different frequency compare to us.

    they charge a monthly fee for any mobile plans but charged on daily basis. when i was there last year, 3Gb data is about 30 dollars with a lot of call credits.

  • cooldude123 on 07/07/2017 - 13:21

    If you're stopping by Hong Kong at all, I would recommend one of the China Unicom/Mobile 1-card-2-number SIMs which give you data in Hong Kong and China- the advantage here is that you get unblocked data in China since it's routed through Hong Kong so there's less stuffing around with a VPN.

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