Exactly my experience. Found it expensive too. Stayed a while in Bali (Kuta) many years ago and had no problems trading from an interent cafe there. Put I had to search for the right one, this one had satelite access. Don't know what the situation is now. Persoanlly if I am going to Asia again then I will go back to Hong Kong and make exceursions from there in the weekends. vital analitics
I'm thinking that way too now, choose a home base with Western comfort and security, like Miami or Singopare, from which it's easy to make weekend trips to more exotic places.
If you are serious about your trading, you'll have ups backup and power won't be an issue. Regarding internet, you'll also want backup. ADSL as primary and there are a bunch of providers for wireless - not quite high speed but better than dial-up. Wherever there is cell service, they offer this. Also, you should have a broker who takes phone orders. This is common sense no matter where you are. It doesn't apply just to those of us here in Thailand. Good luck.
I find internet in thailand Ok for trading unless one extreemly scalping. Trading from internet cafe or in-room DSL from hotel proves nothing as to reliability and speed for any location in the world If trading from hotels and internet cafes in thailand, you should keep in mind these points: 1-Internet cafes not necessarily using fastest connection available, depands per # of PCs they are using, let say they have 10 PCs, and in order to keep the cost down, they might go for slower package 1-2MB only (generaly people are not much bothered with high speed while on vacation, unless one wants to trade) 2-You are connected through a router, the port that you are using might lose you any moment , while others on same service still have no problems (happened to me many times) either had to change my room for this (grand president in Bangkok) or ask the owner to change the port (sunnet internet and guesthouse in phuket) 3- Afaik highest speed you get in Bangkok is 4MB while phuket is 2MB only, meanwhile internet is lot cheaper in bangkok with many service providers, so you should afford to have another DSL as backup. 4- Internet really get slow every morning (US and European market still closed) when Thai exchange SET and general business start 5-You should have a broker that can place "native" stop-loss with every order, incase connection is lost
Go to phuket lot more to do, twice bigger and much better developed with many shopping malls, nicer hills and forest, but beaches aren't as nice a samui. remember samui is covered mostly with coconut trees only If you like nigtlife, diving and snorkling, phuket & surrounding offers much better under water world
Been to Barbados, has everything in terms of technology but the island couldn't be anymore boring. The food is the worse unless you go the West Coast and pay 110 bucks for lunch at a 4 star. The people there, well all I can say there no Thais Azores - i have to look into that, didn't quite make it there when I went to Malaga Bocas del Toro- a little raw for my liking. good surf though. maybe when Red Frog beach gets finished I'll consider it. Panama has the best internet in Latin America . Costa Rica. Was a nice place. The comemercialization of the pacific coast is disgusting. Jaco beach was a quaint little beach town 10 yrs ago, now its over run by drugs and prostitution. Puerto Viejo was very nice when i visited but has some of the most dangerous surf, peopel die every year in the water. Cayman would be nice but a little expensive and the boredom factor. Barcelona looks to be on the top of the list , no worries about technology. Big Gauid fan and the food is awesome. Love the tapas. the winter mos are ok would like it warmer, ranging from 11-14C. better than -24C. Traded from Hawaii, expensive and the time difference is a killer. Maui, snorrrr. Lahania is happening but killer expenisve Thailand seems like the idea place in terms of cost, i have to be by the beach but reliability of internet is paramont, by the sounds of it seems inevitable there will be problems with outages. I prefer to be outside of the U.S i'll consider making a trip to San Diego to check it out I can't be stuck here for another winter...
Thailand may (may) improve in the near future as there may finally be some progress on freeing up the CAT monopoly on the inernational gateway. In addition to proxies you have the ISP shaping the traffic and then the CAT presumably shaping it again, in addition to reliability issues. ADSL will remain poor value for money but if your trading justifies a leasd line you may finally get bandwidth and reliability (currently lacking). Sadly, while they could have fed the Phuket link straight into the undersea cable, but instead chose to route it through the CAT and their gateway in Bangkok. Against this backdrop don't hold your breath or sell the house in the US. Link to HK is unreliable and has 200ms latency with multiple router hops via US routing. CSLoxinfo is the best 56k backup as it routes via Singtels gateway when the CAT link is down.
Bangkok. The pollution acts as a filter to block out some of the suns rays and the internet is faster than in the provinces.