[banker0007]

Has anyone been able to use a laptop and have internet access or use of a phone while they are over in Russia. My husband owns a business and is in constant communication with his company so it would be wonderful if we could have internet access in Russia.

Thanks!

LeAnne

[beckyww]

We stayed at Marriotts in St. Pete and Moscow in 2006. Internet access - no problem.

Becky
The Woodworth Family in Beautiful San Antonio TX

[MissDaisyofTexas]

We brought our laptop. In one hotel, we had a wireless connection and it was great. In another hotel, we had to buy an internet phone line card and use the phone line. It was very slow, but it worked.

For the phone, we used Skype through the internet.

[Amysue1112]

We took our laptop and was able to connect via wireless our whole trip. Our facilitator got us cards for internet minutes, and it they were very cheap. Our daughter's orphanage was in a very remote area, but even there we had no problem with internet. I was able to keep a blog and post stories and pictures every day while we were gone.

You can use the phone too, but we had a bit of a hard time b/c even with English directions the prompts were in Russian so we had to get help.

On trip 2, when we were in Moscow doing our embassy stuff, we rented an apartment and it was AWESOME...also they had a computer in it with free internet access and free phone calls to the USA...Whoa did we take advantage of that!

[Aphi86]

We also own our our business and the three weeks seemed un-doable, however, we had laptops and Instant Messenger which was a whole lot cheaper than phone cards. You should also check out Skype which with a microphone for the laptop is a free call. Additionally, on our first trip I had plugged my laptop in (it was on already) and it surged and fried the motherboard (gotta love the Dell warranty!) For trip two, dh could not afford for that to happen to his work computer, so he bought back up batteries. He was always charging one while one was in. So, only the batteries were ever plugged into the wall, never the computer.

[orenmommy]

WE used Andres Peace Travel Service out of Florida and Moscow to rent a cell phone. Worked perfectly in our remote region. Highly recommend their service. We did not have use in our hotel for internet in region.

[kalina87]

Oh gosh yes!!!!! THANK GOD! It'll be a little pricey, but WELL worth it when you start to go insane. Just purchase a card out there. Talk to your agency about purchasing a card. It's been like 3 years since I was out there. i forgot how to do so. I just remember how great it was!!!

[momraine]

One thing we did for our trip to Poland was we changed our Cel phone package to include international. Now, granted it was still kind of expensive to make each call, but we were able to use the cell phone even in small towns in Poland to make short calls home and I even checked my e-mail with it.
The total bill was not that bad. Since I was leaving other kids at home it gave me peace of mind to have it working. Another thing was we discovered that some of the big airports have wifi, so dh was able to use his laptop and do a little business on the long layovers we had. (but be sure you have a firewall in place)