Many tourist hotels offer access to a computer and either paid or free WiFi facilities but with both these options do not expect anything like the speeds you will find in Australia.

David.

Hi Larose

On my recent trip in January I found the internet in Sri Lanka pretty good!

I had free wifi in a few mid-range hotels.

However what I would HIGHLY recommend is getting a sri lankan sim card on arrival! They are available at the airport.

This can be used in your smart phone (iphone etc).

Or you can use it in a portable modem.

The internet (i used the provider Dialog) in SL was really impressive. I found it much faster than our 3G here in australia! Which really puts us to shame!

It was great to have internet access all the time. + handy to have a local sim card for local calls ... i used it also to call ahead to book a hotel room for the night

Very inexpensive.

Any q's give me a yell

Kirsty

Thanks Kirsty, I dont have an iphone, travelling with a laptop instead. But thanks everybody for your advice. Not long to go now, just under 2 weks and very excited

How exciting!

Sitting here in cold Australia and the thought of Sri Lanka is very appealing right now.

Hot Tip - if you find yourself in one of the beach areas, make an effort to walk the 5minutes out to the main roads to buy your water!

The hotels & restaurants will charge you so much more than the locals (who are potentially more in need of the income) who are out on the main roads or lane ways. I grabbed myself a 5L with a great handy carry handle every couple of days ... for about $1-2!... and got invited to tea with a local family :-)

Have a wonderful time!

Good advice Kirsty- thanks, I have just contacted all the hotels we are staying at to see if they actually have wi fi in the rooms? Havent had a response yet, I'm now thinking whether it is wise travelling with a lap top if we cannot have easy access to the internet.

We were recently in Bali and every place had free internte access even all the restaurants and bars.. somehow I dont think SL will be quite so accessable... whats you opinion?

Kristy can you explain how getting a SIM card from the airport works? I am thinking of taking an iPad 2 with me and it uses one of the micro SIMs. I will be traveling from the States and would like to keep up with things here. Will I be able to have internet access at all the hotels, the iPad will be 3G. I would like to use skype for video calls. Do you think that will be possible?

Thanks

Msjai - Yes that it definitely possible! On arrival at the airport there is a 24/7 digitel phone stand. I was able to get a micro sim from them for my iPhone. It took 5-10mins to sign up. Very easy.

I was then able to video skype my partner back home, use the GPS function, email etc etc. I found their 3G network great.

A ball park figure on prices...

$10 for sim card ... which gives you credit i think.

$10 per week for credit. And i was video skyping every day to Australia.

Hope this helps!

Happy travels

Kirsty

Larose - it's difficult to answer your question.

Depending on - how big/heavy your laptop is and how much you want/need internet.

I would not advise you to expect all locations to have free wifi. I think it's heading in that direction, but they aren't there yet. Some places will, some places won't.

The iPhone was great as I could pick up a connection everywhere using their 3G network, even on trains etc.

However I also traveled with a tiny laptop (1 kilo) - the $380 kind you can pickup from Harvey Norman or JBHIFI. Which was great for picking up the free wifi when it was available. And because it was cheap I felt happy I didn't have to stress about it getting stolen or damaged.

Another potion for you would be to take your laptop. And then on arrival at the airport get a portable modem from Dialog. Like the ones we have in Australia.... http://www.dialog.lk/personal/broadband/hspa/packages/prepaid-broadband/

If you have one in Aus that is unlocked, you can use it in SL by putting in a local sim card.

Maybe just buggar it all and go without technology!

Liberating!! (but something I would struggle to do!!)

Happy travels

Kirsty

Larose - sorry i just realised i said Digitel! I meant Dialog!