[garddog99]

Hey all! I’m new here and new to long distance relationships. My girlfriend and I have been together for five years and she has just accepted a position teaching English in Thailand. I'm really proud of her! We have decided to try the “long distance thing,” but I’m worried about the cost of making phone calls over there. I don’t want her to have to call me, but my cell phone charges way too much for international calls, and I actually don’t have a land line. Even if things don’t work out, she’s my best friend, so I expect to call her often. We don’t mind writing emails and stuff, but we’ve gotten into a few fights that way (you know, no articulation in emails!), so if it’s gonna work, we will have to find a way to talk as well. What’s a good way to go? (I'm in the US)

[agnf666]

Cell Phones have national plans now. So, you can call wherever. That's what I would look into. You could get international calling cards. She is going to be teaching in Thailand she is going to be there for years. Have you ever thought about moving there with her or something?

[discoqueen23]

I've found cell phone rates to be really expensive, even with a plan. Some calling cards don't charge your cell phone though, so you can call like, an 800 number and for some reason, the charges aren't applied to your cell. I use one called OneSuite... you can check out their website for rates and you can order there too. I've found it to be really convenient.

[Naive]

Get a calling card!

[Craig]

garddog99 trust me on this one! Check out VOIP services. There are a couple of options that could really work awesome for you.

If you and your GF have the following requirements.

PC running Windows 2000 or XP
400 MHz processor
128 MB RAM
15 MB free disk space on your hard drive
Sound Card, speakers and microphone
Internet connection. Any broadband connection or minimum 33.6 Kbps dialup. GPRS is not supported for voice calls. Results may vary on a satellite connection.

Then you must check out skype dot com. Their product is FREE to call computer to computer AND free to download!

If you want to call a landline then you'll need SkypeOut and it costs a few cents per minute depending on where she is and what kind of phone you are calling. Check out these rates:

Thailand $ 0.123
Thailand - Mobile $ 0.125
Thailand-Bangkok $ 0.067

THERE IS NO MONTHLY FEE TO PAY EITHER!

Other than that you could google "voip" on the net. I have SkypeOut on my laptop and Vonage VOIP at home and the sound quality is as good or better than a regular landline! I cut my regular landline bill by more than half and my longdistance charges to almost nothing

Vonage hooks up to a regular home phone but you make all your calls over the internet.

Vonage gives me free calls anywhere in the U.S. or Canada and SkypeOut costs me around 2 cents a minute for my calls to Europe and Australia!

[tokyo]

There's an audiofunction with some of the main messengers. If your girlfriend has a computer with a broadband connection you can call her over your computer and it won't cost anything.

There are other programs that allow you to make calls over the internet to a phone, but they cost money. I also think that the prices for phone calls over the internet and for calls with callings cards don't differ much. Their advantage seems to be that they allow encryption which the messengers don't offer, but I'd try to get more information about it.

If your girlfriend has a flatrate and a broadband connection, I'd probably use a messenger.