Well, this post is probably just going to be a filler for the actual travel posts I will be making in awhile. I've been writing in my diary for the past 3 plus weeks, so not everything I write will be from my memory/made up. My intention was to blog on the go, but I guess I overestimated the abilities of my mobile phone and the internet connectivity of the places that I was going to. So I guess I'll start the travelling posts with whatever I have to say about the internet capabilities of each country.
Nepal
Not many complaints about the availability of wifi, but the speed of the wifi left much to be desired. Obviously while we were trekking we didn't expect wifi, but they defied our expectations and lo and behold. Wifi was available at both Dhampus and Sarangkot (not exactly mountains but quite high), where Instagrams of beautiful panoramic viewpoints could be shared almost immediately. Also, THIS IS A VERY BAD ATTITUDE TO HAVE! Take in the panoramic viewpoints with your eyes! This is a lesson I learnt many times throughout the trip, where faced with some breathtaking scenery, I tried to snap a picture, and realised its futility, before just thoroughly taking it in with my eyes, and storing it in my brain. But I digress.
As I said, internet speed was not good at all, and not expected to. Hence, checking of results became an issue of greater nervousness than it needed to be, as the page would mostly fail to load until after multiple reloadings of the website (We all graduated by the way). Blogging was not impossible, but very difficult with the unstable connection and general draining nature of trekking all day. So I wrote in my diary instead.
China
Blogging was impossible due to the site I chose to host it on. China internet blocks all things google related, facebook, blogspot, wordpress and god knows what else. Wifi was available in our hostels, which was probably all we needed, since we took many day trips out, and checking the internet was not the biggest priority. However, it became harder to come by once we left Xi'an and began our sleeping-in-trains and airports leg, and our to-go wifi hotspot was Dico's, a fast food chain selling fried chicken. The great firewall of China was especially hard to deal with when I needed to update whatsapp, and had to do so from Google Playstore. Then again, it really does show how much we base our offline realities and relationships online. I should know best, since I did this for my Graduation Paper. In any case, glad I'm not living there long-term.
Turkey
Again, wifi was available for free in the hostels, but not so much in public spaces, which could prove problematic when we were looking for places on tripadvisor and all that. Became a problem for me when I forgot to print my flight itinerary and couldn't access my email at the airport. Gloria Jeans, Starbucks, Burger King all did not offer wifi, which was one point I think the China airports did better, despite the great firewall. I think they did offer wifi, but at the price of 10 Lira per hour. Quite ridiculous. As for speed, well, it's definitely not as fast as what I have back home, and what I have back home is not as fast as what I got in Sweden. Why am I even talking about Sweden here?
In any case, this is a small overview of the connectivity of the countries, and I'll probably talk about airports first before properly going into the daily blogging from my diary. Some last comments though, mostly regarding our dependency on having internet available to us at all times. I think this has partly got to do with us storing some necessary information we used to store offline (either in a notebook or our brains) online, and the expectation of the ubiquitous nature of the internet, for this information to be always available to us, whenever and wherever we need it. After this trip, I realised the internet is not always there for you, and it would be necessary to store whatever vital information in hard copy as well.
