Phone Calls to the US
 

My wife & I will be in China for 18 days, starting 9/9/10 and will need to call back to the US several times due to an illness at home.
Can anyone advise on the best way to call the US (Rental cell phone, prepaid calling card, etc.)? We both have cell phones but they do not have international calling capability.
Thanks

use skype and a computer from your own machine or from a call center/cyber cafe....

buy a throw away phone with minutes in it from a walmart or similar IN CHINA

What is skype?

If you're not planning to take a computer or wi-fi-enabled 'smart' phone with you, which would enable you to dial home very cheaply via the Internet using Skype (Google it), you can consider doing so from computers with headsets in your own hotel. Free Internet is common to most hotels in China, but if you're in something that is providing a higher quality of service that may unfortunately mean charging you high prices for use of a business centre machine.

Cyber cafes are another option, and very cheap to use, but not always convenient or exactly wholesome. If using Skype or another password-protected service you would also be right to be concerned about entering your account information into machines that may very well have key-logging software installed.

Probably your best option will simply be the purchase of an IP card ('ai pi ka', 艾皮卡, but usually easy to identify from the letters 'IP'), which route calls cheaply over IP (Internet) networks, and are very widely available indeed. You simply dial the local access number given, and follow the (English-language) prompts to dial in the number hidden beneath a scratch panel on the card, and then dial the number you want to call. ¥50 will give you more than an hour's conversation (at least in my past experience) and you can call from any phone (although public phones on the street require regular phone cards in order to make the local call to the access number). Nor need you even pay the face value on the card. ¥70 for a ¥100 card or ¥30 for a ¥50 card would be fairly common.

Even if you do take an (unlocked, tri-band, quad-band, or 3G) phone with you, and buy a local SIM card, you can call overseas more cheaply by using a prefix to route your call over IP. Ask your hotel for the local prefix.

Overall, though, if not particularly digitally literate, the IP card is the way to go.

Peter N-H

skype is a free service on the internet....just google it....you can make phone calls with and without live pictures....its fantastic... i have often used it from asia

Thank you all for the very helpful info.