Vietnam is a country where you can get Wi-Fi everywhere in a coffee shop, in a hotel/ hostel, in almost all restaurants or shops and even on the street. The Wi-Fi connections are not usually secured by passwords so if you are lucky you can browse the Internet for free.
Therefore, I spend a lot of time in bars and cafes so I can write my blog and chat with my friends while having a nice cold frappe or a fruit cocktail. It sometimes must look so funny, and I feel so awkward, when I buy one drink and stay in a place for like 4-6 hours drinking for ages, slower and slower :). But I don’t care, everyone does it- I mean all foreigners.
Accessing Facebook
Facebook, Google (except Vietnamese one), twitter and YouTube are blocked in Vietnam but not as strictly as in China. It is not an official block. Therefore, accessing them is pretty easy.
1) VPN
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network and serves as a wall between you and the world. It only lets through the information about what you’re looking for and not who you are.
Apart from safeguarding your privacy, it also protects your files and passwords so that you can use public WiFi and hotspots without the danger of getting hacked.
I’m using my VPN software. I’ve used many different providers, but that’s the only one that is reliable, fast and cheap. It’s been a great solution for using Facebook in Vietnam and China. Also, YouTube is working fast, which not that common with other VPNs.
2) HotSpot Shield
It’s a free VPN software, more info here http://www.hotspotshield.com/. You can download it for free. The free version, in my opinion, sucks as there are many advertisements coming up every time you open a new website. It was very annoying for me and it slowed my laptop down. You can get rid of the ads by paying certain amount of money, don’t know exactly how much as I didn’t do it.
3) Free proxies
Here you can get some info on how to use it http://vpnfor.us/how-to/access-facebook-in-vietnam/. It’s a great website most of foreigners use to get the info on how to get Facebook access in Vietnam. You need to set Google’s DNS first and edit HOST file of the operating system. Here are the IP addresses available: http://pastesite.com/34389.
4) Built-in proxy of the internet connection
You may find that in some places you don’t actually need to do anything to access facebook and the like. It is due to the fact that most Vietnamese people use it themselves and they have built-in proxies in their routers. Very convenient.
I recommend getting a VPN service anyway if you are planning to stay in Vietnam for a longer than two weeks or travel in any other Asian country where the Facebook access is limited or blocked. Of course, that’s if you are facebook manic like me :).
