I had left the UK thinking low-tech travel would be the way to go, minimising the valuable items I'd carry and freeing me up for a richer travel experience that took me back to basics.
Up until Beijing, that approach held true and I valued it, but within three days of arriving in the Chinese capital I acquired a mobile phone and within two weeks I added a netbook!
What caused such a philosophical change?
In the first couple of days, while trying to organise Chinese language lessons and set up meetings with locals through Couch Surfing, there were so many instances where I was given a phone number, or needed to phone, or was asked for my number that, considering I'd be in Beijing one month, I was convinced a cheap phone was a social necessity.
As for the netbook, I decided to look into it because:
A) I needed longer term storage for my photos. I had recently finished the second of my three 8GB memory cards and would need somewhere else to dump at least 8GB before finishing the third. The rate I was going through memory space meant I anticipated needing at least 100GB for my entire trip!
B) Free wifi had been widely available on my trip so far and the convenience of being able to get online when you like and with your own equipment is extremely valuable. There is so much information online these days and the internet is invaluable for research and communications, not least to stay in touch with family via Skype.
C) Surely electronic hardware in China is cheap?
Convincing myself a laptop 'could' be useful was easy, but convincing myself that the benefits outweighed the hassle was harder. Would I really want to carry another valuable item with me all the time? Something that might just have me worrying how to keep it from being stolen. Would it just break down under the stresses of travel?
Most people, myself included, would think you could buy a laptop quite cheaply in China... and you can, but the cheap ones are the imitations and maybe some Chinese brands we haven't heard of back home. The cheapest place to buy electronics is from a big electronics market, but everything is hard sell there and it's difficult to tell the real machines from the fakes. My Chinese friend said you can get them to supply you with a 'real' machine if you specify that's what you want, but the price won't be much cheaper than elsewhere. Real or fake, I didn't really want to save £50-100 only for the thing to break within a few weeks. Acting on a hot tip from the magazine What Laptop, I went for the Samsung NC10, buying it from a China-wide chain store – Sunning – so that if I had problems, there was a chance I'd have somewhere to return or replace it.
In the end the price was pretty much the same as in the UK – around £300. You could get it from America for $300 ish but they won't ship it internationally (presumably there's some international trade agreements regarding this kind of stuff).
