I’m actually shocked that I’ve been able to get so many blogs up this week.  When we first arrived in Tajikistan, we traveled for two days without really any internet, then had some slow internet at a hostel where we spent the first morning.  From that Thursday until Monday, we did not access the internet in any form.  It was some serious cold turkey quitting going on.  But, when we finally did have access to the internet, actually loading a page was another issue entirely.

Bandwidth in Central Asia tends to be pretty limited.  From what I can tell, companies pay for a certain bandwidth, and for bandwidth that is useable for more than five or six computers at once, the cost must be beyond prohibitive.  I believe this because in our office, or in any cafe, restaurant, or something in between that I visit in the city, the internet slows to a crawl so slow that loading WordPress can take a good five to ten minutes.  We’re pretty sure it’s a simple bandwidth issue, because we have even been asked by the office to limit our bandwidth usage because the internet becomes functionally useless if too many of us log on at the same time, or if one person decides to watch YouTube.

One day last week, in a confusing turn of events that I will elaborate on come Sunday, a few of us wound up at the Hyatt hotel.  Dushanbe has a couple of hotels.  There’s the Soviet “Hotel Tajikistan,” there’s another Soviet hotel, there’s a few other Soviet hotels, there’s this hostel that we stayed at.  And then, there’s the Hyatt Dushanbe, a palace of steel and glass with a ten-foot fence and security that involves searching underneath all cars with mirrors to ensure they won’t repeat the incident at the Marriott in Islamabad.  We walked inside.  It is, shall we say, very clearly a Hyatt… marble floors, majestic atriums, and restaurants that cost 40 dollars for for a breakfast buffet.  Dollars, not Somoni.

I pulled up the internet on my phone to see how it worked and to determine whether or not it was free.  I connected and signed in, and if I recall correctly, said something to the effect of, “Wow, this internet is faster than dial-up!” and immediately proceeded to do my usual internet roundup in about one tenth the time it takes on most other networks in the city.  Yikes.

I am told that the many internet/Skype cafes are also quite fast, but they cost money, and right now, I’m feeling a bit stingy.  With them, you also have to be careful to keep a sterile zone around your devices and theirs – viruses here are reportedly so common that if any USB flash drive (the normal route of file transfer because, let’s face it, there’s NO WAY you’re going to download anything larger than 200kb on internet this slow) is used in your PC (Mac and Chrome users rejoice!), you’re going to get a big nasty virus.  So I have been avoiding that by using the alternative that many of us have discovered: modems.

In the US, wireless modems are stupid.  They cost 50-100 dollars for the device, the data costs 30+ dollars a month for about 2-5 GB, and it’s a fair bit slower than the wi-fi at your average Starbucks.  Here, though, you can get a little USB modem for your computer for 100-250 Somonis, including 3GB of data, that is ten times faster than most wi-fi in the area, and whose data a) costs 6 dollars per GB, b) doesn’t expire, and c) is not tethered to a cafe where people will keep pestering you to buy another beer (the best internet happens to be at bars for some reason).  So, we bought modems, or in my case, I just got a local SIM for my unlocked phone and use it as a wireless hotspot.

Thus, my internet problems were solved.  I have wi-fi where and when I need it, at a speed that is functional enough to get all my job applications and correspondence with the world safely in.  I still try and suffer through the slower internet to not use up my data quickly, but I’ve never been good at rationing myself.  We’ll see how much better it gets.  In the meantime it’s a really good thing that the Hyatt is two buses away from me.