From: rhw@att.com (Robert Wentworth)
Subject: traveling in Asia with a laptop
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 18:14:56 GMT

Some time ago I asked some questions about taking a laptop while
traveling internationally, and I thought I would report back on my
experiences.  Highlight: beware of Radio Shack power conversion kits.

I traveled to Korea, Thailand, and Singapore.  In the first two countries
it looked as if I needed to declare my laptop when coming into the country,
but the customs people weren't at all interested.  In Singapore they didn't
even ask.

As far as electrical power:

In South Korea, the outlets I ran into were 110/120 volt two-slot polarized
outlets just like ungrounded outlets in the US.  However, my guide book
claims that S. Korea is slowly converting to 220/240 volts.

In Thailand, the outlets I saw were 220/240 volt dual-mode two-pin outlets.
They were dual mode in the sense that they would accept either a plug like
an American two-prong plug (albeit at the higher voltage) or a plug with
two round pins.   The outlets looked kind of like:    O|     |O

It was in Thailand that I realized my power conversion kit from Radio Shack
was a worthless piece of junk.  The way the kit works is: they sell you
a bunch to adapter plugs, and then separately they sell you a step-down
transformer that is supposed to mate to these plugs and provide an output
which is a polarized 2-slot 110/120 volt output.  The problem with my
kit was that the transformer wouldn't really mate to the adapter plugs.
(If you try to connect them, they kind of look like they fit, but no good
electrical contact is made and they fall apart as soon as you stop holding
them together.)  Totally unusable.  Caveat emptor.

Fortunately, my laptop power supply will really tolerate any voltage
from 110 v to 240 v, so I was able to make do in Thailand using a simple
three-prong to two-prong adapter.

In Singapore, the outlets are 220/240 volt and look kind of like:

             |

         --     --

The vertical prong is the ground, and seems to have some sort of mechanical
safty built in so that you couldn't use a two-prong plug without defeating
the saftey (which, however, my hosts regularly did).  My hosts had one
relative who died from electrocution.  (Apparently the wiring on a lamp went
bad.)  They claim 220/240 volts is considerably more lethal than 110/120
volts.  (Why is North America on a different voltage standard than the
rest of the world?  Is one standard intrinsically better?  Which came
first?)

In Singapore I found that even the plug set I got from radio shack wouldn't
do me much good because there was no way of converting to an outlet that
would accept a polarized two-prong plug (still at the higher voltage). Perhaps
a safety feature, but I was forced to borrow plugs from someone else's (other
brand, superficially similar) conversion kit.

As I write this, I'm still in Singapore.  My girlfriend and I are
convalescing from some (hopefully minor) tropical disease(s) we picked
up in Thailand.  (I blame the beef salad containing raw lettuce that I
unthinkingly ate at a restaurant on the pleasant island of Koh Samui,
but who knows?)  Bleah.  Fortunately our hosts are doctors... 

(Did make it to Malaysia.  There I saw a non-functional plug just like the
ones in Singapore, and a functional plug that looked like

             O

         O       O

i.e., the spacings were like the Singaporean plug, but the pins were round.
Accepted a plug with two round pins, but only if you defeated the safety
in the socket for the third pin.)


Bob Wentworth

Newsgroups: comp.sys.laptops