Global eSIM Plans That Aren't Global: What a Trip Through Laos and Vietnam Taught Me

When travel eSIMs are elegant

A friend pointed me to a travel eSIM service years ago, and it changed how I travel. Before that my choices were the usual ones: pay my home carrier for roaming, buy a data SIM online before leaving, or find a shop selling local SIM cards after landing. All of them work if you spend two weeks in one country. None of them is fun when you're in Thailand this week, Laos the next and Vietnam after that.

With an eSIM, I install the plan at home over Wi-Fi, land, switch on mobile data and I'm online. My usual number stays on the phone for calls and texts. My favourite part was that the data didn't expire: I bought 10 GB, used 3 GB in Japan, and kept the other 7 GB for the next trip.

For a long time I assumed the provider I used was the only one doing this. Then I went to Laos.

Laos: full bars, no internet

My usual eSIM was a disappointment there. Sometimes there was no signal. Sometimes it showed full bars and still couldn't load a map. When you're travelling, that isn't about missing a video: it's navigation, ride-hailing, messaging the hotel and checking how to get to the next town.

So I looked for an alternative, with a little help from an AI chatbot, and found a second provider. It used a different local network in Laos, and the connection was much better. Problem solved, I thought.

Except that its data disappeared at a pace I'd never seen. Same phone, same habits, and a few GB that would last a while elsewhere were gone in no time. I still don't know how it was counting.

I tried a third provider. It had an Asia plan, which looked perfect because Vietnam was next. I bought it, installed it, and then noticed that the Asia plan didn't include Laos. Fair enough: I hadn't read the country list.

Back to the second provider. This time I bought its global plan, thinking a global plan would surely cover Laos, and whatever was left I could use later. It didn't cover Laos either.

Several plans bought, several eSIMs installed, and I still couldn't get online properly in Laos.

What finally got me through my last two days there was the option I'd wanted to avoid in the first place: my home carrier's roaming. Not my first choice, but it worked, and by then I had stopped wanting to research anything.

Vietnam: one more surprise

In Vietnam, the third provider's Asia plan finally earned its money: a good, stable connection. I also had that unused global plan from the second provider, so I opened it to use up the data. It didn't include Vietnam either.

That's when I started reading properly about this market. One comparison site lists more than 60 travel eSIM providers. They all sell "data abroad", but they differ in almost everything that matters once you land.

Five lessons for a multi-country trip

1. Check every country, not the plan's name

"Asia" and "global" are product names, not promises. The same provider can include a country in one plan and leave it out of another. Before you buy, check each stop on your route against the plan's country list.

2. The local network matters more than the brand

A travel eSIM rides on a local partner network, and providers use different partners in the same country. In Laos, the provider I'd used happily for years was on a network that barely worked; another provider's partner was fine. Look up which local networks a provider uses where you're going, and prefer one that can use the country's main networks.

3. Watch how your data is counted

If your data runs out much faster than usual, it may not be you. Check your usage in the first day or two of a trip, compare it with what the provider says you've used, and don't buy a big top-up from a provider you haven't tested yet.

4. Keep a backup

Any eSIM can fail in a given place. I now keep two or three on my phone and switch if one is bad, and I keep my home carrier's roaming as the last resort: not my first choice, but there when I've run out of time to troubleshoot. How many eSIMs your phone can hold, and how many can be active at once, depends on the model. (If you're Canadian, here's how home-carrier roaming is charged in the US.)

5. Do your homework before you fly

1. Make sure your phone supports eSIM and isn't locked to a carrier.
2. Install the eSIM at home over Wi-Fi, not at the airport.
3. Check the coverage for every country on the route, and which local networks you'll be on.
4. Know how to switch mobile data between lines in your phone's settings.

What I wanted from a travel eSIM

Those lessons are what I built TAOX around. Instead of plans for regions, it's one eSIM with one USD balance for every country it covers, so there's no "Asia" or "global" plan to get wrong. In each country you pay the local network's rate for the data you use, and the balance has no expiry date, so what's left stays for the next trip. The coverage page lists the local partner networks for every country, so you can check them before you go.

It doesn't make lesson four obsolete. A TAOX eSIM still depends on local networks, and I haven't tested it in Laos yet, so I won't promise you anything about speed there. This is what it covers on that same route today: