Many of you are probably familiar with Chikka.com to text your love in the Philippines. I always found the client to be slow and unstable and not very user friendly. That and the fact the server and webpage were down about 50% of the time made the software practically unusable.

I don't know how long this has been available, but Yahoo! Messenger http://messenger.yahoo.com/ supports text messaging from their client to mobile phones in the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand and Australia. You can also text many major US carriers. All you do is enter the phone number and type away.

For more information on SMS using Yahoo! visit:

http://sms.yahoo.com/

You can also place international “PC to Phone” phone calls through the messenger if you purchase some time though Net2Phone. The connections aren't usually high quality, but if you have a high speed internet connection you should be able to call them. And the rates are very reasonable. Although, you can save money by downloading the client directly from http://www.net2phone.com and using that to call your HoneyKo. Another company I have used that has cheaper rates to some places is http://www.dialpad.com

Another option you might use for cheap calls is http://phonecard.yahoo.com/
This is where you call an 800 number from your phone and then a call is placed overseas. It is still probably all VoIP (voice over IP), but the quality may be better. I have not tried it yet. I would imagine it is still cheaper than calling from a regular land line. I remember people like Merlin mentioning he was ringing up quite the international phone bill by calling his girlfriend in Colombia. So this might be a better way for him to stay in touch.