Keeping in Touch While Traveling

“The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
  George Bernard Shaw

 "Self-consciousness kills communication.” 
 Rick Steves

So, off you go on another trip.  It’s always fun to get away and see a new place, or even re-explore a place you’ve been to before.  While you are gone you will want to occasionally keep in touch with the people who are important to you.  You may even want to check to make sure things are okay at home.  Especially if you have left children at home or in our case, we quite often leave our 4-legged children at home, with a sitter.  We always like to check in to make sure the dogs are well and behaving themselves, and to see if the sitter needs anything.

So how do you stay in touch while traveling?  If you are in the United States or Canada, you can probably use your cell phone.  Even so, we all know there are places where you can't get service, even here at home.  If you are traveling internationally you may not be able to use your cell phone at all, it depends on what kind of service you have with your cell phone.  You may have to arrange to have your phone set up for international calls, before you leave on your trip, and making those calls can sometimes be expensive.

Most major U.S. cell phone companies give you the option of choosing a plan that allows you to make international calls. These plans may be offered on an ongoing basis or as a temporary service that you can set up for a single month when you know you'll be leaving the country. Each company offers different plans for various prices that work for a number of phone models and in designated countries. Major cell phone providers have coverage maps that show in which countries your network works. Per-minute calling rates vary for different countries.  So if you want to use your own phone, then you need to contact your service provider.

A man talking on his phone
in China

Some cell phone companies have calling plans for specific regions, other providers let you specify the nations where you need your phone to work (the more countries you choose, the higher the monthly rate). Although you can probably find a broad international phone plan from your current cell phone service provider, you will not be able to make calls from every country on earth; be sure to check that your plan covers the destination in which you plan to travel.

The advantage to using your own phone is that you have all your phone numbers already programmed in, and all the important people in your life have that phone number, in case they need to get ahold of you while traveling.  The disadvantage, at least in my opinion, is that while your are out enjoying seeing a new place, you may be getting phone calls from people who forget you are traveling and who just want to chat, and I am not neccessarily inclined to want to do that while vacationing. 

Another option, if you don’t want to add an international plan to your phone, you can rent a phone for the short period you will be traveling.  You can usually do that through the internet.  They will mail you the phone, and when you return you drop it in the mailbox back to them.  You can rent the phone for the number of days you are going to need it, and for a single country or multiple countries, the price will vary depending on how much service you want.  I have never used a rented phone but have friends who have.  The following links will take you to some of the internet providers I found online:   www.mobal.com         www.cellularabroad.com
                 www.travelcell.com        www.planetphone.com
 

When we travel we have never worried about having a cell phone that works internationally.  We carry our regular cell phone with us, but once we leave the states we turn it off so that it stays charged.  We don’t turn it back on till we get to our home airport, and we then use it to call our daughter to pick us up.  She will be waiting in the cell phone lot of the airport.

Starbucks and other businesses
offer free Wi-Fi

We carry our laptop computer with us when we travel, and we send emails home, telling our family what we have been doing, and checking in with everyone to make sure all is okay.  We find that in most cases, this works well for us.  Our laptop does have Skype on it, and if we wanted to, we could always Skype (which is free) to those who also have the service, including our home and our house-sitter   We like having the laptop with us for several reasons, including the fact that we can down-load our pictures onto it as we travel.  The pictures are saved, and it frees up the space on the camera.  My reader, which is a Nook color, also has web availablity, and I quite often use it for just checking emails from home while on the road.  As long as you can get Wi-Fi, using a computer to communicate home is easy, and there is no cost involved.  And most hotels now have Wi-Fi, all over the world.  And if the hotel doesn’t, there are many companies now providing free Wi-Fi hotspots to their customers.  We use Starbucks regularly, even though I am not a coffee drinker, their Chai tea and hot chocolate are worth stopping for.

Wherever you are in the world,
you will find internet cafes

The downside to using email to communicate is that the response is not instantaneous.  You have to wait for a reply, so if you are really in a hurry to find out how things are, you won't have that response, sometimes for days. 

There are times when emails just aren’t good enough.  If an emergency of any kind comes up and you need to reach someone immediately, a phone is your best option.  When we travel internationally and don’t have a cell phone with us that will work, then I know that if an emergency does come up, I will have to get to a land phone and use it, no matter what the cost.  That is always an option in those cases.  Over the many years that we have travelled I have only had to do that once, and that was in September of 2001.  We were in the Costa del Sol area of Spain and after we heard about what happened on 9/11 we had to call home.  Not that any of our family was anywhere near New York, we weren’t worried about that, but it was a traumatic event for everyone, and we felt a need to touch base and see how everyone was dealing.  We also needed to talk to our house-sitter, because we were not sure we would get home when scheduled and we wanted to make sure he would be able to stay till we got back, which he assured us he would.  So for those emergency situations, there is still always the old-fashioned land lines available, and during those situations you don’t always care what the cost is.

 
So, how do you keep in touch when you travel?