Question:

Hey,

I just got a free GSM phone from AT&T (Samsung A437) that is quad band. I unlocked it successfully and now need a SIM to use abroad. I'm researching the best SIM to get in order to allow my wife to call me when I travel and allow me to call her.

Any thoughts on International SIM card vs. ountry pre-paid SIMs? I'll be travelling to Western Europe mostly and also Japan.

Thanks for your thoughts!!!

Answer:

so-called "international" SIM cards are pretty much a ripoff (as is roaming!) :)

the best way to go is to buy a SIM card locally for each country that you're in, then you can buy refills at most tobacco shops or corner markets. to buy the SIM, you can usually buy those at corner markets as well. your passport ID may be required when you buy them.

japan is the one country that (as far as i can tell) doesn't sell sim cards to foreigners. you can roam here using a roaming-enabled european sim card. i recommend using a Vodafone sim card from the UK -- i was able to get on the Japanese GSM network using this. given the high dollar/pound exchange rate, i only recommend using this solution for text messaging (which is like 50p or something per message)

to have your wife reach your new numbers, one easy solution is to register for a Skype account, buy a SkypeIn number in your area code, set the account to auto-refill with PayPal. then whenever you get a new SIM card/number, go to your settings in Skype and tell it to forward all calls to that number.

then when your wife calls the local number, it will forward to your phone number, and then the international rate charged to your account is the Skype rate for that country, which is almost as cheap as it gets. see http://www.skype.com/prices/callrates/ for skype call rates.

this is the solution i did on my trip, and it worked pretty well. you can roam in europe with SIM cards from other european countries, but the hassle is you can't buy recharge cards (for exampel) for the UK when you're in France, even if both countries have a Vodafone company there.

since i was travelling for a year last year, i'm pretty serious about my precautions because they're pretty easy to do beforehand (and it's harder to change your mind about this once you're on the road, and getting sick while travelling sucks). here are my personal antimalarial (and antidysentry) precautions that i take while traveling:

1.) your primary line of defense against malaria (and other mosquito-borne nasties) is mosquito repellent. pack enough for your entire trip. if you don't have a brand you already know works for you, i like Cutter Skinsations repellent. while it has a really goofy name, it didn't smell like the usual horrible mosquito repellent smell, and repelled many more mosquitoes for me than the hardcore Ultrathon repellent (which burned my skin, didn't repel mosquitoes well, and was generally annoying) available at REI.

2.) always use mosquito nets when sleeping at night in malarial areas. know that you should leave the net over the bed knotted until you're ready to sleep, and then carefully open it up. i would carefully tuck the edges of mine under the mattress at night to avoid having mosquitoes slip up the sides at night. permethrin-treated nets are even better, if you don't mind premethrin (see point 3 below). always pack a small roll of duct tape so you can repair small holes in mosquito nets and screens (i ran into this a lot when traveling, and few things suck more than having a mosquito net with a hole in it while a cloud of hungry mosquitoes is looking for a way through the net to feast on you). the WHO recently discussed findings that showed that mosquito nets have a big impact on reducing malaria.

3.) if any of you are spending a lot time in the backcountry, you can also treat your hiking clothes with Permethrin before you leave. this will give your clothes a faintly musty odor, lasts for about 30 washings, and will make all mosquitoes stay far away from your clothes. a good third line of mosquito defense. (note you never apply this stuff to your skin. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permethrin#Uses and http://www.travmed.com/trip_prep/insect_permethrin.htm for details. some people don't like using this stuff on their clothes because it's fairly toxic, albeit us-government approved. it sure kept the mosquitoes away from my hiking clothes, and i lived to tell about it. Your Mileage May Vary.)

4.) when i'm travelling, i go by the CDC Traveler's Health recommendations for each country (this is a great resource -- the main site is at http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/). for example, the current CDC recommendations for India as of the date of this blog posting are posted at http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/destinationIndia.aspx, and state "Malaria risk area in India: Risk in all areas throughout country except no risk in areas above 2,000 m (>6,561 ft) in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu, Kashmir, and Sikkim. Risk also exists in urban areas below 2000 m, including Delhi and Mumbai (Bombay)."

i know some of the travel doctors are saying that anti-malarial pills aren't needed for Delhi and Bombay right now, but my policy is to always go by the current CDC recommendations, and so i'll be taking antimalarial pills while in India. the standard doesn't-make-you-insane-or-get-sunburn anti-malaria pills are Malarone (i've had no side effects with these pills, and you only have to take one pill per day), and Malarone is not available to purchase in most countries that have Malaria!!, so you have to get buy these pills before you leave home. they're expensive, but your insurance will usually cover at least part of the cost (i got stuck with my crappy insurance at $5/pill for a 30-day supply). again, this is your third line of defense after the mosquito repellent and nets that you should already be using.

5.) in addition, i'm packing some Cipro for self-treating any unexpected cases of severe/long-term dysentery. this is handy to have when travelling (your travel doctor can give you a prescription for this along with self-treatment recommendations), but again, the odds you'll need this is really really low. i think i used mine twice in 400 days of traveling.

and finally, if you're wondering WHY malaria sucks so badly, you can get the medical facts on Malaria from the CDC Malaria FAQ, but i highly recommend reading Tim Cahill's essay titled "Malaria" from his book Pass The Butterworms: Remote Journeys Oddly Rendered. It details his own experience getting Malaria while travelling (after being fairly blase about it beforehand), and it definitely makes you want to not catch this disease.

for clothing, i tried to pack a series of layers that worked well for hot/humid days, but also could be combined together in case things got really cold. the list goes through the clothing item-by-item.

i'm a HUGE fan of the eagle creek or victorinox packing cubes (see the list for details and the usual buy-me-on-amazon links). these are great for organizing your clothing, and they have the added bonus of compressing things down and making it really easy to load/unload your suitcase. and since they're in standard sizes, they also fill the interior of most suitcases without any wasted space.

and the short list of 5 items from my packing list that i couldn't live without:

1. a pair of flip-flop style sandals that you've tested, know and love. these will probably be your primary footwear. flip-flop style sandals are essential for taking on and off easily when entering and leaving temples, etc... no fussing with teva's velcro (and nobody else will wearing tevas). i recommend reef sandals.

2. sound-isolating in-ear earphones (lots of companies make these nowadays... they're small and block out screaming babies, annoying airport announcements, and all that stuff. i like the Shure headphones) and my trusty ipod.

3. pocket-sized mini tripod for my small digital camera (with velcro attachment to attach it to buildings or scaffolding when needed for that perfect long-exposure shot)

4. beach towel (i've tried using a sarong as a towel, and i much prefer a regular beach towel). note: yes, you can buy a beach towel locally, but beware of getting one with dyes that transfer onto your wet skin while you're lying down on it, as my cheap beach towels did in fiji. i have a long rant about this at http://www.goneliving.com/egypt/backpacker_product_of_the_year_the_microfiber_beach_towel.html (note that billabong appears not to make their awesome microfiber beach towel anymore)

5. everything else: laundry bag, flashlights, swiss army knife, titainum mug (light and good for those homemade cocktails), empty pillow case (handy for filling with clothes when you need an instant extra pillow), wet wipes, playing cards, ziploc bags... see the packing list for details.

i'm looking forward to going back to india this winter!

if you speak fluent spanish, some of the other ships might be more young/party oriented, since Quark's crowd tends to be older (read: the average age is close to senior citizen age), but they are top-notch with regards to ship quality, number of landings/day, briefings and lectures. and theres usually enough younger folks as well along to keep it interesting. and they have cool hikes etc. I strongly recommend Quark.

It's only been a week,
The rush of being home in rapid fading.
Prevailing to recall
What I was missing all that time...
- "Remind Me", Melody A.M., Röyksopp

I've been home now for a week and it's all moving slower and faster than I expected.

i'm still the subtly exotic creature at parties, pointed out by the hosts when i invariably fail to mention what i've been up to the last 13 months, somewhat akin to having people notice a rather ordinary-looking pet cat in the corner, and having one of the hosts point out that "Oh, while he might look a lot like the average tabby, he's actually a bengal cat!" (which by the way, does cost more than the total amount i spent on my around-the-world trip.)

i have to admit, it's been nice to have people ask "and when did you end this trip around the world?", and being able to answer "two days ago." or "wednesday."

i've been busy curating the photos, videos, and sound files i recorded on the trip. even with all the deletions of blurry/bad photos when i was taking them, i still have roughly EIGHT THOUSAND media files from my trip that need to be sorted out. i've managed to at least wrangle them into folders for each country, in addition to making the reduced set that someone might actually be able to sit through seeing. it's simply amazing to remember what i did this past year -- tropical beaches and reefs on fiji, hungarian folk music in budapest, tiny siberian train stations on the trans-mongolian train, and so forth. the video and audio files really add a lot of color to the photos -- i'm glad that digital cameras have all these wonderful extra capabilities.

but it's a hell of a time, actually. being able to start from scratch on a number of frontiers gives me a lot of room to redefine myself. while of course i'm still the same guy as ever, it's great to be able to start with answering questions like "where is my ideal place to live?", "what's my ideal workplace?", and go from there. (plus thinking about a couple of ideas for cool internet products. more on that later.)

plus i replaced the power supply in my homebrew computer, and as a quick sidenote to my geek pals: if your computer is having an inexplicable problem that is hard to replicate, it's probably the power supply that's at fault. go and get a good power supply tester and try connecting the leads of your computer's power supply to it. in my case, it turned out that my +5v lead was oscillating between 4.5v and 5.9v and causing havoc with Windows as a result. Oh, and if you have an Antec power supply (like i did before i replaced it with a more reliable one yesterday), my warnings go double for you. I'll never buy another Antec PSU again -- I purchased an Enermax Liberty for my new power supply, and things are now running swimmingly.

"Have you thought you might should be in California?"
- Iron & Wine, California

dear readers, today is officially the last day of my trip!

i've been a few weeks behind in my blog posts (when i get home i'll add more detail about my trip to antarctica and the highlights of buenos aires, as well as finally write those Hungary, Jordan, and Oman blog posts), so i'll quickly bring you up to date: since i was feeling ready to return home at last, i updated my itinerary to shave a few weeks off of my previous trip plan, and decided that my last day would be march 20. so tomorrow i'm up at 4am (for the second day this week) to get to the airport and catch my Delta flight to LAX.

i arrived in antigua via a $10 shuttle minivan from the airport at around 9pm, and checked into the Black Cat Hostel, which i'd found after doing a bunch of searching online for a good hostel in antigua (they're too new to be in the current lonely planet). this is definitely one of the best hostels i've stayed at in latin america, and far better than the somewhat run-down lime house hostel in buenos aires (they win the award of worst hostel breakfast in the world! come on guys, at least empty your coffee pot of yesterday's old coffee before making today's coffee in it). after slugging down a few beers at the bar in the light of the jar candles arranged along the wall, i headed out with several other people from the hostel to hit some of the other bars in antigua.

after getting up and enjoying the delicious french toast for breakfast here, the coffee cleared my mind enough to notice that it's a beautiful sunny day here in antigua, guatemala, with only a few white streaks of clouds in the sky. the city itself is a fantastic place, reminding me a lot of the time i spent in cuzco, and i'm looking forward to posting a lot of the photos i've taken today. culturally, it's been really interesting to move from the southernmost city (mas o menos!) in south america up into central america, and then to los angeles to see a little bit of the origin and evolution of the latin american influences in LA.

do i have any regrets about my trip ending tomorrow morning? suprisingly, not many! it's been a fantastic journey over the last 12.5 months, but i really feel ready to move on to the next stage of my life, and i will treasure having my own bedroom to sleep in, and not having to live out of a backpack every day.

in other words, i'm ready for California and home at long last. and this trip has been one of the most incredible experiences of my life.

"It’s unpleasantly like being drunk."
"What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"You ask a glass of water."

- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

]]> http://www.goneliving.com/antarctica/surviving_the_drake_passage.html http://www.goneliving.com/antarctica/surviving_the_drake_passage.html Antarctica Sun, 04 Mar 2007 19:58:55 -0800
Lyubov Orlova
Beagle Channel

It's my first evening on board the Orlova. The sea is calm, the evening was beautiful and low-wind when viewed from the bow of the ship, and I watched the land (islands?) roll by as a fellow passengers related the history of Tierra Del Fuego, conjuring up the images of the native Fuegians coated in a glistening layer of seal oil, lighting fires from on top of the mountains when they were first sighted by Magellan.

This morning started in my Ushuaia hostel with a packing panic, as I shrunk my backpack by putting all nonessentials into a large plastic bag and storing it at the hostel for my return. I then went down to the Albatross Hotel to catch the briefing by the Quark staff (where I realized that my ship is Quark's last sailing to Antarctica this season!), and hopped on the bus for the must forgettable tour (at least it was well-organized, but quite sterile) that i've taken on this trip.

After our tour was completed, we had a few hours to "explore Ushuaia" (ie. go to the internet cafe and surf the web for a while), then we headed down to the Antarctic termial for the briefest of customs inspections (since our ship wasn't visiting Chile or any other countries, and Antarctica isn't a country of its own, we were technically staying in Argentina the entire time), and finally hopped on board the Orlova to head out through the Beagle Channel, escorted by a "pilot boat" for some historical and probably-quite-obselete reason until we made it out of the channel.

]]> http://www.goneliving.com/antarctica/leaving_for_antarctica.html http://www.goneliving.com/antarctica/leaving_for_antarctica.html Antarctica Fri, 02 Mar 2007 18:17:28 -0800 as i mentioned in my last blog post, i'm starting tomorrow morning on my great antarctic adventure!

the ship doesn't actually leave until the evening, so we meet in the morning to go on a tour of the Tierra del Fuego National Park and have an Argentine-style asado (barbeque) lunch, eventually boarding the vessel around 4-5pm.

and then it's off for 11 days of adventure, lectures, food, drink, hopefully lots of zodiac landings, icebergs, and penguins! once i return, photos and backdated blog entries to follow as quickly as i can get them written and posted! (there is no internet access on the ship)

have a great few weeks, and i'll talk to ya'll when i return! oh, and happy first day of the international polar year!

]]> http://www.goneliving.com/argentina/antarctica_is_a_go.html http://www.goneliving.com/argentina/antarctica_is_a_go.html Argentina Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:52:41 -0800

Are we ever gonna get back to California
Are we ever gonna get back to California again?
Are we ever gonna get back to California
Are we ever gonna get back to California again?

say hi to your mom, "the showdown in goattown", from their album "Discosadness"

it's been just about a year on the road since this long journey began, and so far i've made it through six continents (only antarctica remains), 39 countries, and walked a hell of a lot of miles in my Pumas.

and it's been one of the best experiences (and years) of my life.

but i'm feeling that it's time for a change... no more living out of a backpack every day, dealing with dormmates loudly bursting in at 5am, dealing with a new language every few weeks, and all the rest of it. (on the flip side, that means not waking up every morning to a day of nearly-guaranteed new experiences.)

so i have one last grand adventure ahead of me on this trip, namely my visit to Antarctica, and then a gradual path northwards via Argentina and Guatemala over the next 6 weeks or so as i head back to a warm, welcoming bed in Los Angeles. and from there? after resting up, it's time to start travelling across the united states as i figure out what i'm going to do next and where i'm going to live!

this has all been laid out in my trip's itinerary for some time, but while i've been approaching the pre-planned trip end date (April 12), i've also recently started feeling quite strongly that it's almost time to head home and start living a life in one city again. it's a good feeling... like something inside me is waking up and realizing it's almost time to begin migrating north at last towards Home.

]]> http://www.goneliving.com/brazil/exhausted_and_happy_at_carnival.html http://www.goneliving.com/brazil/exhausted_and_happy_at_carnival.html Brazil Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:22:40 -0800
copacabana street scene
its all caipirinhas, late nights (and later mornings), and exploration here in Rio de Janeiro.

i arrived in the fairly run-down rio international airport after my two flights from chile, wondering if customs still photographed and fingerprinted visitors from the USA in reciprocity for the USA doing the same thing to Brazilian visitors. luckily this wasn't the case anymore, and i quickly passed through immigration to enter the country.

despite the fact that i'm staying in 13-bed dormitory room for a week and a half (and paying US$60 per night for 7 of those days because its Carnival), the people in my dorm are remarkably quiet at night and snore-free, which means i can ACTUALLY GET A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP for a change. my hostel (aptly named Walk On The Beach Hostel) is only a few blocks off the beach in Copacabana, is run by a really friendly bunch of people, and most of the people staying at the hostel are a good bunch of people.

the first few days in rio i spent doing my usual settling-in routine for a new country: exchanging the money from the last country, withdrawing enough money from an ATM to cover me for several days, buying a SIM card for my phone so i can make calls locally (i choose the Oi network for their nifty little orange blob logo), taking my laundry to the local laundromat, and dealing with any other pressing issues (which for me meant getting a haircut. haircuts overseas are always fun for me because i insist on getting my hair cut where the locals go, which means minimal communication at best, and lots of questions as we go, but i usually end up with a pretty good haircut when it's all done).

crime is definitely an issue here -- i've already had people try to pick my pocket several times in the last few days, including a quite sketchy attempt this morning by two favela kids to actually stop me in the street and grab my arm out of my pocket where i was hanging onto my (nearly empty) wallet. i got out of it without losing anything, but it's definitely a sign of the amount of opportunistic crime in rio. but i'm preparing to have my pockets picked at some point - i don't carry more than enough money than i need for the day with me, but it does mean that i won't have that many photos of rio, since carrying my camera around with me entails a fairly high risk that someone will steal it (especially when going out at night). one of the girls in our hostel has already had her camera stolen by a pickpocket, so it's not uncommon that these things happen, especially with all the chaos of carnival. from what i've been told, the key is just to not bring anything of value with you when out on the streets, keep your hands on what you do have to avoid pickpockets, and if you get threatened with a weapon, give them whatever they ask for.

after that it's been pretty much nonstop parties with the good people of rio and the other folks staying in my hostel. you can definitely feel the pressure for carnival building up, even in just the 3 days that i've been here for. today the streets were thronged with the first people selling masks and costumes for carnival, and trucks blasting out samba music are rolling down the streets. last night we were up until dawn partying in the streets of Rio, and i'm sure tonight will be more of the same. and carnival hasn't even started yet!

]]> http://www.goneliving.com/brazil/settling_into_rio_de_janeiro.html http://www.goneliving.com/brazil/settling_into_rio_de_janeiro.html Brazil brazil carnival crime haircut hostel parties pickpocket rio riodejaneiro Sat, 17 Feb 2007 16:16:51 -0800