Phone Phreak

A friend of mine who was about to set out on her own travels asked me the following question:

Hey, what are you doing for a phone while you travel? Did you buy a prepaid sim card for the phone you had? Or do an int'l phone plan? I'm trying to figure that out.

I remember having lots of similar questions myself before I left on my trip and wrote a few posts about it. Here is the answer I gave my friend:

I have 2 phones: a Blackberry with an international calling plan, unlimited data and worldwide email. And I have a second handset for local SIMs. The second handset is a piece of junk that I got for free from a friend in NZ, but it's quad-band, unlocked, and GSM. That's important. I had thought that I would just use my US number and not worry about the expense of international calls, but it turns out it's really important for a lot of reasons to have a local phone number.

I thought the Blackberry would be all I would need since (unlike an iPhone) Blackberrys can be unlocked and used with local SIMs, but I found that swapping SIMs was a real PITA -- I couldn't reliably receive calls at either number because I might have the other SIM in at the time. Two phones is a crappy solution, but it's the best I've found so far.

You know what's better than carrying around two phones? Tell me. Please.

The other day, a friend showed me his Skype phone, a phone that uses a local Wi-Fi Internet connection to let you call other Skype users for free, and all other phones (even international ones) for a ridiculously low rate. But I refuse to carry a third phone.

(Remarkably, there isn't a Skype application for BlackBerrys, though they keep promising one. There are other VoIP BlackBerry applications (e.g. Truphone), but I haven't been satisfied with them.)

The Great Ocean Road

I had been wanting to do this famous drive ever since I arrived in Melbourne in January: The Great Ocean Road. I mean, it sounds pretty ... great, doesn't it? With my couchsurfer friend T, a borrowed car, and a stowaway Punjabi passed out drunk in the back seat (don't ask), we picked up The Road in Torquay and set out for a weekend of long drives, beautiful views and peaceful slumber under the stars.

 
Required touristy photo op

The drive itself strongly reminded me of Highway 1 down the West Coast of the U.S.: a windy cliff-hugging road chock full of sights and tourists eager to see them all. It rained intermittently all weekend, making the driving conditions treacherous -- all the more so considering that the rear tires of our borrowed car were bald, as we discovered the hard way in one particularly tight slippery turn. No harm done, we took the rest of the drive at a leisurely pace.

We stopped at a campsite near Johanna Beach after a day of beach towns and surfer dudes. By nightfall, the guy in the back seat had roused himself enough to down most of a box of wine, blasting Punjabi music in the car and passing out drunk again. We turned off his music and quietly poured out the rest of his wine before falling asleep ourselves to the sounds of the ocean and the patter of rain on our tents.

 

The next morning, after a quick picnic brunch, we broke camp and headed West toward the Twelve Apostles, a series of sandstone pillars just off the coast. The rain cleared just enough for us to get a couple of sunny seaside snaps.

 

Mission accomplished, we turned around and cut inland for the drive back, through thickly forested park land, eventually setting up camp at the trail head of Beauchamp Falls. I was less impressed by the falls than by the trek, surrounded by towering beech and gum trees and a thicket of fern.

 

That evening, a noble effort of sausages and onions grilled over an open campfire was very nearly quenched by another sudden deluge. The rain let up long enough for us to scarf our damp sausages and retire to the relative warmth of our tents to sleep once again to the sounds of rain.

The ride back was uneventful, unless you count the sobering of our Punjabi friend, who then refused to pay his share of the petrol because he hadn't seen anything. <sigh>