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.)
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