Real Travel Tips – Technology Prep

One of the topics I was thinking about writing about after traveling Asia and Africa for ~9 months was travel tips. I sort of pushed it off thinking that there must be a lot of good advice already out there. Since I’ve been back I’ve gotten a lot of different questions about traveling and I realized a lot of the real travel tips I ended up learning by talking with other travelers, local people from different countries, and being on the road.

Here are some of the main tips involving technology prep that every traveler should know. There are a lot of these so I plan to break them out into a series of posts.

Technology Prep

Technology has really changed how you can travel nowadays. In most places of the world you can book a place to stay, translate, navigate GPS maps, search, message, and much more off the convenience of your phone. Personally I like to disconnect from the world and enjoy the moment while traveling but nowadays technology can really simplify your traveling experience. Here’s what you need to know:

Don’t Lose Your Phone Number

When you travel for long periods of time your cell phone company will often take back your number after however many months unless you pay monthly fees. For a lot of us our phone number has almost become apart of our identity. But why pay cell phone companies a bunch of money to just hold on to your number?

For a one time fee of $20 you can port over your number to a virtual number with Google Voice. I would highly recommend doing this and then using local SIM cards. You still get notifications of calls, voicemails, and texts to your virtual number through emails and you can go to your Google Voice page to see your history. To respond to somebody you just email them and it texts your message to that number.

Use the Local SIM Cards

For those in the USA, it may come as a shock but we pay a lot for our cell phone and data plans. In lots of countries around the world it will be cheaper or a lot cheaper to use the local SIM cards while in that country. Sometimes the service won’t be as good as back home but a lot of the time it is as good or much better than what we are used to. In India it costs $4 for 2GB/day. My Indian friend wasn’t sure if that was enough for me but I reassured him that 2GB lasts me a month.

You will need to have an unlocked phone to be able to use different SIM cards. Check to see if your phone is unlocked otherwise you can always pay somebody to unlock it.

Set Up Communication Apps Before You Go

I was lucky my friend told me this tip before I left. A lot of communication apps are tied to your phone number and send a confirmation through text. If you want all of your communication apps tied to your main phone number it’s good to download the communication apps of the country before you leave your country. It may work out if you changed your number to a virtual number because you receive texts as emails but better to just do it beforehand. Here’s a quick list of apps and countries that use them:

• WhatsApp – Most widely used app around the world. Get this one for sure. I heard it became so popular because of message encryption but Facebook’s owned it since 2014 so Zuckerberg is probably reading all of your messages.
• Messenger – This is Facebook’s messenger app and you can be sure Zuckerberg is personally reading each and every one of your messages.
• WeChat – Only use this one if you are in China. Everybody in China uses this and it basically combines every social media platform, payment, and messaging into one. The Chinese government is definitely monitoring everything on this app.

These other ones I haven’t used as much but people use them!

• Line – Japan
• Viber – Vietnam
• Kakao Talk – South Korea

Bring a VPN?

This is something you should think about before you go and really depends on where you are going and what sensitive information you may be transmitting. In places like China that has The Great Firewall you will need a VPN if you want to access basically any app that you normally use (Google, Google Maps, Gmail, Whatsapp, Facebook, etc.). My VPN was spotty so worked off and on and I can say you truly realize how much you rely on the big tech companies for information.

A good rule of thumb is that governments are monitoring your information while you are in their country. A VPN may help protect any confidential information from being stolen. You will also need one if you are trying to watch HBO Go in another country. (My VPN came in handy for the last season of Game of Thrones while I was in Tanzania. It buffered for about 2 minute for every minute viewed but it was still worth it!).

I paid for GoTrusted and it seemed to work okay but I wasn’t very impressed with it. It lost connection a lot, took a long time to connect, and in China didn’t work for the first few days I was there. This made it even more difficult because I had to email the company and my gmail was blocked. Luckily my friend who I met up with had ExpressVPN and that worked well enough for me to sort out my issues. So far I’ve only heard good things and haven’t heard any issues with ExpressVPN so I would say definitely go with that one. I think they even have a free 14 day trial.

Keep Flexibility With Ongoing Flights

If you are traveling for a long time and you want flexibility this is some of the best advice I can give you! Many countries don’t want people staying over a certain amount of time and becoming beach bums or what not. To prevent this they often require you to show an ongoing flight out of the country within your visa time requirements. When you are unsure where you will go or how long you will stay this can really put a damper in your “go with the flow” travel style.

The best way I learned from my friend is to buy your ongoing flight ticket through Expedia the day of your flight. They have a 24 hour cancellation policy so you can cancel your flight within one day of you buying it. Now you have a legitimate ongoing flight that you can instantly cancel and it does not cost you anything. It may take x amount of days before Expedia gives back the money but if you aren’t crunched for money it works perfect!

There are other ways to be flexible. I met some girls who booked all of their flight destinations through a travel agent but they had flexible dates on when they flew. They would just fly standby. Another was is doing an around the world ticket. The catch with this is that you have to pick East or West and all of your flights have to keep going that way. I don’t know how much these cost though but may be reasonable or maybe in some cases cheaper.

Hope you enjoyed! Please let me know if there are certain travel topics you would like to learn more about! Happy to help!