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Published: March 12th 2009
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Working Women
These women are doing business in a much harder way ... One of the smartest things we did during last year’s trip to southeast Asia and China was to buy a tiny Sony VAIO. It’s nestled in Tom’s big pack and is preventing a huge amount of time wasting and frustration. Quote from Tom: it’s more important than clothes. It contains (among other things):
• Addresses, phone numbers and other info for critical business and travel contacts
• Travel information: itineraries, trip notes, airline reservations, etc.
• Digitized copies of important documents
• Our personal email accounts and Internet favorites. If you’re using an internet café’s computer, you’re leaving a trail of personal information.
• The ability to encrypt all our important information in case the computer is lost
• Quicken software to pay bills (you can schedule payments in advance or send electronic payments as needed) and manage our budget, checking account, and credit cards
• Photo management software (Picassa is a great, free downloadable program)
• Backup copies of all the photos we’ve taken, and photos of our home and communities to show people in the countries we’re visiting.
Even if you don’t have a laptop, you can upload your critical information to a free encrypted (secure) web site called “A Drive” (look it up) that you can access from any internet café. Remember your password! We’ve done this as a backup.
One of the most popular features with our fellow travelers is Skype, which allows you to make very cheap phone calls over the internet. We often hear, “Can I borrow your computer tonight?”
If you go away from home for months, you have to find a way to pay bills at home, balance your checking account, and track credit card usage - unless you’re a masochist, take good notes, and really want to spend a few days when you get home trying to untangle the mess. So far, we’ve learned
• Our phone company’s calling card was printed with the wrong PIN. We had to call the US to straighten this out, but how do you do that if the PIN on your card is wrong?
• Our wireless phone company suspended our phones with no billing, as requested, on the day we flew from the US. The same day, they reactivated the phones and - oh, by the way - charged us $30 for the reactivation. We had to call home and fix that one too.
• Our east Tennessee electric company messed up the automatic payment system we so carefully established before we left. Luckily, we also gave them a deposit large enough to cover us. Had to call them too.
• We’d moved from middle to east Tennessee the month before we began this trip. Our middle Tennessee water company is still charging us for our water taps, even though they shut down the account and sent us a “final” bill already. Another call.
• ATMs are great - no more travelers checks or unreasonable charge card interest rates. However, they charge you a service fee that changes with the currency rates - and also give you local money using those changing rates. You have a ballpark figure, but don’t really know until you get your bank statement. Try figuring that one out after four-five months.
You may already know this - US cell phones don’t work overseas and you can’t buy an overseas cell phone from US providers. You need a compatible phone that allows you to buy a “SIM card” in each country you visit. The SIM card is a computer chip that goes into the phone and allows you to connect with the local phone system. Our traveling cell phone never worked very well - we bought it on the internet from England last year, and any call made was routed through England, a colossal pain in the butt. It died in India, so we went to one of the dozens of cell phone stores in Jaipur, and got a new one. Here’s the trick: it’s easy to buy a phone, but India’s current security concerns (the hotel bombings in Mumbai last year were coordinated using prepaid cell phones) require SIM card sellers to provide the government with a copy of your passport, a passport-quality photo, and enough travel documents to prove that you are not a threat. We may find that buying our next SIM card in Egypt presents other challenges.
One concern we had: if you were to lose everything (in a fire, for example) how would you get enough money to get home? You can provide the State Department with your itinerary, which could tell them you were in a city affected by an earthquake, military trouble, etc. However, don’t count on the ambassador to fund your return trip. Before you leave, go to the State Department’s website for a detailed explanation on how to set up a pre-approved wire transfer request with your local bank that can be executed by your phone call.
Last year’s trip also encouraged us to bring multiple credit cards and ATM cards associated with multiple banks. Not all ATMs take all cards, and they do occasionally eat them. If you use American Express, get a backup MasterCard or VISA. Make sure that one of your ATMs is a “PLUS” card and that one is a VISA.
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