On our recent trip I found that I didn’t miss TV, but I did miss data. I couldn’t pick up my iPhone to look up a restaurant recommendation or a bit of information about the historical site we were visiting. I couldn’t get the bus schedule, get directions, or share the photos of what I was seeing.
It was frustrating.
US phone carriers are uniformly evil in respect to international travel. They drop all pretense of reasonable charges and spike absolutely criminal fees without excuse. What would reasonably cost $20 or $30 here in the US (and far less for domestic users in the UK), would cost hundreds or thousands for US-rates-tied people there. And to add insult to injury, my 2 year contract expired while I was traveling, but my carrier refused to unlock my phone in advance and allow me to use a local and inexpensive SIM card while traveling.
I am looking for a new US carrier, but as I’ve said, they’re pretty much all evil. It’s just a matter of degrees.
So I had to limit my data usage to when I could find Wi-Fi. And that’s not easy. The router at our flat failed the last few days of the trip so we had to resort to coffee shops and the odd passing open network. As I’ve said, it was frustrating.
What I could and did do was to make a point of connecting with friends and making new ones when possible. I passed a delightful hour in a pub called the Brass Monkey with Myke Hurley and his brother, a special treat (and I learned about a drink called “Crabbies,” alcoholic ginger beer). We spent another hour or so with my dear friend Nancy Jo (who was also the director of my play in Edinburgh). We sat in the back room of the Elephant Room where you could see the Edinburgh Castle. This is also where J.K. Rowling spent her days, writing the first Harry Potter books.
I missed the data, but the time with friends made the discomforts of travel well worth while.
The Notes From The Road: Connect by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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