20 Biggest Travel Mistakes

kai1275 · Post by **kai1275** » August 29th, 2013, 6:01 am

***JP*** wrote:
Taco wrote:Always bring a laptop with you. In countries where you can't speak the local language its your life line to the rest of the world. Also comes in handy at the airport when your flight is delayed you can send messages to friends and let them know your going to be late.

Also I would suggest to do research on the city you are headed to for free wifi hotspots too. That way you are prepared and know exactly which places to go when in need to communicate home.

Good Point. Wifi in the US at the airports is never free, but abroad depending upon the country, it is free. For example S.Korea's airport wifi is awesome and free when I went there.

kai1275 · Post by **kai1275** » August 29th, 2013, 6:04 am

Taco wrote:Always bring a laptop with you. In countries where you can't speak the local language its your life line to the rest of the world. Also comes in handy at the airport when your flight is delayed you can send messages to friends and let them know your going to be late.

Funny you say this. I'm always telling my wife to bring hers! She and her friends never take their laptops anywhere! I always take mine because I am an IT guy and I never know when I will need it for work reasons, but for personal reasons it has saved my ass too many times. Even my tablets have saved my ass big time before.

The point is that phones cannot always save your butt. Especially if the battery has died or super low.

***JP*** · Post by ***JP*** » August 29th, 2013, 6:33 am

kai1275 wrote:Great tips on the SIM! I definitely will try that next time. You are right about ATT and the other big ones. They will demand you pay out of your contract if you got your phone on one of those discounted contract deals before they unlock your phone for you. That is a big gotcha. That is why I never do contract and I save up cash and buy my phones at full price instead. If I can, I buy them on Ebay too which is cheaper than going to the official big carrier store.

These days there's tons of websites that sell factory unlocked brand name cell phones and smartphones too. Even though it's more expensive to buy it pays itself off cause you can change sim cards whenever you want and in the smartphones there's no carrier crapware that you can't remove. I've always bought my phones unlocked for that reason. I don't want carriers controlling me, watching my every move and making me use their bloatware that you can't erase that takes up space.