Getting Ready

I just set up our home phone number to give us our phone messages over the internet so we can answer our messages, if necessary, while we are in Asia. This got me to thinking about when we went to Africa in 1990 and the only way to stay in touch was either by mail, or go to the airport and use the AT&T phone to call home collect.

Now, as soon as we arrive in a new country, if we are going to stay for a few days, we buy sim cards and put them in our phones and can call anywhere. Sometimes, like in Malaysia, it was cheaper to call the US from Malaysia, 6 cents per minute, than to use our prepaid cells within the US, 10 cents per minute. And, we can call even cheaper with Skype. Sure that I could somehow arrange to have our local calls forwarded to my cell in Asia. But, don't think that would work as most of the calls would come during the night there due to the time difference. Besides, unlike Laura, I hate the telephone.