As I write this I am sitting Dubai airport - DXB. I have been wandering about for a couple of hours hearing all the Arabic speech. Now I am at the gate for GVA all I can hear is French.
Wonderful.
Anyway...
Comms
I had thought the best solution would be a wifi hot spot, like a mifi and an international sim to connect wherever. There are list of solutions. The recommended one as I chatted round was to get a mifi from vodaphone on a month to month plan for about $80. Then add a lebara sim. Well vodaphone did not have the mifi anymore at that price.
Flight centre have a similar plan for about $120 with 200 mb of data in most of Europe.
While in the vodaphone store, discovering that the mifi solution was not available, I found another plan. This is what I am using now.
I bought a month to month plan at $50 per month. The sim is included. It gives me unlimited calls and unlimited texts in Australia. While traveling however I pay only $5 on any day that I use the plan and retain the same conditions, infinite call and infinite texts to use their terms in most of Europe.
There is also a data component currently at 3gb of data for the month.
Being a month to month plan means no contract and I can cancel at any time. The attendant at the shop said they usually take 2 or 3 weeks to actually debit the credit card for payment. If I cancel quickly enough I may not get billed at all. I doubt that, but was very clear it is month to month only.
So the plan is to use it in my phone. I have already placed a redirect message on my regular number telling callers the new number to use while I am traveling. I will use the phone to create a hot spot for my other devices and see how it all pans out. If it is as good as they suggest I will pay $50 for the plan. And $5 for each of the 20 days I am traveling. We shall see!