When traveling the World you will find yourself in a wide range of different cultures and countries having new experiences that will stay with you for life. Traveling doesn’t come without its challenges however and one of the hardest things about traveling is being without your friends and family for long periods of time.
Thankfully, as a result of modern technology there are now more and more ways to get in touch with your contacts back home than ever before, let’s take a look at just a few ways in which you can stay connected with all those that you miss.
Local Sim Card
First thing’s first, you are going to need to find, if you are able to, a local sim card so that you can utilize the internet when you don’t have a wi-fi connection. On a recent trip to Haifa I was able to pick up a sim card and a data pack incredibly easily which I was able to use to call my Mum back in England, from the streets of Israel, pretty cool. If the country that you are in doesn’t offer the same sort of sim card Israel does then you can always pick up an international style sim to help you out.
Messaging
The easiest way of keeping in touch with those back home, and by far the most convenient is through instant messaging. You will invariably be on different time zones to those back home and instant messaging is a great way to keep in touch when you both aren’t available at the same time. You can also use instant messaging to arrange a time for a call. There are lots of services out there which offer instant messaging with the most popular being Facebook and Whatsapp. Apple and Blackberry also have their own services as well as Android devices so there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to stay in touch with friends and family in the click of a button.
Video and Audio Calling
Such are the advancements of technology, you can now very simply, call and video call those back home providing that your connection is strong enough. Video calling will take up far more data than an audio call will but if you do have a strong connection then video calling is the next best thing to being in the same room with someone.
It really is incredible that you can call people from the other side of the World with such clarity and simplicity that you feel as though they are in the same town as you. If you aren’t able to get a strong enough wi-fi connection then an audio call is a far better option, it uses less data and it can be a lot less frustrating as there is nothing more annoying than a blurry and broken video call.
All of these options are available to you if you have a cellphone, a tablet or a laptop, if you don’t have any of these then there are internet cafes around the World which can help to provide you with the means to keep in touch with your loved ones.