We're on our way to Southeast Asia, to visit the countries of Cambodia and Vietnam. We are very excited to learn about the history and culture of these countries, the food, and of course to spend the time getting to know the people.
Both of these countries require visas for entry, so the first step was to go get international passport pictures taken. They are different from U.S. passport pictures, and are much more expensive (very few local places take visa pictures). Once we had the pictures, we filled out the application for a Vietnamese Visa and sent our passports, applications, passport pictures and self addressed prepaid envelopes to the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington DC. It took about 5 days for them to complete our visas, and then they were returned them to us in the mail.
It was an easy process, but a little unnerving to send away our passports about a month before we would be leaving on our next trip. When we got our passports back, they contained our Vietnamese Visa that we were praying would be in them.
The Cambodian Visa's have to be purchased in the airport when we arrive in Cambodia, so hopefully it won't be too long of a process since we arrive in Cambodia late at night.
The next step was getting some money to have on hand when we arrive in the countries. On Monday, October 24th we went to Wells Fargo and ordered a small amount of foreign currency for both Cambodia and Vietnam. It usually takes them about three days to get the requested currency in.
Two days later we received a call from Wells Fargo saying that due to the volatility of the Riel (Cambodian currency) to the U.S. dollar, they were not able to provide us with any Riel. So we'll just have to take our chances when we get to Cambodia that they'll accept the U.S. dollar, or we can find an ATM when we get there.
One of the things we decided to change in anticipation of this trip is our cellphone. T-Mobile's One-Plan provides unlimited data and text in 140 countries, which includes Cambodia and (we think) Vietnam, and calls from those countries are only 20 cents per minute, so we decided to give them a try.
Instead of completely switching over to T-Mobile, we decided to buy service on just one phone, so that we could try T-Mobile out in all of the places where we spend time and see if it is comparable to Verizon. So far, T-Mobiles coverage is not very good in Lake Havasu City or Red Feather Lakes, where we spend a lot of time, so it has been disappointing to say the least.
Last time we were in Lake Havasu, we went in to the T-Mobile store and asked them about the questionable service, and they said that they are in the process of upgrading all of their cell towers in Lake Havasu so the service would be better by the end of the year, but only for I-Phone 6 or newer. So we'll have to see next time we're down there.
One thing we learned by visiting the Lake Havasu store is that all of the T-Mobile stores are independently owned, which helps to explain why we get inconsistent answers from different stores.
Over the last two days while I have been working, Steve visited two different T-Mobile stores to make sure that our service plan would for sure cover us while we are on our trip, and both of the stores told him that he would only be covered if he bought the "Stateside" plan, so after the previous discussions with them that he was told he would be covered under their "One-Plan", he ended up buying the "Stateside" plan that they said he needed for an extra $15 per month.
When he got home, he was still confused, so he pulled up T-Mobile's plans on their website, and the website said that the "Stateside" plan is for people in the U. S. that need to call people in foreign countries. This is not what we need. We need to call people in the U. S. from the foreign countries we are visiting. So now we were even more confused.
We decided to give T-Mobile a call. He reached an agent named Christine, who talked through the plan with us in great detail. She assured us that what we had read on the website was correct, and that we did not need the "Stateside" plan. She said that we would have free unlimited data and text from Cambodia and Vietnam, and that calls would cost us 20 cents per minute with the "One-Plan". She also said that she would cancel the "Stateside" plan that the guys at the store told us we needed. She did an excellent job of explaining our plan to us, so we are now quite confident that our plan will cover us in those countries. She also gave us a code for turning roaming on and off as we enter and leave those countries.
Trying to figure out phones in foreign countries is never easy, but we're hoping that we finally have what we need for the trip ahead.
We'll check back after our trip and let you know about the currency and the phone.
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