My wonderful wife, Marion, and I just returned from a retirement trip to Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand and I discovered the thrill of staying in touch with our grand daughters and a few friends by use of the Internet! You see, after a few days we started to suffer grandkid withdrawal and I was wondering how things were going in this organization. We called my daughter to chat. 

Phone calls from overseas are expensive. Burn that thought into your brain. We called from the hotel in Sydney and it cost us about US$2.50 a minute. That was the last call we made! 

We were about one block from the area in town frequented by the backpacking crowd that looked for inexpensive places to stay. Our hotel was very nice and clean but Marion felt a bit uncomfortable since we were also about a block from the red light district. We had no problems but the atmosphere might bother someone that wasn’t a retired cop — but that is another story. 

Many stores in the area advertised Internet access and suggested we check our e-mail. Luck was with us in that I had already set up a free (love that word) e-mail account that also let us check our other accounts. The storefronts ranged from absolutely filthy to very neat and clean. Prices ranged from US$2.00 an hour and up. 

We really got to liking that system because, almost every town we stopped in had some place that offered the Internet service. Some prices were as high as US$1.50 for 10 minutes but the service was available almost everywhere. 

Lessons learned and helpful hints 
Both Yahoo.com and MSN.com offer free e-mail accounts that can be accessed anywhere in the world that has Internet access. (I use Yahoo so this information pertains to that service although I understand hotmail works the same way). 

Set up an account before you travel including setting it up to check your normal e-mail account. Test it before you go. 

Set up the address book to contain the names you want to contact and be sure you have a copy with you. 

When you use the Internet from elsewhere, you will log onto the server at the local area. Call up the browser and go to the Yahoo home page.  Select the e-mail access, log on and go to it. 

I didn’t have many addresses memorized so I couldn’t take full advantage of the service possibilities but we did stay in touch with the family and I sent an e-card to one of the girls to celebrate her honor roll status. 

Most places didn’t have cybercams and microphones set up but a couple did. Just think — seeing and talking with the folks back home from a long way away for a very low price. Sure beats long distance rates.