Originally Posted by
Dunbar
At a $15-20 per MB international roaming rate in Asia (according to google) it would only take ~80-100MB to get to $1600. I can do that in a day or two without trying very hard (much less a week.) I can't believe you'd just wing it though. It's not exactly a secret that international roaming rates for data are astronomical. At least the carriers are starting to offer reasonable international data plans for travelers.
Like I said, I was a real idiot. I remember thinking at the time... "hmmm... this is fun (using Google Maps to track my journeys through back streets of Jakarta). I wonder why I've never done this before, hope it doesn't use too much data." Famous last words.
I'm now going to spend some time on the prepaid SIM card w/data thread.
It's strange, I'm usually pretty smart about stuff like that--- just had a momentary lapse in judgement. I think what threw me off was that on prior trips I had not really used much data on my Blackberry-- so I focused on getting rid of the phone roaming charges by using a combination of Skype and UMA. At the same time, I escalated my data usage sharply-- so I got hammered again, just in a different way.
I'll be much, much smarter in the future.