As others have said, the single biggest thing you can do to avoid a block is to call your issuer and add a travel note with dates and countries. As soon as a risk analyst, at least for my firm, sees that, we'll leave legit activity from that area alone. If you don't get a note on the account, though, you can always give us some activity that clearly shows travel, say use at an ATM or shop in an airport, and we'll pick up on the trend and typically avoid blocks.

Ha ha, nice to see that there's another FT'er out there in the same line 'o work. Now if you're Ft'ing at work, well, that's icing on the cake...

Combat Medic: Good point on USAA. I do all of my banking with them and have never had any issues traveling overseas and have also never had to call. They do have a few random blocks here and there for specific lines of activity, but they seem to use alot more common sense than other issuers that I've seen. Definitely the way to go if you're eligible to use it.