Holidays should be about relaxing. Most people only get to escape their often stressful day-to-day lives for one or two weeks of the year. It’s a small window of opportunity to forget the daily grind and difficult issues that can arise in our daily lives. Difficult bosses with unrealistic expectations, money worries, personal life grief, it can all get us down. That’s why we all love getting away from it all so much.
The biggest way we keep connected to the world around us now – at home or abroad – is through our mobile phones. We make calls, send texts and emails, send tweets, check Facebook…
But shouldn’t we ‘disconnect’ when we’re on vacation? Kick back? Go off grid? We’ve called this post ‘Can you travel without your mobile?’ And we think you can. Sure, if it’s a business trip, you should almost certainly take your phone with you, but if it’s a personal one – why bother? We reckon the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. And here’s why:
Work stress levels
Checking into your work emails or voicemails can be a terrible idea. You’ll start thinking about work and the ever-mounting pile of work you’ll no doubt return to. You may even be tempted to reply to some of them and that’ll eat into your chill-out time massively. Just leave it – you’re on holiday. You’re allowed to be. You also run the risk of your boss assuming that you have a 24/7 mentality towards work. You’ll never be able to go away without a phone again!
You can use an internet cafe
If you really, really, really need to go online, you can also use an internet cafe. In many other countires, with less widespread broadband, internet cafes are extremely popular and thrive. You see plenty, so you can go in, do your business, come out and get on with your holiday.
Social networking on holiday is, well, a bit sad…
‘OMG! The weather is lovely! Havin a G8 time on holiday!!!’ just reads like ‘Blimey, I’m bored and addicted to Facebook. I can’t even go a week without pointlessly updating my status’. Tragic.
Roaming charges
It can prove awfully expensive to use your phone abroad, especially if your using the internet and go ‘data roaming’.
You can use other phones
Okay, if you have young children and you’re holidaying in the woods, then by all means carry a back-up phone (turned off until you need it, of course!) with you. But for city and resort breaks, there’s always pay phones, especially at hotel receptions.
Hidden charges
Often people forget that they’re charged to receive charges abroad, as well as when they make them. So even if you get people to ring you, you’re still shelling out unnecessary cash…
But that’s just our opinion… What about you and yours? Do you take your phone abroad when you intend to relax? And if not, how do you manage without it? We’d love to know.
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