Auckland, New Zealand

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Docking at Queens Wharf, the perfect location for walking in downtown Auckland, the sun was just rising over the island although we could see the day was destined to be overcast with rain showers forecast.  Auckland offers so many things for the ship passengers to fill their day, museums, Kelly Tarlton's Sea Life Aquarium, Sky Tower, Waitomo Grotto and much more, we are here until 8PM tonight.  Fortunately for us, on our several previous trips to Auckland, we have seen the city and all the outlying areas including the wine regions.  We decided to take the ferry to Devonport, a charming seaside village on the North Shore.  Just as we headed out the skies opened, rains came and we were drenched, so back to the ship to dry off.  Therefore, just a walk around the Quay Street area followed.  The remainder of the day was spent catching up on internet and relaxing.

Our new T-Mobile plan for international use is working great and the best addition in all our years of travel overseas.

With all passengers present and accounted for, lines were cast and we departed for Sydney, Australia a few minutes before 8PM.

Tasman Sea here we come - ready for some rock 'n roll!!!!!

Phone, Internet, Text

Recently on a trip to Thailand and Myanmar, we visited many areas on a river boat where we did not have Internet access.  We noticed one of the passengers on board who was always checking things on his cell phone and we wondered how he was doing this without running up an extremely high bill.  In discussions with this passenger, we found out that he was using a BLU unlocked phone and T-Mobile as the carrier.  Over the years we have seen crew and passengers buying SIM cards for a particular country, but we had always wondered how to do this when you visit as many countries as we will be doing on the World Cruise.  It didn't make sense to be buying a new SIM card for each country.

After more research, we decided on getting a BLU Life One L120 "unlocked" phone.    We ordered this phone from Amazon, because their price was the best.  Within a few days the new phone arrived.  Now we had to get over to T-Mobile to setup an account and get a SIM card.  So, off to T-Mobile we went.  The representative at the T-Mobile store couldn't have been more helpful.  After listening to the descriptions of all the plans they offered, it became apparent that the Simple Choice Plan for International was the best for us.  We had already used their data calculator online to determine how my GBs of data we wanted available each month.  We settled on 3GBs.  However, under this plan, you never run out of GBs, because once we reach the 3GB limit, you aren't charged any additional.  What T-Mobile does is just reduce the speed of your Internet connection.  This plan includes UNLIMITED Talk, Text and Data.  The T-mobile service is available in over 120 countries and the best part is that there IS NO ANNUAL SERVICE CONTRACT.  The plan also includes FREE unlimited Talk and Text over any Wifi connection.  When you are outside of the USA, you pay 20 cents per minute for calls to mobile devices and landlines back in the USA.  Additionally, you can share (Tethering) up to 6 devices with your phone Internet connection.

If you decide to do something similar to what we did, I would recommend that you let T-Mobile setup your phone and the correct APN (Access Point Name) for T-Mobile.

BLU phones can be found at this link BLU Phones .

T-Mobile Plans can be found at this link T-Mobile Plans .