Youngest is off travelling shortly.

He’s got 8 weeks in Japan.
6-8 months in NZ working and travelling.
Then Canada until money runs out.

Is the best solution to just buy a SIM in each country?

Probably best to buy in each country, depends how data heavy he will be and where he’ll be (e.g. rural or cities in NZ?). On a working visa in NZ he’ll be temporary resident so probably much easier and cheaper to buy data plan there. But if he’s got a modern smart phone, dual eSim might be an option, you can get global with up to 180 day validity and then top up. Airalo

If he’s not taking his UK sim with him, make sure you keep his number active if he wants to keep it, by using the sim every so often, depends on his provider and contract.

Does it need to be a SIM or will an eSIM work?

Does he need calls/text or will data-only work?

Just get an esim per country you’re going to.

Abigale is using a roaming add on with EE which covers her for most of the destinations that she will be visiting.

Gives her free calls and texts with 125gb of data a month but could be capped at 50gb for fair usage but that’s not happened so far.

She is of the generation that thinks phone calls and texts are a thing of the past. As long as she has the Internet or WiFi then everything is working well for her.
The others are all on SIM only

She’s in Rotoura at the moment. Riding most days and says the trails are amazing.

The plans are to do 12 months down under and 6 months in Canada on the way back. Assuming she comes back 🤔

Is he getting excited

Is he getting excited

Yes, but trying to get his travel buddies organised is a challenge…!

Assuming she comes back

I have the same feeling. He’s already learning Japanese and talking about work out there in future.

Particularly when eldest has decided he’s off to make use of 2 years in Canada this time next year, possibly then finish his Masters out in Vancouver too…

She’s in Rotoura

Youngest is heading to Queenstown – there’s three Hilton hotels there, and he’s been working for them here for a couple of years. His boss just emailed a good word for him to the three NZ managers. Fingers crossed.

One thing she has found out is that bike bits are expensive and wished she had taken a few more spares. We have posted out a few necessities; just in case, that she didn’t take but the Garmin Edge is now playing up and they are expensive and have yet to find someone who will ship out.
Might have to buy one and send it as a gift.

I think they plan to spend the next few months in the North and then move on further South.

First thing they did was buy some transport and will sell it on when they leave NZ

This is probably outmoded now but when we went to Japan in ’16 we hired a dongle. Absolutely zero hassle – like everything else over there it just works, was at the hotel when we checked in, just had to pop it in the pre-paid envelope and post it before we left.

Eeesh, that’s 3 tough markets! For Japan the easiest will probably be to buy a sim there – or rent a dongle and just tether all the time.
Canada is notoriously awful for roaming, basically because 3 (now 2) big telcos have stitched up the market. So he’ll definitely want to just buy a sim out there, PAYG from Chatr, Fido or similar

One thing she has found out is that bike bits are expensive and wished she had taken a few more spares.

Eek. Ben is not even taking a bike – he grew out of his this spring (6’3″!) but decided to buy a bike out in NZ as he is not riding in Japan – he is heading to climb mountains and cities…

Use both Nomad and Airalo for places where I don’t have roaming. Both have been fine.

Individual country e-sims likely to be slightly faster but the regional ones are fine. You can also get them on arrival at airports but to be honest I’d just get a regional one for each area.