Great information, thanks!
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Great information, thanks!
Hi there.... basically there are two goods options.
1. Internal calls
Do your phones use a SIM card, or are they like most US phones that don't have one? Here we mainly use SIM cards in our phones, and in your case rather than buying a prepaid phone like one could at Walmart, here you can buy a prepaid SIM card and put it in your phone. You can get credit and the prepaid SIMs at chain stores or 7-11s and places such as this.
This is not to say you can't still buy a prepaid phone & sim together here, they sell them at k-mart etc, but if your phones take a sim card it is cheaper just to buy that!
2. Calling US
I'd suggest you got a calling card at a store like 7-11 or one of the shops in an area like chinatown in the big cities. The smaller shops in places like chinatown tend to know which card is best for calling where, wheras at 7-11 you will have to pick it yourself! Don't be fooled into buying one of these cards from a big name like Verizon or AT&T, or Telstra here... as the rates are ridiculously high still. You can get a cheap brand $5-10 card and get far far more minutes.
Hope this helps..
Or, if you have a computer with high-speed internet access, try Skype. $10 will last you forever, whereever you are, if you are calling the US.
We went through the same thing. We took a bunch of phone cards and found out it 30 or 40 minutes to talk for 5. What we found was we could buy the cards there and they worked as they should, meaning 1 minute for 1 minute. Have fun and if you are going down south take some warm clothes, it gets chilly that time of the year.
Randall & Juli
Having just coming back from SYD a few weeks ago, I can honestly tell you to get a phone card! That's the cheapest and best way to communicate back home to the US. We bought a $10AUD phone card and it seemed to have last forever. We actually had something like $7+ AUD dollars left on the card when we departed SYD. Shop around and you'll be fine. I found, too, that certain McDonald's has free wi-fi but I wouldn't necessarily count on it everywhere.
Thank you, everyone, for all the input, it is greatly appreciated!