Email is a great way to stay in touch. Most modern services can be accessed from any computer with a web browser and are free to use. This means you can keep up with everyone for the price of an internet cafe - which can be as low as $2 per hour in the cities.

There are 2 main options when you choose an email provider - do you want your own domain name or are you happy with an address like john@gmail.com?

Free Email

Huge range of choices, but here are some well known ones;

• Gmail - Googles offering, very slick and huge storage
• Yahoo! Mail
• MSN

Your own Domain

If you want your own domain name, then my favourite option is oneandone.co.uk - which costs £2.34 per year for a .co.uk or .me.uk, and around £10 a year for 5 email accounts with anti spam and anti virus. Having your own domain is a nice thing, especially if you decide to launch a website or a Travel Blog. THe only problem is getting your name before all the other John Smiths do!

Remember to set it up before you go

If you have parents or other people who you want to stay in touch with while you are away, make sure they understand how to use email and get them setup with Gmail or similar before you go - otherwise you will end up having to phone them to explain how to get into their emails……

Email on the move

With a GPRS or 3G phone and either a PDA or a smart phone, its possible to get email on the go -  just rememeber its $10 per MB on PAYG - so text emails are fine, but HTML and attachments are going to cost you.