When we travel in Europe, we just make do with WiFi access. The wife can still Facetime here friends and family. Every restaurant has WiFi.
The only problem we had was that all the parking required SMS payment. Fortunately, it was a national holiday and parking was free.
In the DR, YMMV.
Whatever you do, keep your phone in airplane mode all the time. If it loses a connection to wifi and connects to the local cell network, it's going to be a big bill. Verizon charges $1.99 per KILObyte of data when you are international and didn't purchase a plan, which is almost $2000 per MB. So sending someone a photo is going to cost you about $3000 under those circumstances. The other providers probably have similar rates.
Not following - wouldn't you just want the local currency?I suggest taking about $100 in 1s and 5s instead of worrying about phone access, though.
Not following - wouldn't you just want the local currency?
This is what we did in Hong Kong in July. Only turned it on 2 or 3 days when neededWith ATT we had international plan $10/day unlimited voice text and data. Easiest option