How can I (re)activate my iPhone 4 from overseas?

Ok, this is a strange one.  I'm from the US and have had my iPhone 4 AT&T) since it was released (mid 2010). No problems.
I'm overseas (Taiwan) for vacation and about one week into my trip I finally get good WiFi and so I check my e-mail, vpn to home to make sure everything is OK, update apps, etc...  After a while my iPhone appears to reboot, though it is quicker than a normal reboot.  When it is done rebooting, my iPhone comes to a screen titled "Restore Completed" (I didn't instruct it to restore) and it guides me through re-activating.  (grrr.) Of course, when I get to the end, it says "[y]our phone could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailble.  Try connecting your iPhone to iTunes to activate it, or try again in a couple of minutes."  (Crap.)  I think "well, I'll hop on my iPad 2 and see what's up and if I can fix this easily."  About 20 minutes later, my iPad 2 does the SAME THING and also cannot activate.
So I try again in a few minutes.  Same thing.  Now 12 hours later and same thing.  (Oh f---!).
I don't have my iTunes PC (as I said, I'm overseas) so I cannot try that.  I tried apple.com/support and I have AppleCare but they are being too helpful and only give me telephone support options.  I'm not going to pay international long distance for iPhone support.  E-mail support would be ideal but no joy on that front.
So I'm reaching out to the community for a lack of any better options right now.  Does anyone have any good ideas how to solve this?  I have searched but found nothing too useful. 
I was using my phone as my primary camera (not any more).  I really hope my data is there when I do get everything restored (200+ pics from my trip so far).  Unfortunately, I cannot imagine how the 13 hour flight back to the US is going to be without my books and mags because, of course, they are all on my iPad.  Ugh...
Help, please!!
Dave

Get a SIM adapter and put the SIM from the iPhone 5 in the iPhone 4. Or get a new SIM from your carrier.

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