I will be traveling out of the country and would like to disabled data traffic from/to my 8100 while away, but would still like full telephone services.

Is there an easy way to do this?

Go to Options > Mobile Network and set Data Services to OFF.

I have been trying to figure this out too for vacations when i don't want to have to have my email popping up every 10 minutes, but would like to check it once a day.

So, if data service is turned off, and i am on a BES, will this break my connection with the BES so that i have to "reactivate" it? Or, when i turn it back on, will my blackberry automatically reconnect to the BES and download emails?