iPhone Apps

I’m too geeky to travel without technology and I’m glad I had an iPhone with me. Some apps that I found to be extremely helpful:

City Maps 2 Go
Allows usage of map and GPS offline

So basically I pre-downloaded the maps of all the cities or regions that I’d be heading to when I had wifi. I would have gotten lost so many time had I not used this app. The maps also mostly come with point of interests for hostels, tourist attractions, stores, etc. While it cannot exactly locate a specific address, you can do a search for the street names. At least that’ll get you heading to the right direction.

Hostel Hero
Browse hostels listing online and offline

Like City Maps 2 Go, Hostel Hero is created while keeping travellers’ needs in mind. It also allows pre-downloading of the hostels lists by countries and regions. You don’t always have to pre-book the accommodation for the night. Sometimes I’d look up the hostel information (price, rating, review, address, etc.) on this app while commuting to a new town and upon arrival, use the City Maps 2 Go to find my way to the location.

AllSubway
Subway maps for all cities in the world

Pretty self-explanatory. While not useful in small towns and villages, it was quite handy to have when in the metropolises.

Converter Plus
Convert everything!

I mainly used this app to do currency conversion. It also helped to have this when dealing with the different temperature and measurement system.

 Skyscanner
Search for cheap flights

I started off using FareCompare.com to search for cheap flights but found out later that Skyscanner.com is much easier to use and yield to better results. The app is super streamlined.

Skype
Phone call + video call via internet

Okay, so Skype is nothing new. Most of you probaby already use it to “skype” other users. But what I ended up using a lot besides that was to call up regular phone lines. By getting Skype credit, one can use Skype to relatively cheaply call and text people on their mobile phones. However, the best usage I discovered was to use it to call toll-free numbers back in the States when needing to talk to my banks, airlines, credit card companies etc. (which usually took ages!)