OTP’s Guide to the Most Useful Travel Apps For Backpackers

Daily Blend, Gear & Tech | rishegee | July 20, 2011 at 8:34 am

Photo By: Marco Arment

Is that a smartphone in your pocket or are you just happy to see us? Turning off the tech while you travel has its benefits. At the same time, wisely using your gadgets opens you to a world of opportunities: shenanigans, hookups, deals, shortcuts and methods of documenting the most awesome times of your life. Forget using your iPhone to make calls – that little piece of overpriced silicon is now an alarm clock, calculator, notepad, calendar, camera, GPS and guidebook, all in one tiny package. Google Maps has saved your ass more than once, Foursquare is your in-pocket travel diary, and you’ve cultivated a smooth hostel move where new friends add themselves to your Facebook – using your iPhone. Now, take it up a notch and wow your travel buddies with OTP’s Top Travel Apps.

If you’re outside the US on a Sunday, chances are supermarkets are closed and your only option is the seedy fruit stand across the street from your hostel. Forget $14 martinis and explore your local deli using mixology. Choose your base spirits, mixers and whichever random ingredients your friendly immigrant vendor is pushing. Get introduced to the incredible backpacker staple of Gin and Iced Tea and you’ll never look back. Cocktail parties in city squares (Spain is notorious) have never been so classy. If you’re looking to fill up on solids, try Epicurious and make the average corner store finds into a gourmet feast in your hostel kitchen. While OpenTable and Yelp are US-only, there’s a plethora of local bar and restaurant finder apps available to those who search.

The Balinese kid’s boom box is blasting the best tunes, or the bar in Lima has put together the greatest playlist ever. When the club is going off and you can’t name that tune, forget the old trick of whipping out your video and trying to decipher a staticky recording later. Zap it with this app and SHAZAM: Song instantly identified. Let your travels open up your mind and eardrums to new music that won’t be forgotten when you get home, and set up a Pandora or Spotify playlist based on your new find.

Not knowing the difference between the entrance and exit sign isn’t a big deal but sometimes, like when you’re wandering an ancient maze of a castle, it’s useful to have your foreign language signs covered. Snap a picture of the foreign phrase and check it on WordLens and watch the words convert before your eyes. At this stage it’s only available in English to Spanish. While we believe it’s best to give learning the language a shot, if you’re pressed on time, there are plenty of other translation apps that’ll help you get your foreign lingo on – including the king of them all, Google Translate.

Smartphones double as cameras, so apps for photosharing, photoediting, photographing and photoplaying (we made that last one up) are everywhere. PhotoBucket has moved past its Myspace days to be a great cloud hoster and Flickr has many handy apps great for putting your pics safely in the cloud – but Instagram is still top of the line for ease of sharing and fun editing options. Make your snaps pop with the stylistic options available and use the easy sharing functionality to Facebook, Tweet or broadcast your shots in every way you wish. Struggling with camera resolution? PictureShow can improve resolution and zoom for clearer pics once you actually get home and face a printer.

Buying pretty postcards is fun in souvenir shops, but if writing the words and finding the stamps freaks you out more than that chunk lingering behind the hostel fridge, it’s time to befriend online postcard apps. While Postman creates a postcard you can post anywhere you want online, Postino or Hazelmail actually print a physical piece of smashed wood pulp and mails it out to your folks back home.

If you find yourself scrimping on megabytes like it’s AOL back in 1996 (500 mb a month, bitches) and you need to find wifi to stream Lakers highlights, use this free Wi-Fi finder to locate the closest public spot – café, square or park – with free wifi. The best part? You can download the directory and access it offline, when that wifi is just too elusive to find.

SitorSquat comes to the rescue at the most butt-clenching moments. This app (iPhone and Blackberry) locates your closest water closet so you can drop the kids off in the pool before resuming your travel adventures. Enter the nearest intersection or get located on your phone and be directed to sit, squat or a combination of the two for some serious relief.

Your friend paid for the hostel deposit, you shelled out the cash for the room, and now your new best bud is paying for drinks on his credit card. Don’t rely on your drunken recall or the stash of receipts at the bottom of your pocket and instead use the ShareABill app to keep track of bills, meals and accommodation costs, then divide them up at the end of the trip. This handy app adds in costs like tax and tip as well, and can be used to split just one meal, or an entire weekend away. No need to ever argue about cash and look like a penny-pinching asshole ever again.

Staying occupied with Angry Birds and Words with Friends on long busrides has eradicated your social skills, and suddenly talking to strangers in a local bar is stickier than the grotty carpet. Awesome Pickup Lines was created with you in mind, helping you grab that chica or hombre with the suavest of moves. Looking for a conversation starter? There’s an app for that, too.

Remember the Milk and Evernote are backpacker life lines. Keep track of that hot technophobe girl’s snail mail address, store the local recommendations you scored from the next table at lunch or set reminders for your train/plane/bus departure times. Use these apps to store online pages, notes, reminders and lists, doing away with your stuffed travel journal and pile of receipts and beer-soaked napkins for good.

The queen of VOIP, Skype revolutionized the world with the ability to make phone calls, face-to-face video and chat conversations from every Internet-enabled device in existence – including your smartphone. Pay up front for an unlimited Skype account and you can make calls using your smartphone to regular landlines. Do it for free with other iPhone users by signing up for Viber, or Facetime for video chats. Skip the talk altogether and sign up for a free text-messaging app like Whatsapp, where you can create travel groups and keep in touch with your buddies from the Outback to the Andes. Type travel into the app store and you’ll find all sorts of crap, junk and the stinky shitty stuff in between. If you need something to keep track of your travel directly, FlightTracker will help you check which flights are on time, GateGuru gives you the latest on airport lines and delays and TripIt collates your itineraries and booking numbers for you. Convert your currency using XE’s currency converter and keep track of your deep travel-induced epiphanies on your notepad. Find your way around with Metro, which gives you access to subway maps and routes from all over the world. With all these apps, you have everything you need to be a super-backpacker, minus the sidekick (that one you’ll have to get by looking up once in a while and socializing).