Ho Chi Mihn City, Vietnam 

I have written before about how much the internet has served us on our travels. We are not super techie (yes, I can hear those of you who know me laughing at the understatement) so what works for us is simple and basic. Each of these apps or websites have helped in some way to make our trip easier, safer or just more fun.

The Lonely Planet book series and tripadvisor.com have guided us in our travels. We purchased digital Lonely Planet books and have them downloaded on our cell phones and iPad. The books identify the best places to go and sites to see in each country. There are maps with recommended routes showing the top sites. At the end of each chapter is insider information about history, national psyche and culture. We use tripadvisor.com to read reviews on sites, restaurants and tour companies.  We often ask tripadvisor for the restaurant where locals eat.  When selecting a dive shop to get our dive certification we relied on the tripadvisor.com reviews.

We use booking.com, AirBnb.com, and hostelworld.com websites for accommodation reservations. At first we thought it would be a good idea to arrive in a destination, look around and find a place to stay. That will work and many travelers do it but we have found it is not for us. When we have finished a long day of travel we are usually hot, tired and cranky and end up choosing the first place we look at. With booking.com and hostelworld.com we can rely on other people’s reviews and sort for just what we want (wifi, breakfast, location). We have stayed in hundreds of different rooms and have rarely had a bad experience. The websites portray the accommodations fairly accurately.

We used AirBnB.com when we met our daughter and son-in-law in New Zealand. It worked well as we were able to choose sites based on detailed information and reviews on the properties. For four of us, renting a whole house or apartment gave us flexibility to cook or not and to have a living space to gather in. We had a rented car which was a good thing because all of the places we stayed in were away from the center of town. AirBnB is more expensive than what Mike and I typically spend so it would not be practical for us on a day-to-day basis.

Using the above resources has made me really conscious of how important it is to write reviews and to give realistic reviews. Others rely on the reviews and it does no good to give positive reviews that were unearned or negative reviews that are too harsh.

Charles Schwab mobile banking (schwab.com) is our go to website for handling our travel money while on the road. We opened an account and made a deposit (they also require a small brokerage account) with this on-line bank. We have used their debit card at ATMs in every country. As we need more money, we transfer small amounts to it from our credit union. It has been very easy to use and we get a good exchange rate.  The best thing is that there are no international fees and Schwab reimburses all of the bank ATM fees charged.

Through another traveler we found out about the app maps.me. This app allows us to download maps of the countries we want and then have the maps available when we have no internet connection. Without cell service, the only time we can access information is when we have wifi so while traveling on a bus, train or taxi we had no way of viewing a map of the area. With maps.me we can put a pin to indicate our accommodations, bus station or sites we want to visit.

Staying in touch with our families is important to us. While we always have email it is nice to talk to family from time to time. At the beginning of our travels we would look for a storefront with international telephone service and sit in the cubicle to make a call home. In Cali Columbia, we met a traveler who told us about Google Hangouts. It is an app that allows us to make telephone calls using wifi service. All of the calls to our family in California and Oregon are free!

I love to read and while traveling there is plenty of down time for reading. Books are heavy and take up a lot of room in my backpack. The Fresno County Public Library mobile and Kindle apps came to the rescue. With the FCPL app, I have been able to borrow books (up to ten at a time) when we have wifi access and download them to read at anytime. This is an amazing free service and I have read hundreds of books over this past year. I use the Kindle app to access my library books.

What do we do on a long, long bus ride or a long lay over in some airport? We listen to podcasts. We subscribe to podcasts on many subjects like news, politics, travel, fitness and talk shows. The podcasts are great because we can download them when we have wifi and then listen to them anytime we want. We are enjoying following the current political antics leading up to the election.

For anyone thinking about starting a blog I would highly recommend using wordpress.com. WordPress is the platform that has allowed me to send this blog out to you for the past two years. It is fairly easy to use and I have been satisfied with it.

The last app I want to recommend is myfitnesspal.com. We have really struggled with getting enough exercise (other than walking) and as a consequence we have struggled with our weight. It is so easy to over eat on the road. We eat almost every meal in a restaurant and ordering sensibly day after day is hard. After working long and hard to lose weight before we left, it has been discouraging to feel the pounds adding back on. The myfitnesspal.com app is helping us to monitor our calories and activity. We have only used it for a few weeks but are beginning to see some results.

Along the way, we have met several people who decided not to carry any technological device with them on their travels. They feel that to immerse themselves in the culture they do not want to be connected to home. We admire their commitment but for us, using technology to make reservations, map our travels, stay in touch with family and be entertained has enhanced our travels.