Southeast Asia Travel Journal

I seems like everyone has an iPhone these days, or wants one. One of the reasons is that there are thousands of ‘apps’ available for the device. It seems like there’s no question that can’t be answered by the response "There’s and app for that." Of course, there are a lot of travel-related apps available, but not all of these apps are any good. Some – by big names in travel guides even – are down-right awful. Since I do hope to be able to bring you my own travel app in the near future, I’ve been trying out a number of them on an iPod Touch.

The Travelfish guide to Angkor was one of the first apps I tried. Travelfish.org is one of the few sites I trust enough to consult when I’m planning trips to places I haven’t been to yet. The Angkor guide was their first travel app and it’s been updated several times since I first got it a month or two ago. They now have several apps out for many of the destinations they cover.

Although I’ve had it for a while, and thought it was good, I decided to try the Angkor app "on the ground" in Siem Reap before giving it a review. The Travelfish apps are oriented to some degree to the ‘backpacker’ types who don’t do too much advance planning, and often arrive at a destination without any reservations, so the apps are full of suggestions on where to stay and eat as well as what to see. The suggestions – all the result of on the ground inspections – are appropriate for most classes of visitor, so you may find them useful.

But the real potential usefulness of the app. for any kind of visitor is the guide to the sights of the archaeological park. The Travelfish app. manages to pack in quite a lot of information, including a map that doesn’t require you to be on-line, about the temples. While it may not have the level of detail that you’ll get from the Dawn Rooney guide, it has enough to help you decided what to see, or know what you’re looking at, and of course an iPhone or Touch is certainly a lot less weight to carry around than a thick guide book. The Travelfish app. even has a few temples and other sights that you won’t find in the standard guides.

An iPhone or iPod may not be the best device – format-wise – to plan your trip on, but as a tool to take with you on the road, they have a lot of advantages. The Travelfish Angkor guide shows just how useful it can be. Check out the Travelfish web site or the Apple iTunes store for details.

Posted by michael under Travel Tech
Tags: Angkor Wat • iPhone • Siem Reap
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