Traveling helps us to stay sane. As we go through with our life as either “corporate slaves” or “business junkies”, traveling at least every quarter seems to become part of our life to regenerate and to reflect on how beautiful our life can be while being away from things that keep us so busy.
While this is the case, planning and being on vacation can also bring forth a different level of stress that can only be remedied by certain solutions available for us. When traveling, there are several things we always keep in mind:
- itinerary
- internet connection/roaming concerns
- payment and currency solutions
- documenting (photos or videos)
- entertainment-on-the-go
Now without do, let us share with you our top application per each category! I hope you will find time to try them all out before and during your travels.
TravelerBuddy (Best for Planning)
Recommended by a friend, we took the chance to try this out during our travels to Japan for Tokyo Game Show in September and Thailand for ASUS in October. It proved to be the best travel assistant that you can have before, during and even after the flight.
It has everything you need from automatically generating and managing the itinerary for you, online and offline access of your documents, providing you with information about what to fill out on immigration cards (genius) and even generating expense report for business trips.
What we like: The UI is impressive, and it definitely has everything we need for various parts of our trip. It allowed us to plan for our next travel, and even save our recurring information for an easy pullout on upcoming trips. Its competitors in the market won’t be able to keep up with the slew of features it has, and I for one am really happy with what it can do for travelers.
- TravelerBuddy 1
- TravelerBuddy 2
- TravelerBuddy 3
- TravelerBuddy 4
The app is available in iOS and Android, and if you’ve got Pro or Biz account, you are granted with over-the-top features such as online checking, real-time alerts, unlimited pre-travel checks, immigration and expense check. Try it out with their free plan, and see what features you would need to determine if it’s best to upgrade to a higher plan.
CherryRoam (Best for Internet Roaming)
This one isn’t necessarily just an app as it also requires you to have a device that lets you surf the net anywhere and everywhere! We took and used this during our recent travels to Japan and Malaysia this year. We got surprised with how affordable the cost of surfing the net, and how manageable it is in terms of adding new credits to our surf “wallet”.
- Cherry Roam 1
- Cherry Roam 2
What we like: Other than it’s from a brand we truly love – Cherry Mobile – Cherry Roam offers the most convenient and cost-effective way to surf online abroad. You can rent, buy or reload their website (https://cherryroam.com.ph/), and all it takes is to use one application (and the device) to keep you updated online.
During our trip to Japan, we loaded a total of PhP5,000 to our Cherry Roam and only spent PhP3,150 for 11GB data allocation for 7 days. For content creators like us, 11GB was more than enough for us to draft, publish and upload our blogs and videos. If you’re traveling for fun and leisure for a week, your PhP5,000 can definitely go a long way if you’re renting one out.d
CherryRoam is now available at select Cherry Mobile concept stores and select Travel Club outlets for PhP6,990. You may also order by sending an inquiry to [email protected] or by sending an SMS to 0996-668-7777.
PayMaya (Best for Buying Stuff abroad)
We talk about PayMaya many times on our site. It has been a household name for a lot of Filipinos even for such a short time from being introduced. It can be used for buying from e-Commerce and gaming e-Pin sites, but eventually evolved to being one of the best payment solutions by a lot of Filipinos.
What we like: PayMaya has always been our go-to payment solution when going abroad. It works in Hong Kong and Japan (especially to establishments who accept Visa payments). There are various ways to reload PayMaya, and all it takes is to swipe or scan QR when paying various shops. We’ve had troubles in some parts of China, especially in Shenzhen are as they usually access WePay or Cash, but PayMaya has been very useful elsewhere.
Want to know more about PayMaya? Check out our other posts.
- Maximize your Freenet points and PayMaya with these games on sale on Steam
- Receiving money via Western Union? Get it via PayMaya!
- SM Store and PayMaya team up to bring a smarter shopping experience
Fyuse (Give your photos or videos a new depth)
https://youtu.be/9rTjaCcwX6o
Ever thought of spicing up the photos and videos you’re taking? Fyuse offers a unique way of documenting important moments in your life by turning it into a pseudo-3D playback experience. What it basically does is it gives you a time to capture your subject for a few seconds while pointing your camera to certain spaces surrounding it. What it does is it applies an algorithm to your photo or video and turn it into a media file that allows you take play it back as if it’s in a 3D space.
There’s a simple catch though: Fyuse wants their app to be used like Instagram. As such, they wish to position it as another type of social media and also a tool to generate a GIF or video version of your captures.
What we like: It is a self-contained application to generate and share content. And it’s free, of course!
Pokemon Go (Play while Traveling) on smartphone + Let’s Go Eevee/Let’s Go Pikachu on Switch
This may be an unpopular choice by some but we still do find this to be a great game companion for travelers! If you stopped playing the game, this may be the best time to get back to it and start catching more types of Pokemon. Now that Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee on Nintendo Switch have arrived, it is now possible for you to transfer some of your 1st Gen Pokemon to your Nintendo Switch game progress.
What we like: We have been playing this game for more than 2 years now, and we’re excited to know that its future is more exciting than ever. There are over 400+ Pokemon to catch, and its significance to being integrated to more Switch games in the future is very possible.
- Pokemon Go 2
- Pokemon Go 1
Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of gadgetpilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.
