Hey, it's Vinnynomad and in today's article, I'm going to tell you what are the most useful websites I used in my travels. Each one of them came out pretty handy and I would advise anyone traveling to use them.
Let's start!
1. Airbnb.com
This one is an awesome website regrouping different accommodations all around the world for a pretty good price! It helped me find a cheap room, apartment or house a few times and is perfect for people traveling alone or in a group as multiple types of accommodations are made available by thousands of hosts.
I like to use it when I am planning to stay at one place for a month or so. The hosts often offer discounts if you stay for a longer term and it usually ends up cheaper than hostels, especially if you are 2 or more.
If you are not really a hostel person, but still only planning a short stay, airbnb will offer you more privacy than you would have in a hostel for only a bit more money. From experience, it was also always possible to find an option on airbnb that was cheaper than the cheapest hotels.
2. Busbud.com
Taking the bus is usually the cheapest way to travel and busbud helps you find the cheapest bus and itinerary for the dates you want to travel. One of my friend advised it to me after he went to south america where it was hard to have english information about buses online.
Busbud let you book everything online and in english so you wont have to use your terrible spanish skills at the station.
3. Cheapair.com
Cheapair makes it on the list because it is a good tool to find cheap flights but more specifically because it lets you pay for your flights in bitcoins!
They use coinbase as a reference of price so you know its updated constantly for the current prices.
4. Cheapflights.com
For those of you that are not interested to buy flights with bitcoin, cheapflights has constantly offered me the cheapest fares over the last couple years. They have more than 300 partners to help you find the cheapest flights and also have one of the most easy to use interface.
They are usually a bit cheaper than cheapair.com
5. Couchsurfing.com
This website regroup an awesome community of hosts and travelers helping travelers to find a place to stay for free. I recommend to all travelers to use couchsurfing as it will give you the opportunity to meet very cool locals that are happy to receive travelers in their homes.
I have made lifetime long friends using this and met very cool and sometimes unusual people. If you don't mind sleeping on the couch for the night and willing to save big money on accommodation, couchsurfing is your ultimate tool.
6. Cryptopay.me
Cryptopay lets you transfer your bitcoins to a visa card in a matter of minutes. Cards are available in 3 currencies, USA, GPB, EUR which is very convenient for the travelers.
They have an amazing customer support with a live chat, very minimal fees and unlimited spending limits.
I highly recommend this website to any travelers that own a few bitcoins.
7. Google maps
I can't even count how many times this saved me from getting lost, missing appointments, missing flights, and saved me from other situation one would not really like to be in.
I was in a situation not too long ago where a taxi driver took an unusual way to go somewhere so I decided to open my good ol' google map and realized the cab driver was taking me to destination the longest way possible. I called him out, told him to follow the indications written on my phone and negotiated a price for the run. His way would have had make me throw away an extra 20$ that I could have used to buy sexy lingerie for my girlfriend. Which I did. Thank you google maps for those beautiful moments.
8. Hostelworld.com
I have used this website numerous times to book hostels at the cheapest price. They pretty much cover the whole world which makes it really easy for a traveler that doesn't want to spend a lot of money to choose the cheapest destinations.
They also have very interesting articles to give you ideas on where to go and what to do.
I highly recommend living in a hostel while traveling because they are cheap and force you to interact with other travelers that will make your trip 100 times cooler.
I met some of my current best friends in hostels and lived some of my funniest moments in them too.
Ps. You will also meet the weirdest (not the nice weird) people you ever met. But hey, it makes up for some funny memories.
9. Tripadvisor.com
This one is so popular and such a no brainer for looking up nice things to do, or hostels, or restaurants, or everything really. I never taught about using it until I went into that crappy restaurant in Vancouver, BC. It was disgusting. I usually like everything, but not this, this was one of my worst culinary experience ever.
So, my friend gets his phone out, to write the name of the restaurant + review on google and click on the first link. You guessed it, yup, one of the most popular review website, trip advisor. The restaurant had an average of 2 stars. The only thing bringing it to 2 was that single 5 star written by a prankster saying the food was the most delicious thing he ever tasted since mud covered dirt.
My incredible culinary experience could have been avoided if we had looked before if the only person that liked the restaurant was a guy that never had actual food in his life before.
That restaurant doesn't exist anymore, but that is an other story. The current story is that trip advisor is good stuff.
10. Workaway.info
Very cool website that lets people who need help in their house or projects to get that help from travelers in exchange of accommodation and sometimes food.
It will make you save money, meet locals, eat real traditional food and give you work experience in various fields.
Well that is it for now steem! I hope you enjoyed the read and found some useful information. If you have other websites that you like using while you travel please leave a comment as I am always interested to learn.
Thank you and stay tuned!
Interesting thoughts