The Best Free Travel Apps For People Who Don’t Like To Plan

This article is brought to you by Busabout – travel for freestyle travellers who want to decide where they want to go, when they want to go there, and when they want to leave. 

–

Look, we get it. You’re anti plans. You hate plans as much as you hate scratchy underwear and subscribing to outdated, predetermined constructs of gender-roles in society. You run wild like the mighty Mississippi, a whirring dervish, like an errant shopping trolley careening the isles of a distant suburb’s Aldi. Like Cat Power during her crying-under-the-piano-onstage years, YOU. ARE. FREE. Or maybe you’re just lazy? Point is, everyone knows that, when it comes to travel, to maintain such unstudied and uncompromising liberation from plans, you’re going to need a plan.

Freedom tastes best served with a side of sensible contingency preparation, my friend.

So we found the best, totally free electronic applications to download so that you don’t get robbed/lose a reliable wi-fi connection while traversing the globe like a majestic dire-wolf.
–

App #1: Wi-Fi Finder

Why: If I really have to explain the benefits of easily accessible internet to you, then I genuinely have no idea how you’re reading this or what you want from me. This app makes it easy to catch the waves of the world wide web without using your data downloads, and to use the internet from your device without having set up international roaming — and let’s be honest it’s totally the latter because you totally didn’t set up roaming.

Wi-Fi Finder even compares wi-fi strength from locations near you, like cafes, libraries, underground opium dens etc.

For: All iPhone and Android stuff.

Get It: Here.
–

App #2: Flying

Why: This guy is the Ryan Gosling of flight-tracking apps. It keeps you updated on your flights and check-ins at the same time as being really, really good-looking.

There are these flight points and stamps for when you achieve flight milestones and other stuff which you probably won’t use, but it also updates to social media, so you can be like, ‘Oh I didn’t even know my phone posted that I just landed in Tibet, that’s so crazy’, but then never switch the function off.

For: This app is exclusive to iPhones. Soz.

Get It: Here.
–

App #3: XE Currency

Why: If you’re anything like me (and our covert but penetrative demographic mining suggests you are!), you are going to be totally screwed trying to do all of your currency conversions in your brain box. I always end up waffling things like ‘Well it’s $1000000 pesetas  – minus tax, carry the four… banana…’ until someone steps in and works it out for me or robs me blind. This app instantly accesses live currency exchange rates and helps you to calculate your expenses on the go.

Availability: It can be downloaded on iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Windows and Firefox OS.

Get It: Here.
–

App #4: Duolingo

Why: I honestly have no idea how anyone ever learnt another language before Malcolm Turnbull invented the internet. None. This app makes it so easy to learn Spanish, English, French, German, Portuguese or Italian, while doing the least amount of work. You’ll be conjugating the pants off your verbs in no time.

For: iPhone and Android.

Get It: Here.
–

App #5: Roadtrippers

Why: If you’re heading to the US for an epic Instagramatic road-trip this is the perfect app to pack. The easy-to-use interface lets you select attractions, historical sites, shopping hubs, food or nature hikes and adds them to the (really good) map for you. It’s just like travelling with that friend who researches everything to the hilt, but not annoying or awful.

For: iPhone and Android – only for the US and Israel; Canada, Australia and the UK coming soon.

Get It: Here.
–

App #6: SkyScanner

Why:  Okay you probably already use Skyscanner on your computer, but it’s really good to have on hand as well in case you need to leave the country really, really quickly. As you may know, it compares flight times and prices, to any destination, across every airline ever.

For: iPhone and Android.

Get It:  Here.
–

App #7: Viber

Why: Viber uses your internet connection (or, the internet of the person next to you who stupidly never set up a password) to send messages, make calls, take photos, or send video messages/dick pics, totally for free.

For: iPhone and Android.

Get It: Here.
–

App #8: ImageIt

Why: This is either the cleverest app or the dumbest app ever, I can’t decide. Never mind though, because it is also the funnest. It works kind of like Pictionary, in that you draw and select images of what you’re trying to say to the non-English speaker with whom you are trying to communicate. I see a Fawlty Towers-esque potential for intercontinental conversation caper and mildly racist miscommunication.

It’s also happily distracting on the long haul flight home, when you’re trying not to think about telling your dad what happened to the emergency credit card.

For: iPhone, iPad and Android.

Get It: Here.

–

Busabout are giving you and a friend the chance to win $10,000 worth of hop on/hop off European travel. You can choose from 34 different destinations for the fully flexible trip of a lifetime! Enter here. 

–

Alice Williams is a founding editor of Melbourne print magazine, SPOOK. You can read her at PedestrianTV, The Vine, SPOOK, and Daily Life but she looks better on Twitter @shutupalice.