Forget chunky guidebooks and dog-eared printouts – Travelfish’s new Angkor iPhone app provides a slick new way to get the travel info you need to explore Angkor
Travelfish is pretty much the definitive website for travel info if you’re looking to explore Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos – and now Stuart and Sam, the site’s co-creators, have produced their first iPhone application in conjunction with South African iPhone development team Bytesizedcreations,which covers the Temples of Angkor and nearby city of Siem Reap.
The move of travel guides to the iPhone and other similar devices is a logical step – the sheer portability of the iPhone, its internet connectivity, easy to use interface and location positioning capabilities makes it potentially a way more efficient and useful way of storing and accessing travel info – provided, of course, whoever has bundled that info together in an application has done a good job of making it easy to understand and move through, as well as the traditional editorial necessities of being well-researched and accurate.
Angkor iPhone App Travelfish
Travelfish has previously pioneered downloadable PDF guides to specific destinations in South East Asia, and their Angkor iPhone app is a slick continuation of the same idea. There’s a stack of info here, comprehensively covering Angkor’s best temples, other attractions in the surrounding area, over 40 hostel and hotel reviews with online booking or enquiry forms, restaurant recommendations, transport info and detailed, interactive maps of the temple locations and the town of Siem Reap. It’s the same philosophy of independently researched, impartial info, with lots of photos and colour that make it visually way more appealing than the usual guidebooks and Travelfish’s own printouts. The pictures aren’t just there to be pretty – they greatly help the user scroll through the info as visual markers.
The app also has a very well thought out navigation interface, making it easy to get straight into Hotels or Restaurants or Temple information depending on what you need at any specific moment. Despite there being a lot of information, it doesn’t feel overwhelming due to the app being well organised and easy to move around.
The Angkor app also exploits the iPhone’s GPS capabilities so you can always find yourself on the maps included in the App, which will let you see where you are in relation to the items such as hotels, restaurants etc already marked on there. You’ll need to have connectivity through your SIM card for the GPS to work, obviously.
In short, if you’ve got an iPhone (or an iPod Touch, on which the App works just as well except for the GPS bit, as the Touch doesn’t come equipped with GPS) this App is, without any hyperbole, all you need to explore Angkor and Siem Reap. It’s also cheap – $8 US. You can download it direct from the Apple store.
Travelfish already have several more iPhone apps to other destinations in the works which should be out within the first half of 2010. Given the popularity of the iPhone and the general trend of transition from paper to digital – as indicated by Amazon selling more ebooks than real books in Christmas 2009 – it looks like there will be more and more travel apps for the iPhone in future. Travelfish have certainly set the bar hight with their Angkor app, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do next – and heading out on a trip armed with just an iPhone.
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Thanks for the write-up Chris — glad you liked the App!