Offline Maps – How to never get lost when you travel abroad!

Offline Maps – When travelling, it can be very challenging to find your way in cities you have never been to, although I am convinced that getting is not always a bad thing. When asking for directions, you’re likely to make wonderful and unexpected encounters and with a little bit of luck, you’ll end up in much more beautiful places than the ones you were heading to.

It doesn’t matter how and where you are travelling to, there are times when you just want to reach your destination, like when you terribly want to get to your hotel after a 15-hour flight.

So there’s probably nothing special about this tip I’m going to tell you about and I was kind of sure that everyone already knew about it. But the more I talk about it to travelers I meet, the more I realize that it’s not that obvious for everyone so I decided to write a blog post about it.

I’ve made you wait long enough already so here it is : if you don’t want to get lost while travelling, use the miraculous mobile app Maps.me. It’s got everything you need, offline! I mean seriously, this app changed my life and my traveling experience. You’ve probably read that in my Travel Tips but I always advise people not to use internet on their phones when they’re travelling to avoid having to pay staggering amounts of money that could be used more wisely so don’t worry! We’re not going to do that; this app is all about offline goodness!

How does it work you say? Maps.me – Offline Maps is an app that allows you to get directions to where you want to go even when you are offline. All you need is to download the app and the maps of the country you’re planning to visit when you have access to an internet connexion. Make sure to do it before leaving for the that country by the way, when you have a reliable internet connexion, because internet tends to be very slow in some countries and some maps are more than 100 Mo in size (Thailand Map for example). Check out this video to understand how to use Offline Maps:

Once that’s done, you’re good to go, just answer the call of adventure! You will not only have your maps with you but you’ll also be able to check your current position on the map whenever you like. The signal for that is sent via satellite (GPS), not internet so you won’t need to be connected to anything to find your way. Of course you’ll have to activate geo-tracking on your phone to be able to see your current position.

I know it sounds easy as pie, and it is but many people don’t know about it and don’t think that such an amazing app could exist. So please share this life-saving tip with your friends by sending them this article! I know it did get me out of trouble a couple of times when I was in Japan for some time and I discovered this app, looking up stuff on my phone.

You’ll also find it very useful to make sure the taxi you just jumped in takes you to your destination without taking a big detour and ripping you off with extra charges because that happened to me! It was in Bangkok actually; the taxi driver wanted to take me to a costume shop without telling me and I was able to avoid that thanks to Maps.me – Offline Maps! I told him he’d better get back on track or pull over and let me out so he quickly apologized and I could feel he wasn’t expecting it. Let’s not make hasty generalizations there, not all taxi drivers are nasty drivers of course! But you should always be vigilant and Offline Maps will help you do just that.

Don’t forget you can still subscribe to my social media for more blog posts and pictures of my travels: Facebook Page, Facebook Group, Instagram, Youtube and Twitter.

I hope you’ll find these tips useful and wish you all a wonderful trip !

Talk to you all very soon,

MF