Unwrapped travel

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As we moved our first app into beta testing last week, we thought now would be a good time to let you know about some of the features of the app and show you a few more screenshots — just so you are completely tantalised!

First, a special thanks to those who volunteered to help with the testing. We had more than 100 people volunteer — thank you to you all. Unfortunately it wasn’t practical to get everyone involved in the testing, so we whittled the list down to a dozen or so to put the app through its paces.

I can’t really discuss anything in more detail without letting the cat out of the bag: Our first app covers Cambodia’s Siem Reap and Angkor Wat.

The app is called “Angkor”.

Keeping it simple
One of the tempations with the iPhone/iPod Touch is that few limitations stop you cramming whatever you can into the device, so our immediate approach was to put everything bar the kitchen sink in. The problem with this is that you quickly develop a massive dump of information that is both intimidating and unwieldy for the poor guy on the street that just wants to find a cheap noodle joint.

There’s nothing worse than opening an app packed to the lintels with information, only to get a list that goes and goes and goes and goes some more. So we tossed the list out the window and went with eight simple top level categories:

Background | Sleep | Eat & meet | See & do
Transport | Walking tours | Photos | Maps

Each section contains sub-categories and sections, but at a glance, you should know exactly which section of the app you want to head to. Here is a screenshot:

Makes sense?

Delve a little deeper
Each section then has sub-sections. In the Background section, for example, you’ll find information under the headings of History, About Cambodia, and Planning. Each of these may contain smaller sections themselves. History for instance is broken up into more than a dozen chapters, each talking of a specific period and where appropriate matched with a picture. About Cambodia has chapters on Food, Language and Safety (among others), with these often broken into sub-sections — food has Eating Khmer Food, Snacks, Insects and so on. So it’s four levels of fun.

Before you recoil from what sounds like a hellish conflagration of lists, listen to this: No lists are involved. Well, there is a list if you want to use it, but the important thing is you don’t need to. Instead we make use of the great iPhone swiping feature to allow the reader to flick through the sections looking for one that catches their eye — sort of like how you’d leaf through a book. Here is a partial screenshot showing a couple of history snaps.

What this means is that you can dig deeper and deeper into various subjects, learn a bit (we hope!) and be helped along with the photos.

If you’re scratching your head and thinking “Hey I didn’t read any of this on the Travelfish website!” you’d be right. The app contains around 40,000 words of extra content that we have written purposefully for the app.

Save time and money
As you probably know, many guesthouses and hotels can be booked online. Within the accommodation section, all the contact details are clearly displayed, but if a place works through property resellers (like Agoda or HostelWorld) then we also give the reader the option to click through to that site to make a reservation.

The problem is, resellers often have different rates, meaning that if you’re looking for the cheapest option you have to go check each provider and compare rates. We save you the trouble and show you the cheapest rate in our records that is available at each reseller. See the screenshot below for an example.

Decide where to go before you get there
Most of the sights, especially the Angkor ruins, have been matched with a photo. There’s nothing worse than reading about a site that sounds at least half interesting, only to get there and find four laterite blocks and a sleeping pooch. By matching the sights with pics, and with our straightshooting write-ups, you’ll be able to decide quickly what you do and don’t want to spend your time doing.

This is further buttressed by a handful of walking tours that give you a range of different options and routes — helpfully marked on the maps — to help you get the most out of the app.

Stay on the straight and narrow
It’s just not an app without a map right? We’ve packed up some neat bundled maps with the app. You’ll get down to the ground detail for Siem Reap and Angkor Wat along with a bird’s eye view of the rest of Cambodia — including the capital and border crossings. This means you’ll have all you need to plan without needing to get online once, so no need to fret about totally insane roaming bills.

The maps are annotated with markers that lead you straight to listings (so click on Angkor What? bar and you’ll be taken to their review in the Eat section). It also works in reverse, so if you’re reading about Two Dragons Guesthouse, you can click on the map icon and have the map pop up to show you just where you need to go to pick Gordon’s brain.

And there’s more
The app also contains a photo gallery with hundreds of photos along with the standard stuff like bookmarking, help, glossary and FAQs. Results also can also be reordered and sorted to make it even easier to find what you’re after.

On the subject of search
There isn’t one.

We don’t mean to brag, but we reckon the information is so well organised and so easy to find that there is no need for a search facility in this app.

We thought it was better to eschew one totally rather than go for what would have been nothing more than a glorified filter — a solution that has been much derided in other travel apps. If you can’t find something in this app, we’re willing to bet that is because it isn’t there.

That said, if you’re reading this and just happen to be able to write a natural language search algorithm for the iPhone, please do get in touch

So when is it going to be available
We’re planning the final beta-build tomorrow (Tuesday) and as long as no last-minute problems flare the app should go to Apple shortly afterwards. Once they have it, we need to bide our time while it runs through the approval process.

Once it is available, we’ll be celebrating and will be giving away coupons for the app at the iTunes store. If you’re a blogger interested in receiving the app for review purposes, contact me at stuartmcdonald@travelfish.org.

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Yesterday I caught up with a couple of Travelfishers who happened to be in Bali and took them off for an afternoon of beach sitting and BBQ seafood eating — yes, you should always get in touch if you happen to be in Bali!

As an added bonus I had the first functional build of our first Travelfish app on my iPod Touch and so, after I’d clouded their judgement with enough Bintang, I said hey take a look at this — and they were suitably impressed.

So, given the cat is starting to sneak out of the bag, I thought I’d sit down and go through in a bit more detail what we’re trying to do with the new Travelfish app.

SOME HISTORY
A few months ago I knew nothing about apps. I knew iTunes was great for downloading free Sesame Street podcasts for the kids and, ahhhh, Village People albums for Samantha, but that was about it.

Then in July my parents visited and Dad had an iPhone 3Gs with him. Within ten minutes I was a convert. Over the next ten days we took the phone through its paces. We used Google maps to trace a drive up to Bedugal. We checked email and browsed Travelfish on White Sand beach north of Candidasa. We browsed hotels in Sanur while sitting on the beach. As a travel research device and planning tool, it was absolutely awesome.

Not long after this we partnered with a developer and started building our first app.

When I finally got around to getting my own gadget, I went for the considerably cheaper iPod Touch that came in at a third of the price of an iPhone 3G (the 3Gs is as yet unavailable in Indonesia). First I went and downloaded Flight Control — a totally addictive game that you should get too, but once I’d given up on bettering my amateurish score of 64, I started looking at it as a work and research device.

Now, as long as I’m within range of a WiFi signal, I can use the Touch for email and web browsing, Twitter, Facebook, chat and basic note-taking. On my next trip all I will be taking is the Touch — no laptop.

Then I went in search of travel apps, purchasing and downloading all the other Asia-focused travel apps I could find. The majority were poor, in quality, execution or both. There were some gems, HostelHero for example, but the bulk were quite disappointing.

But out of this disappoinment came the opportunity of doing some things better:

CONTENT REMAINS KING
In some apps the content is primarily derived from free sources on the net, for example Wikipedia or WikiTravel. I’ll be the first to say some Wiki content is great, but when the only listings offered in the food section of one city is a single Indian restaurant that we’d banned for spamming Travelfish I’m not sure how many times, the need for curation is highlighted. Uncurated Wiki content is problematic. As is reams of totally unformatted text dumped straight out of a Wiki.

So comes the first goal of the Travelfish app: The content must be as good, if not better, than what is available on the Travelfish site and it must be tailored for use on the iPhone.

THE IRONY OF NOT WANTING AN INTERNET CONNECTION
A lot of the cheaper (under $3) or free travel apps are really just a gateway to an actual website. There’s nothing wrong with this if:

a) you’re in an area where internet connectivity is ubiquitous;

b) you’re on a local sim card so roaming charges are not an issue.

If you’re tramping through rural Cambodia on a five-day break, chances are you’ll have zero connectivity and you won’t have a local sim card.

My father’s roaming bill after the aforementioned 11 days in Bali was A$4,400.

So came the second goal of the Travelfish app: It must not require internet connectivity to be useful.

INFORMATION OVERLOAD
Other apps, notably Lonely Planet’s, are absolutely packed to the rafters with information, but when it comes to simple tasks such as finding a guesthouse or a place to eat, the process is very complex and not at all intuitive.

In a very clever move, Lonely Planet has set up an excellent resource courtesy of GetSatisfaction that allows people to lodge praise and complaints for their apps. This proved to be an ideal resource for seeing what issues customers were having and how Lonely Planet was dealing with them.

So comes the third goal of the Travelfish app: The app must be intuitive to use and the information must be easy to find.

MAPHEM
One of the challenges faced by the other real travel apps is maps. It is a frustrating business to be browsing offline and in a situation where you really need a map only to get a “You gotta be online” message when you click on a map link.

So comes the fourth goal of the Travelfish app: The maps must be totally cached and be able to be used offline at all times.

THE FAMILIAR VS THE FUNKY
Lastly, once you’ve looked at and used a few apps, the design, look and feel all gets pretty similar — a dollop of lists, a smidgen of pics, a dash of icons and a pinch of dropdowns. We decided we wanted something that looked. really. good. So we’ve largely dispensed with lists and drop downs. While it isn’t quite as fancy as the big screens Tom Cruise played with in Minority Report, the app interface really turns traditional travel appdom on its head, yet it is so simple, you’ll have it down in seconds.

So comes the fifth goal of the Travelfish app: It must be funky but not at the expense of functionality.

I’m happy to say that, with the first working build in my hand, all five of the above have been satisfied.

Q AND A
The response to our newsletter list has certainly surpassed our expectations, and we’ve been getting a lot of questions — so here’s answers to the 10 most frequently asked questions regarding the Travelfish app:

Q) Where will the app cover?
A) The first Travelfish app is destination rather than country focused. The launch destination is somewhere in Cambodia.

Q) Will the app be free?
A) No, but assumming all goes to plan there will be free apps on the way.

Q) How much will it cost?
A) We expect it to be priced at a similar or slightly higher level than the Travelfish Guides. Please bear in mind that Apple takes 30% of the final selling price.

Q) Will the app contain extra information compared to the Travelfish site?
A) Yes. It comes with a far more detailed background section — history, culture, guidence on health and safety, money matters and so on. Sort of similar to the introductory section you’d see in a legacy guidebook. That said, while we’re putting a lot of new material into the app, nothing is more than four “clicks” from the splash page.

Q) When will the app be out?
A) We’re currently working towards having it to Apple by early December.

Q) Will the app have ads in it?
A) No.

Q) Will I be able to update the information in the app?
A) At this stage no, but this feature is on our longer development timeline.

Q) Will the app have Google maps in it?
A) No. We’ve used Google Maps for the interactive maps on Travelfish, but due to licensing issues, we can’t bundle these maps how we wanted to. The app does have fully interactive maps, but they are not supplied by Google.

Q) Will I be able to book places online through the app?
A) You’ll be able to contact places directly via web, email, phone and fax and where we have a link to an online reservation supplier you’ll be able to make reservations through those other sites (in which case you will obviously require internet connectivity).

Q) Will I need an iPhone for it to work or will an iPod Touch be enough?
A) The app will work on either an iPod Touch or an iPhone.

SCREENSHOTS
We really don’t want to give too much away in this regard, but here are a couple of screenshots of sections of the app. Note these are not final and the finished product may look a bit different to this.

Some of the details on the accommodation profile above have been blanked out.

Yes, Sam does like her crab — especially with a liberal dose of Kampot pepper.

Thanks for signing up for the list and we hope to have something ready for you to use in the very near future.

Cheers

Stuart and Sam

As far as independent budget travellers are concerned, Singapore has always been a bit of a budget buster. “S$20 for a dorm room?” Are you kidding? No we’re serious — anything more than a day or two in this fascinating city-state will leave your wallet in dire need of some slow time on Ko Pha Ngan to recuperate.

But it’s not all bad news, and our Singapore-based Travelfisher has put together a cheatsheet for some ways to stretch your Sing dollars out that little bit further. We’re not saying your stay won’t still cost a motza, but these tips will save you some money!

You can read the full story here: Singapore on a budget.

So you’ve heard of the spicy sauce, now visit its spicy home! Sri Racha, located midway between Bangkok and Pattaya barely rates a second thought in most travellers’ itineraries, but if you’ve got the time up your sleeve — why not? There’s a few half decent places to stay, an offshore island and a bucket-load of good eating!

You’ll probably need no more than a night to take in most of the town’s delights and luckily for you, we’ve summed them all up for you over on the main Travelfish site. So please do check out our Sri Racha travel guide.

We’ve just added a new Travelfish Guide to the store — the third edition of our top-selling Travelfish Guide to Ko Phi Phi in southern Thailand.

The guide is easily the most comprehensive guide to Ko Phi Phi available and as it was researched on the ground in October 2009, the information doesn’t get any fresher than this!

We’ve increased the font size a bit to make the guide a bit easier on the old eyeballs, so it’s a good deal longer than the previous editions. There are also four maps, detailed reviews on 50 (yes fifty) places to stay across the island. In our accommodation reviews we looked at all budgets — from 150 baht dorms to 15,000 baht private pool villas — and everything in between. There’s also information on where to eat and drink, a diving guide and tips on how to do the island on the cheap.

We’re also, for the first time ever, offering a couple of pages as a free download so that you can check for yourself and decide if it really is worth the US$4.95 we’re asking. You can download the sample pages here (in PDF format).

Of course there is the Travelfish 7-day money-back guarantee — no questions asked.

Sounds interesting? You can buy the guide online here — it is available for download immediately after purchase.

We’ve been busy deepening our coverage along the famous Mae Hong Son loop in northern Thailand and have just added seven new spots working south from Chiang Mai.

First stop is Hang Dong, followed in quick succession by Sanpatong, Chom Thong, Hot, Mae Chaem, the very little visited Mae Na Chon and last but not least, Thailand’s tallest peak, Doi Inthanon.

So if you’re doing some slow travel along this route, you might want to give some of these spots a looksee.

For most people doing the Mae Hong Son loop, the blip of a town of Khun Yuam is little more than a halfway point between the far larger town of Mae Sariang to the south and the provincial capital of Mae Hong Son to the north. But, if you’ve the time, it’s a comfortable spot to break up the journey.

As such, we’ve just added some coverage onto the main Travelfish site. Afterall Khun Yuam is an ideal spot from which to visit the breathtaking Mae Surin Waterfall and, in November and December the fields coime alight with flowering wild sunflowers, painting the hills yellow. There’s a good place to stay, a handful of cheap eateries and even a local wat to poke around in, so if you’ve the time, slow down and give Khun Yuam a night — our complete Khun Yuam travel guide is here.

When Bali institution Kafe Warisan shuttered a few weeks ago, those craving French cuisine with rice paddy views didn’t have long to wait to head out again. Warisan creators Said Alem and Nicolas Tourneville opened Metis just shy of two weeks ago and we thought we’d give it a test drive for a birthday dinner on October 27.

In summary: The food, in particular the sauces, are superb; the prices are reasonable; the service is friendly but needs a little work; and foie gras isn’t “legendary” when a new restaurant has only been open two weeks!

Reservations:
Their phone rang unanswered twice through mid-afternoon when we tried to make our reservation. Called in the evening and it was answered immediately. We had no problems making a reservation just a couple of days beforehand, booking in for a table for two at 8pm on a Tuesday. Courteous.

Layout & initial impressions:
Metis sits well back off Petitenget Road with adequate parking. We came by taxi. The dramatic pathway leading from the street to the restaurant — complete with water-borne torches ablaze — is somewhat lowlit, enough so that the half-dozen two-inch high steps along the way could be tripped on by the unaware. Brisk and polite security zapped our bags. When a mobile phone set off an alarm he asked, “Is that a phone?” to which we resisted saying, “No, it’s a bomb!” and entered the main foyer. The main entry has an Asian-inspired antiques store to the left and macaroon/chocolate shop to the right, with the main restaurant reached via a slight dogleg between the two. As you enter the dining area, you can immediately take in the splendid vista of the restaurant and rice paddy beyond.

The restaurant is configured as an open-plan “U” with the central area a small grassy tableau, behind which sits the paddy views, a la Warisan. A long, luminescently green bar and casual lounge area runs along the right leg of the U ending in a sunken bar that juts directly into the paddy. The long bar was held up by a few foreigners in shorts and flipflops — we’re not clotheshorses, but come *on* people! The left leg is partly given over to the enclosed kitchen area. The best seating is at the centre of the U, right beside the lawn — and that’s where we were seated.

The bar:
We arrived almost 30 minutes early but were seated to eat immediately — we would have preferred to be asked if we wanted a drink at the bar first, so we ended up asking. The sunken bar, open to the sky, was initially deserted save one other customer, and a rat that ran straight between my feet (a mouse, according to our waiter), giving the paddy setting a touch more authenticity.

The modular seating is somewhat problematic. It’s basically two concentric half-circle lounges, one bigger than the other — they fit together with a small table flush to both at the centre. But the smaller circle needs a few people to be moved out to allow people to sit down, with the table then at the centre. We had to get the staff to help us position the seats, as did two other groups who came later. We imagine they’ll eventually have the tables spun out and ready for customers in the future.

Once we were seated, service was prompt and helpful. We ordered a Fifty Seven Magnum (70,000 Rp++) and a Chamango (70,000 Rp++). We’re all too aware of the liquor pricing issues in Indonesia, but in a place like Metis, we expected to pay more for our drinks — and get a martini glass of the size KuDeTa serves up. Beer nuts with toasted garlic accompanied the drinks. A margarita served for round number two was a better size. Service had to be called over to make a second order, despite an empty glass on the table for five minutes or so. Napkins didn’t arrive till the second drink. Beer nuts were not refilled. The jazzy music was audible but not too loud and as it wasn’t crowded, it felt quite intimate. We can’t help but wonder what they will do in wet season though — as it was the lounges felt a touch damp and the rains haven’t even begun. When I asked a waiter about protection in the rain, she said they would cover everything in plastic sheeting.

Once back at our table, we perused one main menu each, a specials menu, a foie gras menu and the wine list. A small canapé was served and we asked for bread — twice — but it didn’t appear until our appetizers did, 30 minutes later. The lack of bread was annoying, as was the floodlight directed upwards into the frangipani beside our table, which needs some shielding.

The food:
The business end of the evening! If you were a fan of Warisan, you’ll not be disappointed with the fare at Metis. An expansive menu, one of us had a lot of trouble deciding just what to have. Describing a dish as containing the restaurant’s “legendary foie gras” when the paint is barely dry on the walls, was a little presumptuous. You *were* Warisan, and now you are Metis! We ordered grilled scallops with foie gras (195,000 Rp) followed by barramundi (165,000 Rp) and grilled fresh Japanese scallops with gratinated sea urchin sauce (180,000 Rp) followed by Moroccan lamb rack mechoui (215,000 Rp). We asked for and received a twenty-minute break between courses.

Unfortunately wine in Indonesia is taxed to a completely ludicrous degree and as we’re just not willing to pay $75 for a $15 bottle of wine, we tend to make do with the “local” Hatten wines. Metis had both their white and rose on the menu, at a slight mark-up, but not the red. I’m the first to say the Hatten red is far from memorable, but its drinkable and not outrageously expensive. We’d have got a bottle of the Hatten Red if Metis carried it, but their next cheapest, (3Rivers Shiraz Cabernet) carried a substantial mark-up — so we just went with a glass of 3Rivers (120,000 Rp per glass) with the main and a couple of Heinekens (35,000 Rp per bottle).

On the upside, water comes cheap — free flow Evian for the evening cost 25,000 Rp per person, though we’d suggest the water be decanted into something more attractive than 1.5 litre plastic bottles that look to be straight from the Circle K.

The Japanese scallops were fabulous. Set on a creamy sea urchin sauce, the dish was especially rich, but the scallops had a smooth, succulent texture and delicious flavour. The bread — at last! — was perfect for mopping up the sauce. That plate went back glisteningly clear. The fois gras with scallops and puy lentils was outstanding. We usually feel sufficiently guilty to never eat fois gras, but were tempted and it was delectable. Despite the fabulously rich sauce, even the flavour of the lentils came through.

By the time we’d finished the entree the restaurant was humming. The staff coped well and we were never left waiting. One distraction was that as the restaurant got busier the double swinging doors into the kitchen area were swung open and closed near constantly. This continual flicker of light and moving people was mildly irritating — and we were on the opposite side of the restaurant — yet people were being seated right beside this. Reserve ahead and specifically ask to be seated away from the kitchen doors.

If our scallops were fabulous, the lamb rack was superb — we’d go as far as to say it was probably the best lamb rack one of us has eaten — ever. Set on a base of vegetable ragout with a side of couscous, the etched crackle skin (easily removable for those who watch what they eat — not us!) sat atop lamb that fell off the bone. There was a slight spice-y aftertaste — star anise? — but the complex flavours were delightful. This was a hearty serving and it took a long, thoroughly pleasurable time to work through.

Our barramundi meanwhile was perhaps just a touch overdone, but the risoni underneath had perfect bite and was nestled in yet another amazing sauce. A win, but with some order envy alongside that lamb.

Dessert? We couldn’t fit anything in, but it must be said, after spending a lot of time trying to decide on the mains, the dessert offerings left us a little uninspired.

All food and beverage plus service (6%) and tax (10%) came out at 1,614,910 Rp which was a bit less than the expected million per head we’d have guessed ahead of time.

As we left, we suddenly found inspiration lurking again in the little sweet shop. We selected some chocolate mint truffles and a few macaroons to take home, with a selection of six coming to 33,000 Rp. We also perused the antiques — a lovely Chinese wedding box jad a cool price tag of 37,5000,000 Rp — not sure if the price includes a wedding ceremony.

Our advice?
Book ahead and ask for a table by the lawn. Specifically ask to be away from the kitchen doors. Get there early, perhaps 30 minutes beforehand to enjoy the bar area. Get the lamb!

Metis
Jl. Petitenget No. 6, Bali, Indonesia.
T: (0361) 737 888
info@metisbali.com
http://www.metisbali.com/

All images taken from the Metis website – note the last images is reversed on their website

Just walking down the footpath can be a memorable experience in Southeast Asia — you could easily cross paths with an elephant, meander past a blind musicians or step aside to make way for a column of monks — yet one of the most memorable facets is the food. Clayton, Chad, and Lyndon, three Canadian chef-travellers, decided to record their experience as they cooked — and ate — their way across Southeast Asia. We did a short interview with the guys and have showcased some of their videos on the site — you can read the full interview with Chefs Without Borders here.

What makes the perfect beach? Are you looking for stretches where no other speedo has swum or are sunset bars and thumping music more your thing? While Ko Tao is best known for its diving industry, it’s also home to more than its fair share of glorious stretches of sand. So here is a round up on some of Ko Tao’s best beaches — note though, this isn’t an exhaustive list — we don’t want to take away all the fun!