Travel Tools
Plan trips and search flights.
Everyday slang for thirteen countries, including the false friends that embarrass travellers and the words that mean the opposite abroad.
Country Travel ReferencePlugs and voltage, emergency numbers, tipping, currency, drive side and tap-water guidance for a long list of countries, in one place.
Travel PhrasebookEssential travel phrases in twelve languages with pronunciation and speech, working offline once loaded.
Flight SearchBuild a flight search and open it instantly on Google Flights or Skyscanner — a launcher, with the search habits that actually find cheaper fares.
About these travel tools
Time zones are not a grid, and assuming they are is how meetings get missed. India runs at UTC+5:30, Nepal at UTC+5:45, the Chatham Islands at UTC+12:45 — offsets of thirty and forty-five minutes are used by hundreds of millions of people. China spans five geographic zones and uses one, so the sun rises in western Xinjiang around ten in the morning by the clock. Then daylight saving moves independently: the hemispheres shift in opposite directions, and the gap between London and New York is five hours for most of the year but four during two short windows each spring and autumn when one has changed and the other has not. A stored offset is not a time zone, and this is why. The second thing worth knowing is that the exchange rate you read is not the rate you get. The mid-market rate is the midpoint between what buyers and sellers are quoting, and nobody transacts at it. Cards typically add one to three per cent, airport bureaux far more, and dynamic currency conversion — the machine helpfully offering to charge you in your home currency — is usually the worst rate available, so declining it and paying in local currency is nearly always right. The third is that a passport validity rule is about your departure date from the country, not your arrival in it. Most countries asking for six months of validity measure from when you LEAVE their territory, and airlines enforce it at check-in on the destination’s behalf, which is how people get turned away at their home airport by a rule belonging to a country they have not yet reached.