At first blush, they’re little different from most phrasebook apps. Organized in categories, they allow you to look up common phrases. When you find “hello” it gives you the written translation and pronunciation (in Mandarin, it provides the Chinese character as well as the Pinyin) and provides playable audio. This puts it a step above many phrasebook apps I’ve used, which only include a few audio files, and far above a paper version devoid of any audio at all.

In a pinch, you don’t even need to learn the language, just hand over the earbuds and press “play” on the appropriate phrase.

Lingopal’s translation programs also excel in the sheer volume of phrases they provide. Hundreds of phrases come with each app and they offer 44 different languages. They have a free “lite” version of most guides, but the full guide is only .99 (for each language), so it’s an incredible value.

One last way that this stands out as a useful app is for those who aren’t native English speakers. The app allows the user to set the “native” language to whichever they prefer, which is something I haven’t seen in any other competitor (without buying an app specific to that language).

Where does the entertainment come in?

Well, let’s just reveal that the app comes with an “adult content” warning.

Beyond the standard categories, Lingopal includes some you won’t find in other phrasebooks. Sure, they offer “Essentials,” “Numbers,” “Dining,” “Directions” and more, but they also include “Flirting.” An unbelievable nine categories of flirting – from “First Move” to “Getting Lucky.”

Translated phrases include everything from “You’re very pretty” to “I’m a dolphin trainer,” “I’m a pilot,” and “I’m a ski instructor.”

Many are included purely to provide comedy, or to relieve boredom on the part of the creators.

• “I like puppies, long walks on the beach, and reading French poetry in the moonlight.”
• “You are so beautiful that I would marry your brother just to get into your family.”
• “Ah, you have eyebrows, I love a girl with eyebrows.”
• “So you say you’re straight? So is spaghetti until you heat it up.”

If you aren’t interested, there’s the always useful: “I’m sorry, but I’m diseased.”

After all of that, there are two categories of insults – mild and X-rated. These probably aren’t anything you’ll ever use, but provide some entertainment – for you and any friends who speak the language it translates to. The most extreme of those are:

• “Are your parents cousins?”
• “Eat the peanuts out of my shit.”
• “I used to fuck guys like you in prison.”

I love that Lingopal is a useful and well-designed app, but doesn’t take itself seriously 100% of the time. It’s reminiscent of the early days of Google, when jokes and Easter eggs were frequently intertwined with their output. Google still has its moments of fun (ask Google Maps for directions from Los Angeles to Tokyo sometime), but they’re much less common these days.

Try the “lite” versions for free and enjoy! Available in the ITunes store for iPhones and iPod Touch and for Android phones.

This is NOT a sponsored post. Just sharing something I like a lot.

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I’ve gotten more relaxed since I’ve been traveling, but I still have OCD moments. The iPhone e-book  app “Stanza” visually represents a bookmark as a torn page corner. I stopped leaving bookmarks because it bugs the shit out of me that a virtual page is purposely torn.

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There are many things I’ve done on this trip that I never did at home. For example, in Los Angeles I would never have been caught dead going to Watts, but in Thailand I’m visiting a lot of them.

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I was turned off when I saw the word “dung” on a restaurant sign in Vietnam, but this place in Thailand beats the shit out of that. So to speak.

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I wonder if the currency in Thailand was named by someone trying to say “toy boat” 3 times fast.

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After walking through many of the streets of Bangkok, I still haven’t seen a trannie bar called “Island of Misfit Boys” but that’s a natural one for the holiday season.

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After spending a month in Vietnam and moving on to Thailand I had to get used to traffic driving on the opposite side of the street. Well, I actually had to get used to them driving on only one side of the street.

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The only way this dog exercise treadmill could be any cooler is if they built a giant Habitrail around him.

note to PETA: the treadmill was not motorized, the dog was running on his own and loving every second of it

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I thought dogs in Thailand were really well behaved, but then realized that it’s just too hot for them to do more than lay in the shade, lift their heads and “meh” at potential intruders.

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If you had grown up in the 70s, you’d remember that Mr. Moose would constantly drop ping pong balls on Captain Kangaroo’s head. When I heard about “Ping Pong Shows” in Bangkok, that’s what kept coming to mind. Now I can’t shake the mental image of Mr. Moose shooting ping pong balls out of his vagina.

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Showing a Justin Bieber video in a nightclub should be banned for breaking some kind of underage drinking law.

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If hookers aren’t your thing, it’s nice to know that there are ATMs where you can get a date rape drug quickly.

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One of my favorite looks on women in Bangkok is wearing glasses with her hair tied up. I’ve named that style “the Naughty Thaibrarian.”

Part 1 detailed my favorite destinations so far, along with a couple I didn’t enjoy quite as much.

For Part 2, here are some updates on the logistics and financials of the trip.

With all of the nuts and bolts of the trip, the critical thing is to find a balance that makes you comfortable. Here’s how things are playing out for me, so far.

Accommodations

After a stay with friends in England, I experienced my first hostel stay in Lille, France. It was not a pleasant way to start off a long journey – the hostel I booked had no real community rooms, dark & dingy bathrooms and no lockers to store belongings.

Fortunately, the hostels I’ve stayed at since then have all been significant improvements over that first one – with kitchens, bars, lounges and even low cost laundry facilities.

Along the way, I’ve been in many small towns that don’t have hostels, but the cost of the B&Bs have been even lower than some of the hostels I’ve stayed at. Throughout Bretagne, there are wonderful cozy, country hideaways for less than the cost of a nice dinner. Some of them ARE in the middle of nowhere, so having a bike helped tremendously.

I’ve balanced the hostel stays with hotels once in a while. If you search well, you can often find hotel rooms for the same cost as a hostel and even if it’s a couple of dollars more, having a private room to stretch out is worth it once in a while.

My favorite is the homestay. Through AirBnB.com, I found a wonderful flat in Paris and was able to live like a local for a couple of weeks. Far less than a hotel, and a bit more than a hostel but having a full apartment including laundry, internet and kitchen saved me a lot of money on the living expenses so it evened out.

Money

Overall, my expenses are tracking close to what I had planned. It’s a bit higher than it will be over the bulk of the trip, but I had prepared for that. Europe isn’t cheap – especially London and Paris. A few months in Asia and staying with friends for a while will more than balance it out.

My accommodations have been a bit below my budget, fortunately, because I’m running very high on food and beverage.

One of the adjustments I’ve had to make is to make more of my own meals along the way, because every time you step into a restaurant in Europe, it’s nearly $20 to get out. Even fast food runs about $10 a pop. The only exception to this rule is breakfast. A coffee and pastry in the morning costs less than a cup of Starbucks in the U.S. (unless, of course, your coffee and pastry are AT Starbucks). The early morning café stops have been one of the great pleasures so far.

Health

Illness & Injury:

Overall, things have been great. I had a cold for a couple of days in Paris, but got over it quickly. I think the moldy cheese killed it.

I have had some trouble with numb toes after days of walking. To some extent, I needed to break in my shoes a bit more than I did but I also over-do it with walking. These towns have rail systems for a reason, but I was regularly walking up to 10 miles a day. I hate to miss the “in-betweens” along the way.

Fitness:

Between cycling and walking, I’ve lost a great deal of weight and my legs are dead sexy (especially once I learned to stop gashing them open with the sharp hybrid pedals on my bike). Unfortunately, I do need to start some sort of upper body work before my chest rivals the Grand Canyon in concavity.

Vitiligo:

Most of you probably don’t know about this, but I’m melanin-challenged. It’s not a big deal most of the time but some parts of my skin tan, some stay lily-white (or burn in about 3 minutes). Being in the sun hours and hours a day – either riding or walking – enhanced my blotchiness by tanning my “good” parts, even with 60 SPF on. It’s more cosmetic than a health issue, but still annoys the fuck out of me. I’ve had to vainly start applying self-tanner to even things out a bit and eliminate the “Guernsey effect.”

I promise I’m not orange.

Telecommunications

After months of waiting, I was finally able to jailbreak my iPhone and pop in a local SIM card to use  without paying AT&T roaming charges. It was a beautiful thing while it lasted. Sadly, it went missing while I was in Madrid – and I’m still not sure if I left it somewhere or if it was nicked while I wasn’t paying attention.

I now have an unlocked cell phone that I use for local calls (replacing the SIM in countries I’m staying around for a while) and I picked up an iPod Touch for all the other iPhone functions I would rather not live without. Skype, Accio Language dictionaries, Evernote, OffMaps, HootSuite and Kindle top the list of my most used apps.

Cycling

As I mentioned in part 1, riding has been one of the best parts of the trip. The bike comes with a couple downsides, though.

With a load on it, the bike limits you to around 80 miles a day, preferably not more than 60, fewer if there are hills along the way. That means it takes a while to get to a destination that’s 300 miles away. Physically, that kind of riding doesn’t phase me, but it does cause some other issues.

You’re constantly on the move. If you want to get from Paris to Bordeaux, you’re going to be on the road every day or it’s going to take you weeks to make the trek.

With daily packing & unpacking and 6 or 7 hours of ride time, it’s challenging to get to know people and places along the way. There are a lot of days when you do little more than eat breakfast, ride, shower, have dinner and sleep. For me, that’s actually a wonderful day – but at the same time, I felt like I wasn’t really getting to know the towns I sped past.

Spain, in particular, has not been a bike-friendly country when you get past the cities of Barcelona and Valencia. Bikes aren’t allowed on the high-speed rail (which is the case in several countries) and drivers in much of Spain aren’t using to seeing bikes on their roads.

So, what’s next on that front?

I’ve temporarily left the bike behind in Madrid, so I can hit up some destinations that would have been a serious logistical hassle. While I’m in England for the next few weeks, I’ll be looking at picking up a folding bike so that I can more easily transport it and still have wheels with me for rides around the area. I won’t be using it for point to point transportation, but since I’m planning extended stays in the cities I visit going forward, that becomes less of a focus anyway.

Cycling is an important facet for me, but I’m not one of those travelers who wants to be on the bike and riding to a new location every day.

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Whew. Long post. There’s more, but those are the big things. Next week – Part 3: Next destinations and goal updates.

Mobile Check Deposits with Chase!

Well, I’m not making any money while I’m traveling (not yet, anyway) but I still have a few checks coming in from closing out some past accounts.

My checks all went to a good friend, who’s acting as my mail drop while I’m traveling. The challenge became “how do I deposit those checks from halfway around the world?”

I certainly could have had him make a trip to the bank for me (and forge my signature, etc), but I didn’t want to inconvenience him every time I got a $12 refund check from a canceled magazine subscription. And without a permanent address overseas, I didn’t want him to mail the check to me (not to mention the challenge of exactly where I would be able to deposit it).

Enter Chase’s new mobile app. Sorry, at the moment you need to have an account with Chase AND an iPhone for this.

And no, I’m not being paid for this post!! But my hand is open, Chase…

This fantastic little bit of software allows you to take a photo of a check with your iPhone, upload it to the Chase website and it deposits into your account on the spot – wherever you are in the world.

For this, I didn’t want my friend to have to mail the check to me, so here are the two simple steps:

1. He scanned the check in hi-res and e-mailed the image to me.
2. Using the Chase application, I was able to take a photo directly off my computer screen into the app and voila! Check was deposited.

I don’t know how often I’ll need to use it, but it was incredibly handy. (Free app)

OffMaps ($1.99)

I was searching for an application that loaded up city maps so I didn’t have to carry the paper versions with me (or FIND a paper version in every single city I visited).

Enter OffMaps. You can download one of the free city maps they offer or just buy the application. Download the city you’re visiting and you’ll have full time access to a street map, that also integrates with the iPhone GPS. The full version allows downloads of pretty much anywhere, from the looks of it, but I’ll be testing it more as I head through France.

In addition to street maps, it includes sites, restaurants, hotels and has optional city guide downloads for more information.

Caveat: as you would expect, the maps are HUGE, so prepare for long download times. Best to do when you have a full-time internet connection – NOT while downing a McFlurry.

Accio Language Guides ($1.99)

I’m loving the Accio language guides so far. Type in a word you want to translate and it takes you right to it. Hit a button and it instantly switches from French-English to English-French. Or whatever language you’re using.

Sitting on the train, every time I see a sign I don’t understand, I pull up the words in an instant. It’s teaching me the language far more quickly than if I had to pull out a dictionary each time.

At $1.99 each, they’re a great value and space saver.

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And finally, another shout out to Evernote. I know I’ve extolled its virtues before (here), but I use it CONSTANTLY to record my random thoughts and memories so I can store my impressions the way a photographer stores images.

A few more alterations and updates to my plan based on how things have gone so far:

Communication:

Lesson #1: AT&T Sucks

My iPhone works when I have a wifi network in range, but I miss pulling up information and posting updates on the fly. Fuck AT&T. The fact that you can’t have an iPhone unlocked for use on other networks even after you’ve completed your contract is absurd.

With roaming data charges set at $20 for 1Mb, they’re dressing you like Jodie Foster and throwing you onto a pinball machine. Current hacker buzz is that there’s a software release to unlock my version of the iPhone in the next week or two, which will be a huge help.

Lesson #2: McDonald’s free wifi often makes them the cuisine of choice.

I’m sticking to my goals and eating local cuisine rather than a lot of fast food, but on a warm afternoon it’s great to grab a McFlurry and relax in an air conditioned environment while catching up on e-mail.

Lesson #3: Skype is a wonderful gift to the travel world.

I know, I didn’t just learn this but calling a friend in the US for 2 cents a minute? Amazing.

Transportation

Lesson #1: My navigation is excellent, my skills with my GPS? Not so much.

Two days in a row, I didn’t load my well planned route into my GPS. So, instead of settling in somewhere to find directions, I made it up as I went and followed my instincts. Let’s just say that I accidentally discovered that Belgium has some beautiful countryside & it’s impossible to tell when you have crossed the border from France. But eventually, I got to where I needed to be.

Lesson #2: Bicycles are not as easy to manage as I had hoped they might be

Coming from London, where they had secure underground parking, I had hoped I would meet similar facilities in France. Nope. Cycling is very common here, but primarily for short rides on cheap commuter bikes, which are then secured with locks the size and weight of a fire hydrant.

Most hotels and hostels will store the bike indoors for you, even if it’s in a storage room or utility closet. I don’t think my bike minds sharing a room with a mop bucket.

Lesson #3: Trains are not all bike friendly

Trains accept bicycles for some routes but not all, and I haven’t gotten the hang of which is which yet. While I’m planning on riding most of the trip, there are legs in which I’d like to take the train due to time considerations, or even on a day forecast for torrential downpours. On July 19th, for example, I don’t have time to ride from Amsterdam to Paris before I’m due there so I’ll be looking to hop a train, even if it means boxing up the bike as luggage (which seems the best alternative so far).

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Part 3 coming: Blogging and writing updates!

There’s a ton of free software on the market, a lot of it total crap or loaded with malware. If you’ve just picked up a new netbook and are ready to head out on the road, here are the free (and spyware-free) gems I use almost daily. A couple are iPhone specific, so my apologies to anyone who can’t find a version that works with their mobile device.

www.icanhascheezburger.com (cut me some slack, I was desperate)

For writing:

For blogging:

• WordPress.org: duh. The standard for bloggers wanting to grow and have flexibility (and your own ads). You need to get away from a hosted blog and self-host eventually -  start early.
• Audacity: an audio editor that works wonderfully for creating podcasts and audio files. Even if you don’t want to do a regular podcast, there may be times when you want people to hear your words directly from the source. How about a man-on-the-street interview?
• Picasa: it’s not going to be your go-to for heavy duty photo editing, but it has the easiest to use albums and is great for basic edits & resizing in bulk.

To manage your mobility:

Photo credit: moorpheuss

• Dropbox/Mozy/Skydrive: you need some sort of online backup in case your computer crashes or is stolen. For more detail on your options: http://matadorgoods.com/remote-data-storage-options-for-travelers/
• Skype: make international calls for pennies
• Remember the Milk: a free task manager that updates and sends alerts via e-mail, phone, and anything else you’re near. Rumor is that they’ll soon be able to send alerts through your margarita blender.
• Mint: keep track of all your personal finances in one place without breaking your bank.

Do you have favorites I missed? Let me know what software you can’t travel without.