Get to know a country before you get there

Name:

thebasetrip.com.

What it does: Basetrip provides basic travel information you should know about a country before you leave: visa requirements, currency, tipping, ATM advice, mobile phone options, internet status, vaccinations, travel advisories, and more. If you want to access the information offline, buy the country-specific information as a downloadable PDF ($5 with PayPal) that you can store on your smartphone or device.

What's hot: Having travel information all in one spot is a help, and the "Tips" section is useful. When I looked up the China page a week before my trip, I found valuable information from an experienced traveler: "Get a VPN (virtual private network) and configure it well before you arrive. Limited internet access to the outside world and domain name system errors when trying to access Facebook, Twitter, Instagram . . . etc. can be frustrating for the newcomers. Whatsapp is still available, though."

What's not: The PDF I bought for China was just $5, but there was lots of white space on the document. That's not efficient formatting for printing, but the site is young and it didn't bother me much because I didn't pay much.