Who Runs This Site?
Just me! This website is the product of a caffeine-fueled solo developer. So, who am I? I'm a software engineer, robotics engineer (though not using that skillset much nowadays), iced coffee enthusiast, photographer, former corporate 9-5er at Amazon Web Services, and now a digital nomad. I've been a professional software developer for about a decade (if you count my time as a paid researcher at university) now and I've worked on all kinds of different technology. From Augmented and Virtual Reality, to robotics with computer vision, to massive enterprise back-end systems. And now, full stack web development. I'm always learning and improving so if you come across anything you think I could do better, please let me know! If you have any collaboration ideas, I'm open to that too. Just reach out to me.
My Travel Planning Was a Mess
After I left my job at AWS to travel full-time, I realized I was spending way too much time on one thing: figuring out where to stay. My process was chaotic. I'd have 15 tabs open—Reddit, blogs, YouTube, booking sites—trying to figure out the best neighborhood in a city I knew nothing about. Where are the best cafes to work from? Which areas are safe? Which areas should I absolutely avoid? Keeping track of all of this was very tedious.
It got annoying. I looked for a tool to help, but nothing really did what I wanted. They were either not specific enough, too opinion based, or pushing empty recommendations just to get some affiliate money. All I wanted was the data to be in one place so I could make my own decision based on my own preferences and make sure I'm not wasting my precious time and money.
The Goal: Make This Process Suck Less
The mission here is pretty simple: reduce the suffering of travel planning. StayMapper puts all the info you actually need to pick a neighborhood onto a single, interactive map. You get district boundaries, points of interest, map tools, and a full city guide loaded with crucial info without having to open another browser tab.
Honestly, I built this for myself. I've already used it to find places to stay all over Southeast Asia, and it's saved me a ton of headaches. I figured if it's useful for me, it's probably useful for you, too.
Here's a practical example:
Let's say you're going to New York City and need to be near a lot of cafes to work.
- Use the Hot Spots tool. You'll instantly see which areas have the most cafes.
- Use the Travel Time tool to see what's reachable in a 10-minute walk from those hotspots.
- Read the guide for the neighborhood in that area to make sure you like the vibe.
Done. In a few minutes you've found your spot.
Have an Idea? Let Me Know.
Since this is a one-person operation, your feedback comes directly to my inbox. I actually read it, and good ideas will likely end up on the site if I can implement them. You won't get passed around to 4 different "support" people and have your message get trapped in corporate support system purgatory.