---
type: Tip
title: Don't trust Google Maps
description: In much of the world it is blocked, wrong, or routing you down roads your vehicle isn't allowed on — check what the locals actually use before you set off.
tags: [navigation, transport, apps, planning]
timestamp: 2026-08-06T12:00:00Z
---

# Don't trust Google Maps

The failure mode is not that the map is missing — it's that it looks like it's
working. Harry has now lost most of a day to it in one country, been unable to
use it at all in another, and found it simply outclassed by a domestic app in a
third.

The three ways it fails, in his experience:

- **It routes you onto roads your vehicle can't legally use.**
- **It is blocked outright**, along with the rest of the Western internet.
- **It exists but isn't the one people actually use**, so its data is worse than
  the local alternative's.
- **The search result is not the place.** A landmark's name can belong to a
  street as well, and the top hit may be the street.

The check to make before you set off is not *does it load* — it's *what do people
here navigate with.*

## How Harry applies it

**Vietnam is the expensive lesson.** Riding a rented motorbike north from Hanoi,
Google Maps sends him onto an expressway with a no-bikes sign three separate
times, each turnaround adding an hour to a day already running late. It refuses
to show motorcycle routing at all. What eventually fixes it is deleting the app
and reinstalling it — after which the bike routes appear. Then, on the last
stretch, it confidently describes an off-road dirt track as a road.

**China is where it stops pretending.** Google Maps and the Western internet are
blocked outright, which is one of the reasons that trip runs entirely on
[Jim](/people/jim.md) — see
[travel with a local guide](/tips/travel-with-a-local-guide.md).

**South Korea is the quiet version.** It works badly rather than not at all;
there is a domestic mapping app that people actually use, and Harry gets by on
Google Maps for public transport alone and flags it as something to plan around.

**Pakistan is the cheap version of the same mistake**, and the one most likely to
catch anyone out. Booking a ride to the Wazir Khan Mosque in
[Lahore](/places/lahore.md), Harry typed the name, took the top result, and was
driven half an hour to a *road* called Wazir Khan on the wrong side of the city.
Nothing was broken and the app did what he asked; the name simply belonged to two
things. Check what the destination pin actually is before you get in, not after.

## Demonstrated in

- [Foreigners Explore Old Town Lahore🇵🇰](/videos/2oNz89I56nk.md) — the top
  search result for a famous mosque turns out to be a street with the same name.
- [Solo Journey to Vietnam's Border with China 🇻🇳](/videos/8LtGV7T8ODE.md) —
  three expressway turnarounds, no bike routing until the app is reinstalled, and
  a dirt track filed as a road.
- [I Ignored the Media and Visited China 🇨🇳](/videos/K3X46veg64I.md) — blocked
  entirely, along with the rest of the Western internet.
- [I Tested 5 Star Korean Treatments in Seoul 🇰🇷](/videos/QIi8IIkYyN0.md) — works
  poorly in [South Korea](/countries/south-korea.md), where a domestic app is what
  everyone else is using.
- [Solo in Colombia's Best City! Medellin 🇨🇴](/videos/OSwpryzqBaY.md) — a cash
  machine in [Medellín](/places/medellin.md) missing from the map entirely,
  found by asking three people in the street. **And then the doubling that makes
  it worth recording**: having walked a long way to that specific bank to avoid
  a withdrawal fee, he arrives to find it has run out of money. The map was
  wrong about where it was and silent about whether it worked, which no map is
  going to tell you.