Earlier this year I traveled to Australia for the first time. I booked the tickets months in advance, made sure I had all the right power adapters, and headed to the airport on my day of departure — only to find out that U.S. citizens actually need a visa to enter the country. Whoops.

Lucky for me, getting an expedited Australian visa isn't difficult. I was able to apply for one at the Quantas desk at the airport and board my plane just as if I'd applied for a visa months before. However, had I been traveling somewhere else, things might have not been quite as easy.

This one was definitely my bad, but it pays to know where you can travel and how long you can stay. And answers to those questions vary depending on where your passport is from. For instance, what I can do with my U.S. passport is a little different than what my friend Tim can do with his German one.

My first passport was stamped exactly one time for a trip to Jamaica when I was 17. My current…

This week I came across the site Visalist, which makes learning all that stuff simple. It lists the current up-to-date visa requirements for over 238 different countries as well as information about what you'll need while you're traveling in each one.

To use it you just enter in where your passport is from. The site generates a map from that color coded with all the places you can travel and what's required for you to enter the country.