BootsnAll Travel Community

I've been to the bookstore browsing the various guide books for my upcoming mini RTW trip. Basically I take a country or city I visited before and read that section of each of the guide books to compare. Lonely Planet and Let's Go seem similar with the exception that Let's Go has the train/subway schematics for Paris, London, Munich another major cities, which I find very helpful. Rough Guide is good too but shorter on info. And is there a reason why LP is $10 more than Let's Go?

I've read that sometimes one guide book is better than another depending on the country or region. Which guide books do you suggest for:

-Europe
-Middle East (Turkey, Jordan, Egypt)
-SE Asia
-China
-Indonesia
-New Zealand

One other question is how do you pack all these books together... or do you? I've heard about tearing out only the specific pages or photocopying and trade/buy as you travel.

thanks!

The different brands of guidebooks all have their good points and bad points. All guidebooks are at least a year or more out of date the moment that they are printed. Choose based upon which of the choices has been most recently published, not which sells most.

The exceptions to this general rule would be (1.) Avoid the "Shoestring Guide To SE Asia", as it is an unwieldy tome with too little actual information (as compared to the indidual guidebooks), and (2.) In South America, where Footprint is considered much better than the others.

I love travel guidebooks and I get great pleasure out of that part of traveling. Everyone has their own preferences, but I'm not a fan of the Let's Go series. They are completely written by Harvard students and from my perspective they are aimed primarily at other American college students or similar.

For global series' I like both Lonely Planet and Rough Guides and I find them pretty similar. I look at their publication dates and unless the Rough Guide is much newer I will usually get the Lonely Planet, but I think that's mostly out of habit since you get used to how they are laid out.

I'm probably a minority on this board, but for Europe I really love Rick Steves' guides. I could go on and on as to why, but I'll save that for another time.

I don't think I've heard of anyone starting a RTW trip with books for their whole journey, mostly because books are heavy and packing weight is always an issue.

I started my RTW with 2 books, bought new ones where I could, and then gave them away or occassionally sold them after I left the country or region. Many hostels and other traveler haunts have book trading areas, but that's always a gamble.

Another problem is that English-language guidebooks are hard to find in some places and are always pretty expensive outside of North America. Many people on these boards travel with little or no information, but since you asked about books I assume you are a fellow guidebook person. Unfortunately there are no easy solutions, but it's definitely possible to get them and trade them as you go, even though it's not always easy or cheap.

We started with LP, then started getting frustrated at errors and omissions, and thought to try another. We looked at te Rough Guides (pretty sure it was Rough Guides) and decided that lay out was way too rough for the way we intended to use them. if you like reading a lot about a place, and not using it much for on-the-go reference, Rough Guide is fine. if you use your guide a lot on the go and need really quick references, easy to find accomodations and how-to-get-there sections, LP is way better laid out. I think most of them would have the same errors and omissions overall.
Also, because all of these guides are written by different author depending on the region, whether or not you like one is going to depend on who wrote it.

While the Turkey book suited us fairly well, Static's impression (mentioned somewhere else on this board) of the author being a little 'boring' and out of touch with us young 'uns was fairly accurate. And I would definitely recommend the entire Turkey book - huge country, lots to see and do, and the LP came in very handy. I would, however, do research before heading off, to maybe get a few ideas that might not be in the book (ie, Hatusha (?) - don't know much about it, but know that it's not in the book (not that we saw, anyway)- we saw a tv special about it after the fact and it looked pretty awesome)

I highly recommend that you find out where the major bookshops are, both new and used, along your journey, so that you can plan ahead. We ended up tracking high and low in the first couple of towns in Turkey desperately seeking a guide, and were very very lucky to find one in Goreme (I think owing at least in part to the fact that the author resides there).

Places that we've experienced as likely bets to get guides, for at least that country, and several surrounding:
Bucharest (there's a huge fantastic bookshop there, it even had road maps to Canada!)
Istanbul (large tourist city, several English-catering bookshops around, though what you find at used shops is a matter of luck)
Budapest (again several places, including at least one English used shop that had a decent selection)
Guide books anywhere in Western Europe shouldn't really be an issue, though try to buy them used, as they are pricey.

I wouldn't count on finding English books in places like Cairo (I remember trekking to the American University store - they had some stuff, but it was quite overpriced, and the selection wasn't great), or generally in the Middle East, unless you happen to get lucky at a used book shop, or at the hostel - guides at hostels don't stick around for long, though. though we did find that trading paperbacks at the hostels was fairly easy throughout the Middle East.

sorry if that's a little scattered, my brain's a little fuzzy at the moment.

quote:

Basically I take a country or city I visited before and read that section of each of the guide books to compare.

That's a great idea, I'll have to remember that!

As for myself, I tend to get both LP guides and Rick Steves guides (rawjer, you're not alone!) for European destinations (which are the only places I've been where I actually bought guidebooks), though I don't usually end up bringing both with me. I'm not a fan of tearing things out of books (though Steves actually encourages the practice, at least with his books!), so I read one for research (usually the LP) and bring the other (usually the RS).

Don't know about Europe but when I was in Central America I used the LP Shoestring for Cent. America and it was pretty helpful- good enough to give me as a first timer so assurance but definitely still left room for my own exploration (partially because I was using in 2006 a version published in 2004). Static, why don't you like the LP shoestring one for SE Asia? Is it just that the information is outdated? I'm curious because I had been considering that one for my upcoming trip.

I am going to reiterate what I said on another thread. I look up info on the net and copy the pages from books I want at the library and leave the guidebooks on the shelf.
I have never found a guidebook that I really like. Making my own seems to work best for me.

Bradt Guides are also nice, but have a limited (generally more off the beaten path) amount of places that they cover. However, they're not as standardized as some so if you want a LP style format for each book, it may not work for you.

We used mostly LP books as we traveled through SE Asia and just picked up books as we went. They're too heavy to carry all with you. To be honest, they weren't very useful for things like hotels and restaurants because that changes so quickly. In Guilin, China we went to were a hotel was recommended and were told it burned down two years previously.

I like Rough Guides in general, but they irritated me in their decision to not produce a guide to Myanmar due to moral issues rather than taking the LP approach of producing a guide and presenting both sides of the argument and letting the reader make up his or her own mind.

I just checked 4 LPs from the library for more research on Europe and MEast. Will see what happens...

Further tips are welcomed

Checking them out from a library is a great idea to see what you like and don't like, but even the ones in the bookstores can quickly get out of date so keep that in mind while you are researching.

Also, if your library has any Rick Steves Europe books, check one out and see what you think. Yes, the guy comes across as a nerd on his PBS shows, but his books are great, and they are quite different from the Lonely Planet style. They aren't for everybody, but if you can test drive one for free I think you should.

quote:

Originally posted by Bush Trekker:
I am going to reiterate what I said on another thread. I look up info on the net and copy the pages from books I want at the library and leave the guidebooks on the shelf.
I have never found a guidebook that I really like. Making my own seems to work best for me.

I 2ND THIS. I am currently looking for a France guidebook. I checked out the more popular brands; Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Rick Steves, Michelin, etc. Im going to Paris for 1 week, Languedoc 4 days, Loire 2 days, and Im still searching for one more place (VERY interested in Bordeaux). One book featured only 3 cities for Languedoc (Montpellier, Couiller, and Carcasonne).....I need more. A couple books had HUGE Loire section, going in-depth about each individual chateau (too much info). Others had info on towns Id never heard of. Some had more pictures than info. I mean, none of them were just right for me.

The first time I went to europe, I did what BushTrekker suggested....I [unwittingly] made my own guidebook. I printed pm's from people, printed pages from websites like Worldsbestbars.com (lol)....and put in all together in a folder. I was really interested in the party scenes, and no guidebooks gonna tell you the hottest spots. This worked out really well for me. However, I did have my Ricksteves "Provence and the French Riviera". It was my first euro-trip, and I couldnt have survived without it. There was crucial info like how to use payphones, internation phone cards, safety tips, etc etc. But now that I know the basics, I think Im going to just create my own stuff, and staple it together. It beats the hell outta lugging around a thick book. I HATED carrying my guidebook. I loved having it to read on the train, but walking around with it is pure hell. And besides, this time 'round I want to rely more on TALKING to people for info. If I have my guidebook, Ill be more dependant on the book, seeing as Im traveling solo. And since I want to master the french language, this'll force me to be more assertive.

I never thought of copying the info from the library....genius!!! I can copy what I want from different books. I dont really care about info being accurate up-to-the-last-minute....Ive already got my accomodations. And the towns are going to be the same, everything that was there 2 years ago will still be there.

LP's streength is Asia - but you will have no problem buying the books there - either new or 2nd hand somewhere like Beijing, Bangokok, Singapore. In Vietnam you iwll be offered (genrally bad) phtocopies which of course rips-off copyright but is a lot cheaper... Australia and NZ to be honest there is so much in info in English I dont know if its worth it - you can always drop into a local library and read up - or borrow someone's at a hostel.....

Just last month I bought a Bradt travel guide for Syria. It was published in 2006, and I'm finding it very useful for planning purposes for my trip which starts the end of March. Until I found this book at our awesome and wonderful travel bookstore here in Seattle I'd never heard of Bradt guides.

As skobb mentioned above, their titles seem somewhat geographically limited.

I've never been able to find an LP guide I "clicked" with. And since I'm not a hostel-staying-young'un, I will admit to probably having bought more Frommers guides than any other brand.

After browsing through individual country LP guides, it's now hard to go back to the compact version (LP Europe). I'm also reading guides for specific regions, ie Tuscany & Umbria and a trekking guide of Tour du Mont-Blanc. Damn, these books are eating up a lot of time!!!

For cities, I like the Time Out guides - they have more practical information than any other guidebook I know (i.e., laundromats, gyms, walking paths, etc.). They're also good if you're looking for nightlife (which I'm usually not, but I like living vicariously).

I think Rough Guides are way too opinionated compared to others - the SE Asia one would not even include Burma because probably the editor did not like the situation there (despite the locals needing the income!).

I have bought my last rugh guide.