Lonely Planet Thailand Author: Visit Amazon's China Williams Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1741797144 | Format: EPUB
Lonely Planet Thailand Description
- Series: Country Travel Guide
- Paperback: 824 pages
- Publisher: Lonely Planet; 14 edition (March 1, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1741797144
- ISBN-13: 978-1741797145
- Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 1.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
I don't know why this is allegedly the most popular guidebook to Thailand. It's organized pretty haphazardly (for example, what would be interesting stories--on ladyboys, elephants, etc) are randomly inserted on pages that need filler. I stumbled on some of these at the end of our trip because they were in some random section.
Quite a few places we walked by--especially in Chiang Mai--had "Recommended by Lonely Planet" signs out front and looked like havens for douchebag "farang".
Most of the places we stayed, and some of our favorite parts of the trip weren't included in the book at all (May Kaidee's vegetarian cooking school in Chiang Mai and Bangkok is the best example; Mae Hwang village outside of Chiang Mai which had a sizeable amount of Westerners passing through on their way to jungle/elephant treks; Spicy Villa there; also Centara hotel in Chiang Mai, Anantara Lawanna in Koh Samui). This all makes me wonder how well they do their homework.
Also very short on information about Thailand itself. In a culture that is strongly based on a shared religion (as the book itself states), they devote just a couple of paragraphs to discussing Buddhism. Very little on their art, which was completely disappointing, as it's the basis for the wats.
Quite a few factual inaccuracies also--most notably, that you're forbidden from photographing Buddha. Not true. None of the temples posted this "prohibition", and when we asked, Thais were incredulous that we were told this. There are some rules for how to photograph Buddha (never place yourself or another human higher in the picture frame etc), and it would have been helpful to have included this instead.
Had a bit of a shock also when they referred to ladyboys as "well-endowed dudes" on page 133.
My friend and I visited Thailand earlier this month, and we conducted an experiment in the process: She used Lonely Planet and I used Rough Guide. We came up with similar trip plans, and we both turned to the Internet to fill in some blanks before squaring away our itinerary. Once on the road, we found ourselves using Rough Guide slightly more often than Lonely Planet.
Both guides are well organized and reasonably complete. LP's maps are more detailed, but the Rough Guide's maps are in color and easier to read. LP does a passable job of detailing elephant parks and other activity destinations around Chiang Mai, but it isn't complete enough to avoid using the Internet to get everything sorted out. This was an altogether miss in the Rough Guide.
We did a back-to-back comparison of recommended Italian restaurants in Chiang Mai, and we found the LP recommendation to be superior. However, several restaurant listings are the same in both guides, and the Rough Guide did not lead us astray. While the LP accommodation listings are not lacking, we found the Rough Guide's listings to be more helpful in Chiang Mai and Ko Phi Phi. I recommend consulting TripAdvisor to get a fuller picture of available options, as neither guide provides an exhaustive listing.
I like that the Rough Guide has full color and more photos, but the Lonely Planet guide excels at legibility. LP is the clear winner--from font choice to column layout. Unfortunately the writing style is a bit condescending at points, which is a huge turn-off for me. The Rough Guide is frank without the attitude.
Both guides are overall winners. Generally speaking, I recommend Lonely Planet for Bangkok and destinations to the north and Rough Guide for destinations to the south.
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