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"Don't rely on others to show you the way, carry your own map."(1)
In this section you will find a brief summary of useful information for each country arranged into geographical groupings. This information is designed only as a starting point, to get the research underway. As well as general information on the country I have also suggested places to stay and the attractions of the town/region, tips on transport from point to point and, where there is somewhere memorable of note, I have occasionally recommended a place to eat. In general I avoid the 'eating' section of guidebooks however, if you are not able to find yourself somewhere to eat then you will need more than a guidebook to get by!
Travel guidebooks are big business these days. People use guidebooks in a million different ways and to varying extents. Some people live by them, use them as a book of rules, only sleeping in listed places, only eating in listed places, etc. Although this is a form of comfort for them it does shut them off from part of the experience of travel, the discovery of secret places that you will talk about for years to come. Other travellers don't have a guide book at all. I travelled Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh without a guidebook of any sort but i did find it difficult at times. Most people, like myself, slip in between these extremes. The book is there, available for consultation if need be, if not it sits happily in the bottom of my bag when I am "blazing my own trail" as the Lonely Planet calls it.
The best source of up-to-date information is other travellers on the road. Is somewhere worth going? A decent place to stay? An inevitable fact of guidebooks is that after inclusion the prices of a place often go up and the standards fall. One tactic I use is to head for the area of town where the guest houses are clustered, as in most cases they are, and find the one that is not listed in your guidebook, maybe it is new or wasn't up-to-scratch last time. Usually this place will be cheaper and nicer because they are vying to get in the next edition.
Often you may be somewhere that sees few visitors and the guidebook is less useful. Maybe you just have to make do with what you find or maybe you will stumble upon somewhere special, and these are normally the places that it happens because the local businesses have not been corrupted by the capitalistic side of tourism. This is one of the big problems with guidebooks, expressed most accurately in this quote from The Beach by Alex Garland - "There is no way you can keep it out of Lonely Planet, and once that happens it's countdown to doomsday" (2)
I used to hide my guidebook, ashamed in case anybody saw me referring to one. Many people pretend that they don't but 99% of travellers have a guidebook or some notes from a guide of some form with them. I realised it was a ridiculous thing to be embarrassed about - it is a handy source of info, if only for the maps, and it really depends on how you use it. The key is in the name, it is a guidebook not a rulebook and despite the claims of Lonely Planet it is most certainly not a "backpackers bible".
Which guidebook to use? I always choose Lonely Planet. It has distinct advantages over its competitors. It lists the correct prices and not some vague pricing range system as employed by Rough Guide and Footprint. The argument is that the prices are often out of date but at least you know that if Place A was cheaper than Place B and Place C was the most expensive then it is bound to be the same still. With the pricing range system all three places might be in the same range and this could mean the difference between a days budget and a quarter of a days budget. Lonely Planet also has experience that the others don't have and the maps are far better (in most cases, exceptions include Dalat in Vietnam and Darjeeling in India amongst others). The disadvantages of Lonely Planet include the fact that the vast majority of travellers have Lonely Planet and so information swapping is not always possible and also they seem to be getting complacent in recent editions, large chunks of information are copied over from previous editions and there are reports from on the road that they don't actually do the ground work anymore and rather just ring up the establishments in order to update prices. This is bad news if the rumours are true. They have also made a marked shift to the higher end of the market, so much so that many budget travellers no longer respect Lonely Planet at all. They can use a lot of space with recommendations for bars, clubs and restaurants and then miss out important information involving lesser used border crossings or important visa information. In recent years I have been very disappointed with two particular editions, although in both the sections that disappointed me were penned by the same researcher, Michael Grosberg (who also researched the LP guides to South Africa and Myanmar, which I would avoid like the plague). This is the other problem I have with Lonely Planet is the lack of consistency between authors. You can tell which sections of the larger books were written by different authors by the sudden drop in standard of writing, use of colloquialisms or hike in prices as the author deems perfectly acceptable budget places unsuitable. After a while it is easy to identify which researchers you find sub-standard and make your choice accordingly. Whilst irritating I find all of these disadvantages outweighed by the advantages of using LP although of course the choice is yours.
(1) David Baird
(2) Alex Garland, The Beach, pg 139
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