About

A few years ago I toured around the Middle East and the Lonely Planet was a great comfort. Several years on, WIFI has gone mainstream and the travel books need to convince people they’re still a useful companion.

This book isn’t aimed at your average traveller. It somehow manages to be pretencious, opinionated, and very subjective for something which is supposed to act as an informative guide book.

The biggest problem is the endless obsession of saying EVERYTHING is great. Don’t get me wrong, positivity is a good thing – but when you’re frequently deciding where to go next this becomes a huge issue. For example instead of admitting: “Phuket town is a bland place, serving as little more than a stopover point for most.” (an opinion the majority agree with from my experience), they write, “There’s good food in Phuket town!”

It quickly becomes apparent some of the authors have forgotten they’re writing a book to help the majority, and instead cram their ‘alternative’ perspectives all over the place. Why on earth is my travel guide telling me what my opinion on elephant treatment should be?! Are we young and ignorant travellers not able to form our own conclusion?

If one author takes her 1 year old to Thailand to successfully boost her ‘cuteness factor’, then how is this helpful to the 99.9% of us who DIDN’T do that? Take a kid with you and I’m sure just about every single restaurant will appear friendly. “Thailand gets richer and happier with every visit” – seriously? The country is great fun but many locals are quite clearly sick to death with the amount of tourists. Did you give a tuk tuk driver 1000B and then notice how happy and friendly he is?