Thailand (Country Guide)

I went to Thailand for the first time with a backpack and this book. I used it almost daily. It was extremely helpful for my entire trip. Whether I was lost in the middle of town, looking for a cheap restaurant, or needing to kill a giant insect in my hostel this book was there. The writers obviously know what they're talking about. The maps are detailed and easy to read. This book gives you enough information to feel confident traveling in Thailand.

This guide is great and seems to be the guide of choice of pretty much everyone I saw during my three week stint in Thailand. I had to have seen it in at least 6 languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Japanese), so considering that the international community seems to embrace it pretty well, I'd put some merit in its pages.

As much as I love this book, I have to admit that it isn't perfect. It puts a lot of information within its pages and sometimes misses some places (mostly restaurants and some guest houses) in the smaller towns. Also, the maps can be a little out of scale. However, with that said, the book is great. It gives a great overview of pretty much every town you can think of to go to (some more popular ones more detailed than the others); even some of the rural villages in the north. Transportation tips are also very helpful.

I would highly recommend this book if you're traveling to Thailand. Also, be sure to take some of the reviews of guest houses with a grain of sand. It seems that the guesthouse owners read the guide too, and most of the poorly rated ones that I visited have actually improved since the printing of the book. You might also want to supplement the book with some websites like travelfish.com and travelindependent.info before you leave. Happy travels!

As always, the book contains a wealth of practical information. I've used lonelyplanet guides to plan my travels to New-Zealand, South-Africa and Kenya in the past.

Basically, my main complaint is that they took out the good stuff from the old edition and replace them with irrelevant stuff.

One example would be in the last edition, they had a section with color pictures of different types of food served in Thailand, something I find interesting to note when traveling to a foreign country. They replaced this section with a section with picture of people riding on elephants and scenery that don't really tell you much.

The reason why I did not give them too bad of a rating is that the information is pretty much the same between the two editions. In this edition, there is less information on border crossings, but that is due to increase safety concerns (so I can understand why they did that). I would still recommend the last edition. Besides being cheaper, you actually learn a little bit more.

This is the worst guidebook I've had the misfortune to buy; if I had the time, I would have returned it. Unless you have perfect vision the entire book is printed in a tiny font on very thin paper, making it hard on the eyes. The reviews are incredibly biased, totally slanted towards travelers who want to eat street food, stay in backpacker or budget accommodations... It does not take disabilities, age or food allergies into consideration & assumes, in a rather mean-spirited manner, that if you don't want to stay in a low budget place or eat, very spicy street food, that something is wrong with you. Being a disabled traveler who is unable to stay in low budget accommodations because they aren't accessible, I was stunned by the lack of information on moderately priced hotels (let alone pricey ones). If you want to try the haute cuisine of Bangkok, stay in moderate or upscale hotels, instead of backpacking, buy Fodor's guide, as there's no information here, just judgments on your inability to 'slum it'. TERRIBLE.