Customer Reviews

China: Yunnan Province, 2nd: The Bradt Travel Guide

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This book desperately needs to be updated and rewritten! I brought it along on a bicycle trip the length of Yunnan in the spring of 2005, but found the information extremely outdated and nearly worthless. None of the hotel and restaurant listings were useable, and the sights were poorly described. The writing also failed to capture a sense of the place. I found Lonely Planet's South-West China (2002) far superior; unfortunately this book is getting old and Lonely Planet does not plan a new edition. Lonely Planet's China (2005) skips over some of the best places--such as the southeast--of Yunnan. Yunnan is a marvellous place to visit, but needs a comprehensive, up-to-date, well-written guidebook. The 2001 Bradt guide isn't it.

We are living in Yunnan Province for this year so we were excited to find a guidebook targeted at Yunnan, especially one that was published only a few months before our departure. The book has however been a huge disappointment! Prices are very inaccurate (often off by a factor of 10), many of the maps are inaccurate and the level of detail is poor. Sometimes it feels like the authors have never been to the places they are describing. We have stopped carrying this book with us. We prefer the Lonely Planet China Southwest.

We adopted our so in 2006 from Yunnan and there was only a small section in the Eyewitness China guide that had information about Kunming and Yunnan. I was thrilled to find this book in a Canadian bookstore on a day trip to Victoria. It has great information about the sites we took in on our last trip as well as things we want to put on the list for the next trip later this year. Since there are generally very few books about Yunnan I considered this a good find. The only thing missing for me were a few more photos. Part of the reason I like the Eyewitness guides are the maps, grapics and photos they include but until Eyewitness decides to make for Yunnan this one will do just fine!

As is often the case with Bradt guides, this book is the best available on the culture, history, art etc of Yunnan. In a concise 250 pages you get as much as most tourists will ever digest on what makes Yunnan... Yunnan. And indeed this book makes you want to go there. I used it during my trip in Yunnan in May 2011 and found it highly informative and to the point.

For info on hotels, restaurants and other practicalities go to Lonely Planet or the web. This is never Bradt's strong point and in any case this book is from 2007, and the way things change so fast in China it is bound to be out of date. But the cultural information will remain relevant for some time.