National Geographic Traveler: Taiwan [Paperback]

Phil Macdonald (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: National Geographic (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792265556
• ISBN-13: 978-0792265559
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,600,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #43 in Books > Travel > Asia > Taiwan

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars J. Holbrook, July 23, 2004

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J. Holbrook - See all my reviews
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This review is from: National Geographic Traveler: Taiwan (Paperback)

This book had excellent pictures and background information. For a resource to read before you go it is informative and helpful but as a resource on the ground it lacks some details. I did find the resources in the very back helpful. I used the book to plan the generals of my trip but relied on tour gides and local friends for the details. I liked this book, it was helpful and I'm glad I bought it but I don't recommend it to be your only resource on Taiwan.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A lot of good pictures, but often not enough information, January 11, 2007

By 

William Fabrizio "Engineer" (Reno, United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: National Geographic Traveler: Taiwan (Paperback)

I bought both the National Geographic Traveler and Lonely Planet guides for Taiwan before working there for a month. While I was there, I found that National Geographic Traveler was more useful for planning places to go and things to do because it uses in depth highlights of tourist spots to visit and has full color photos and drawings throughout. However, I found that the Lonely Planet guide had more information, both useful and not. It had descriptions, hours of operations, and costs for many destinations that both tourists and residents would frequent. It could be described as an insider's guide of what to do in Taiwan, but the quantity of information was more than the quality. Lonely Planet's few color plates were okay, but not as helpful as those found in the National Geographic Traveler. This made the Lonely Planet harder to decide what to do from the many options provided because the choice was usually only based on a couple of sentences. The maps were better in Lonely Planet, but I ended up using a tourist map when I was in Taipei.
I recommend getting both. I found that I would see interesting photos in National Geographic Traveler and then look up the information in Lonely Planet to decide if it was worth doing or not.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nice pictures, but not so useful, July 21, 2004

By 

A. Galen "Ge An Zhu" (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: National Geographic Traveler: Taiwan (Paperback)

This guide is full of pretty pictures and nice background text, but practically useless on the ground. For all the information that this book contains you will have a hard time getting where you want to go. Unless your destination is on the MRT (subway) or Taipei City buses, there are no directions. The maps are so general that only major highways are included. Forget trying to navigate street level. Worst of all, many of the destinations are named in English and the Romanized Chinese, but there aren?t any characters for you to point at when conversing locals. Taiwanese taxi drivers are great, but that won't help if you can't tell them where to go!