Customer Reviews

The Rough Guide to Vietnam (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I visited Vietnam in the summer of 2007, touring mainly the north of the country, and used THE ROUGH GUIDE TO VIETNAM, fifth edition. I was immediately impressed by the depth by which the Rough Guide writers covered the country. It's a big book, meaning it weighs down a bag significantly, but no matter where you want to go in Vietnam, it's here.

I cannot comment on the accommodation listings, as I travel by means of Internet hospitality associations and prefer to avoid hotels or hostels. I gave much study to the restaurants listings while on my way to Vietnam, but ultimately didn't use them. The authors give plenty of street kitchens, but travelers shouldn't have difficulty finding such fare, as it's available everywhere you look. Still, the authors do deserve kudos for including a colour section on the concept of street food, encouraging travelers to put aside their fears and partake of this very delicious Vietnamese tradition. The walking tours are easy to follow, and the maps are the clearest you'll find, as one can expect from a Rough Guide publication.

Downsides? Well, I was disappointed by two facets of this Rough Guide. The first is that recent history is completely biased towards the Communist forces fighting for independence, with no understanding of the French and American sides. Other guidebook describe in detail the horrors that ensued in the South after the North claimed victory, and the poverty that created the plight of the boat people, but I felt this guide skirts the issues. The other disappointment was that the guide shows travelers towards the fragile lands of Vietnamese minority people. When minority peoples move their markets to another village to avoid tourists, it seems insensitive for the book to send even more in. Whatever happened to the philosophy that these independent guidebooks had in days of yore, that some places shouldn't be included in the book to challenge travelers and preserve secluded spots?

As I write this, the Lonely Planet guide is quite old, leaving the Rough Guide as the easiest guidebook to find for the independent traveler (the Let's Go guide is good as well--and lighter--but has less detailed coverage).

I was in Vietnam (Jan/Feb 2008) and I took with me Lonely Planet and Rough Guide, and the better of the two guides is, by a thin margin, Lonely Planet.

However, there is much to commend Rough Guide Vietnam. It is worth buying just for the section that covers the history, religion (13 pages) and the overall culture of Vietnam. Excellent.

This guide is well laid out; breaking Vietnam into eight sections. Each section has a page that points out the places not to be missed. Each of these sections opens with a very good history and explanation of the area. Rough Guide has an excellent selection of restaurant and eateries (better than Lonely Planet's) with enticing write-ups that tell you what to try, "Goi bo, a salad of banana flower, star fruit and pineapple" or "try stir-fried beef with lemongrass for starters, followed by fried scallops and then che baba - grandma's sweet coconut soup." This guide has a better selection of the discos and clubs than Lonely Planet and it has eight (8) pages of recommended books to consider - Super.

HOWEVER, Rough Guides hardly has any maps, and those that they have are not as good or easy to use as Lonely Planet. It has a cumbersome "price code" system for accommodations, i.e. 1= under to $10, 2= $10-15, 3= $15-30, etc., thus, you have to memorize what the numbers represent or flip back and forth to the legend. Whereby, Lonely Planet shows you the cost in dollars. What an idea! Duh. Only a few accommodations (very few) have webpages. In today's world accommodations webpages are a must. All savvy travelers today want to "see" what a hotel or hostel looks like. R.G. does not breakdown restaurants by cost (Expensive, Moderate, etc.) nor does it give you any prices ranges ($10-15 etc.). Not Good.

In short, the better of the two guides is Lonely Planet, especially if you are going to explore Vietnam and want to get away from the "tourist areas". However, if you are staying in HCMC, Hanoi or other major cities and want the best clubs and restaurants with good eatery descriptions then this is your guide. Strongly Recommended. 4 Stars.

This is a very well-researched guide, and proved extremely useful on a recent 2 month trip to Vietnam. The food and lodging reviews were mostly spot on, with lots of useful practical information on getting to and from places. I've always liked the Rough Guides, and this one is right up there.

As someone who is Vietnamese, I think that this is a great book for both Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese readers. In addition to being extremely detailed, it also has a great section with colored photos about Vietnamese cuisine that I think is great for those who may not be familiar to this country's unique flavors. Furthermore, at the very beginning, it has a top ten list of places to see in Vietnam for those who want to narrow down their trip to the most essential places.

I bought this book after the rave reviews received by so many other readers and have to say I was incredibly disappointed on many counts. I just toured Vietnam by motorbike for 2 months. My biggest complaint is that much of the information in the book is simply inaccurate. For example, the book says that in Dak Glei "there's another spectacular rong." In fact, there is no rong in Dak Glei. The closest one is 20 km away in Dak Wak, a completely different village. Similar mistakes occur throughout the book with almost every city. I was constantly finding myself saying, "Well, my guide book SAYS such and such should be here ...." until I finally came to disregard the book entirely. Unfortunately, those are things no reader can discover until they're actually there.

The maps are horrible. They may be OK if you are taking a bus from city to city and not venturing out of the backpacker areas ... but aren't most of you readers looking for more of a challenging and interesting adventure than that? I was, and the maps might as well have been non-existent for all the help they provided.

A minor complaint in comparison with the rest, but which might be more important for some of you: I wish I had paid more attention to the accommodation section before buying the book. They don't list actual prices when describing hotels, but instead use symbols which indicate a range of prices which can often be as broad as $10 - $40. Now most backpackers that are looking for a $10 room are going to find a $40 room. objectionable. Accordingly, I found that section to be very unhelpful. Additionally, although many hotels here have clued in to the fact that more and more travelers have laptops and that WIFI is an important amenity, Rough Guide has yet to realize or to note this amenity in their accommodation sections.

In the end, although I was often tempted to toss the book, I kept it to use as a rough 5 minute reference before heading to a new area or village, but on the whole found that I got much better information simply flying by the seat of my pants and asking the locals. I haven't seen or used the Lonely Planet guide so I can't compare, but I would save my money and skip the Rough Guide if I had it to do again.

I just returned from a trip to Vietnam (Jan 2008) and was given this book last minute by a friend. This book was invaluable to my trip and compared to the Lonely Planet that I had been using, it was way better. The information was useful, concise and accurate.
The only 2 complaints about it are: the language section in the back does not do a phonetic translation which means if you are trying to ask for tea (tra) you end up saying 'tra' instead of 'ja'. You could flip a few pages to where they list all the proper pronunciations of the consonants but who has time for that? It's a guidebook not a dictionary.
The other complaint I have is that massages were cheap and very good over there and yet were never mentioned in the book (where, how much, what to watch out for etc) The LP book did both. However, comparing the 2 books overall, the RG was still much better!

Rough Guide has become one of my favorites. It's value is that it targets a group beyond the backpackers. Vietnam is no exception. The maps are good, recommendations we used were always good. There is plenty of practical information about getting around and still has info the the backpackers, but many suggestions for more upscale restaurants and hotels. This was our primary guidebook for 3 weeks of independent travel in Vietnam.

My wife and I spent the entire summer of 2004 in Vietnam, and we found this guide to be the most complete. For the most part, we spent several weeks each in Hanoi, Saigon, Hoi An, and Sapa; not only did this guide provide just about everything we needed to know to get started in each locale, but as we explored on our own, it seemed like whatever we discovered was also consistently found in the guide. One key example of this guide's excellence: at the time, it was the only guide that guided travelers to the Ha An Hotel in Hoi An, by far the nicest place to stay in town (and very affordable as well). Over the weeks we stayed there, the Lonely Planet hordes were completely clueless about the place. That's the thing: Lonely Planet is great, but it seemed like 90% of travelers we saw had the LP guide tucked under their arms, so think about what that means for you--if you choose to join the LP stampede, or step to the side of it with this comprehensive guide. (By the way: we also liked the Vietnam, 5th: Tread Your Own Path (Footprint - Travel Guides), which isn't comprehensive but seemed to have great taste.)

I traveled in North and Central Vietnam for about 2.5 weeks in Feb 2007 with friends and they had the Lonely Planet guide, I had the Rough Guide. I found that the Rough Guide had a bit more detailed information about food, culture and sights. It was most apparent when we went to see the ruins of a Chiam village near Hoi An (My Son).

I loved the hot tip on the used book trade in Hoi An too. Great trades available in hotels and shops.

I am plannng to do Cambodia and Laos in February, and I am planning on bringing a Rough Guide (if available).

I've typically used Lonely Planets on my trips, but opted for the Rough Guide for my recent trip to Vietnam mostly because of the glowing reviews on Amazon. Unfortunately, throughout the trip I found it lacking in certain ways that will undoubtedly keep me from using a Rough Guide again.

There was a general lack of prices throughout the entire book. The authors included some prices for certain things, like some (but definitely not all) tours, tickets and transportation, but nothing at all for accommodation and eating - and these are perhaps the most important. Hotels and eateries were not even grouped into budget categories. In a place like Vietnam, where the economy and society is changing by the day, prices are naturally going to fluctuate. But including costs in the book provides a kind of snapshot, and gives you a good relative idea of where things ought to stand. Hotel A may be twice as expensive as hotel B, but you would have absolutely no idea until you checked out both for myself. Some restaurants don't print prices on their menus deliberately so that you won't know how much things actually cost, and they can overcharge you. By not including any prices, the Rough Guide leaves you in the dark here.

The Rough Guide provides an adequate amount of information, and covers a lot of ground in a country that has a surprising amount to offer. But the important details are sometimes missing, or buried within paragraphs, and/or in other sections you wouldn't think to look at when you're standing on a busy street corner trying to figure out which way to go. We went to Vinh Long during our trip, and took a bus from Saigon. There's a section for Vinh Long, but the Rough Guide only tells you where the buses may drop you off, not how to get on the bus to begin with. The only option available to us was a bus from a station somewhere in Saigon that wasn't even mentioned in the Rough Guide, after a long taxi ride through what looked like the slums of Saigon. A lot of the food recommendations were a little off the mark, especially on Cat Ba Island, where nothing seemed to be very good at all.

Overall, all the basic information was there, plus a little extra, but the details that were missing all contributed to make the Rough Guide a disappointing travel guide. It will get you around and show you all the highlights, but don't expect much help otherwise.