Customer Reviews

Thailand 3: The Rough Guide, 3rd edition (Rough Guide Thailand)

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

 

 

I just returned from Thailand and I took four guides: Thomas Cook's, Lonely Planet, Let's Go, and this guide (see my reviews on the others guides, and do seriously consider Lonely Planet Islands & Beaches IF you are only going to spend time as a sun lizard).

`Thomas Cook Thailand' is a special niche guide, best suited for those with tour groups and `Let's Go Thailand' is the guide for those backpackers that are `on the cheap'. This leaves Rough Guide to face off with Lonely Planet and in some areas it is superior to L.P and in one big area it is not.

Rough Guide's restaurant recommendations are by far the best of any guide I reviewed; they are both reliable and informative, giving great descriptions and dish recommendations, "the grilled river prawns with chili, the matsaman curry and the delicious durian cheese-cake." The restaurant prices are listed as: Expensive, Moderate and Inexpensive.

The hotel accommodations recommendations are also descriptive, very reliable and most have either webpage addresses or email. Sadly, Rough Guide still uses the user 'unfriendly' price codes, instead of just saying in dollars (or Bahts) what the cost for the hotel is. Thus you need to memorize the table where the number 4=400-600B and 5=600-900B etc., then you can convert to either dollars or euros to get the price. Also, since the Guide is published in 2004 (thus the information is from 2003) you add 10-20% for inflation. Both Lonely Planet and Let's Go just tell you what the price is. "Duh".

The Guide has excellent information that tells you the nitty-gritty that prepairs you for your trip. It also has great history, religion (Buddhism of course), environmental and cultural sections. Not to be missed is the additional reading recommendations (six pages).

Where it bombs is BANGKOK. The Guide says that Bangkok is "sprawling, chaotic and exhausting" and that is exactly how I experienced the 115 pages that covered this mega-city. The layout is dysfunctional. It has no logical consistency between any two points. Bangkok is the home of 11 million people; it is huge and spreads out like greater Los Angeles. It needs to be broken down into regions and then sections and those need to be logically kept together. But, this guide will give you information on one area, like Thanon Sukhumvit, then 60 pages later the accommodations for that area, then 20 pages back will be the Thanon Sukhumvit map; but wait, the restaurants for that area... you guessed it, will be located some where else. Hello! Who laid this out? What herb, pray tell, were they using? So, if you plan to spend any significant time in Bangkok, then Lonely Planet is a better guide.

Maybe the 6th edition Rough Guide will improve the Bangkok section and hopefully increased the guides paltry index (8 pages for all of Thailand - Bangkok alone could be 8 pages) and make this an outstanding guide. Bangkok aside this is still a strongly recommended guide.

Fed up with the traditional Lonely Planet I turned to the Rough Guide for an alternative view. While this guide gives detailed historical/background knowledge it severely lacks in the essentials, notably transport prices and detailed maps.�@There were just too many times when this book became a more of a frustration than a help. This book is best read before you go and left at home.

Full of great and relevant information. Some prices have already gone up, despite how recently the book came out, but that's par for the course in Asia. It would have been nice if there were place names spelled out in Thai a bit more, so you could point them out to taxi drivers. They rarely spoke English and my pronunciation of the romanized Thai words wasn't up to snuff. It's also not as handy as a reference guide for looking up phone numbers or addresses to hotels, restaurants, etc. as say the Lonely Planet. It does provide a bit better context though and reads more comfortably. All in all, a good book. I bought it because it was so recent, but think I may go back to Lonely Planet for most future travel guides.

I was reading Lonely Planet Thailand (Country Travel Guide) and the book has many positive reviews, but the Rough Guide to Thailand has much worse reviews. I can recall reading some Rough Guides to other countries many years ago, and I came away from that experience feeling confident in the series.

If you read the reviews on Amazon U.S. almost all of them denigrate the Thailand Rough Guide. However, if you look at the reviews, you will see that almost all of them predate this edition. If you judge a travel series by an out-of-print edition, it probably won't seem that good.

Then I took a look at Amazon U.K. The reviews of the Rough Guide were much more positive, and were more recent as well. I bought a copy so I was able to review it. Amazon must love me :)

And here is my take on the book - it's as good as Lonely Planet. Both of the current versions (in Summer 2011) were released in 2009, and so seem to be a little dated. I would suggest that both travel guides take a leaf from Nancy Chandler's Maps of Bangkok or Chiang Mai (both available here on Amazon) and keep a web site with updates every few months. The web is now a necessary tool for backpacking journeys, especially when just about every place to stay and many places to eat (and a whole lot of other attractions) have their own web sites. That saves you hunting around for accommodation in the wee small hours after you arrive, because the place you were headed for no longer exists.

But you cannot plan without a book. Reading either of these books is like having a long conversation with someone who has been there, so that you can find out what you'll expect to pay, whether it's a noisy place or comfortable and quiet (tripadvisor is a good site for this as well). When I was getting information I had both guides available, and I found myself using them interchangeably. The information was no better and no worse, in my experience, and the Rough Guide was definitely not the write-off the reviews claimed.

However, both guides should be up for revised versions in Spring 2012. I hope that they will embrace the web, rather than see it as a competitor. Maybe you won't take your paper guide with you and rely on your tablet or netbook, but I'd still feel happier with a book as well. I've spent around 40 hours on-line with the books at my side, and an abstract idea ("Why don't you backpack around Thailand?") turned into a pretty complete itinerary for a three-week trip. You could google Thailand Travel Blog which in my case threw up several good suggestions.

Unfortunately, the trip isn't for me. I'm wheelchair-bound and such a trip would be so much hard work. However, one of my aides is interested in going with her boyfriend, and since both are around 20 they're fine for all the effort (including bare-back riding an elephant!). I am confident that it will turn out well for them.

So, don't overlook the Rough Guide. I'd suggest you get both it and the Lonely Planet, but the Rough Guide alone is a great resource. Let's hope that the 2012 revisions keep up the good work.

Do your research on line before going to any of the hotels suggested in this guide. Some of them are real dumps. Also, the guide does little to show you how to get around the country. I'm spoiled by Rick Steves guides that basically take you step by step on how to get out of the airport and to the sights, restaurants, hotels, etc. There are no prices and maps of Bangkok do not even show where the airport is at. It doesn't do what a guide is supposed to do, guide you. It gives a general overview of each city and gives a history lesson, but not much else. I have to wonder if the people who wrote the book actually went to Thailand or just read about it. Waste of money if you ask me. Something to read while on the toilet, otherwise I'm doing all me research on line.

I always buy from the Rough Guides series as they provide way more info than the other travel guides. Great book and great price!

This is about the tenth Rough Guide I've used, and as usual it has been an excellent source of most importantly accurate information. All Rough Guides have evidently been well researched and give step-by-step procedures of what to do on arrival, finding accommodation and local transport etc. I've never understood why so many travellers use 'Lonely Planet' guides. The title may very well sound ethereal and full of the romatic allusion (illusion?) of travelling, but I have found them at best very mediochre. I can think their popularity lies more in the fact of their reputation. If you're a 'serious' traveller you only ever get the Lonely Planet. Well don't bother, get a Rough Guide which you will almost certainly find more useful.

This is the first rough guide that I have used. I found it to be easy to use and very thorough in all regards. I would say that this book is a must for all visitors to Thailand.

I bought this book and relied on it to plan my
vacation for 30 days in Thailand with my family.
This book is very, very inaccurate! The
information is so inaccurate that I think the
authors just made up things to fill up pages.
It was worthless when I was visiting cities in
Thailand because each time I found the
information incorrect and misleading. I cursed
this book many times when I was on vacation in
Thailand for being so useless and deceptive and
inaccurate. I really hate to give a book such
a terrible review and I usually would never
comment but because this book let me down so
much in Thailand I decided to tell other readers
to warn them to look elsewhere for "reliable"
information. Have a good trip to Thailand is my
wish to you but buy some other book than this one.
It is DANGEROUS to print untruths and misinformation
and wrong address and wrong prices and wrong
everything else. This book was dead wrong so many
times it made me vomit. The authors now have no
credibility with me and I will never buy another
Rough Guide to anywhere because of it. It's
expecially dangerous when you are traveling with a
young child as I was and relied on the book and it
let me down again and again putting my family in
a bad way really fast. It's not fun when this happens
especially in a foreign country with your kid.