How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Guidebook
20. Feb, 2009 
20 Comments
I’m a Do-It-Yourself-er. I like to research. I love finding a good deal. I definitely don’t want the same exact lousy experience as everyone else when I travel. And recently… I learned to love my guidebook.
I was never a big guidebook person. I didn’t trust them. I preferred to do my own research, and if I’m to be honest, the idea of having a cookie-cutter travel experience sounded worse than waiting in line at the DMV. It’s like the beginning of The Beach (classic backpacker film), where Richard says, “The only downer is, everyone’s got the same idea. We all travel thousands of miles just to watch TV and check in to somewhere with all the comforts of home, and you gotta ask yourself, what is the point of that?” That was definitely not going to be me.
So until I purchased the Central America on a Shoestring Guide by Lonely Planet, I traveled completely sans guide. What a mistake. Let me qualify that. If you are going to be traveling to multiple counties, mostly by bus or train and staying in Hostels, you need one of these books. Of course if you’re spending a day in Paris, you don’t need the guidebook, it’s too much info. But for multi-month trips, they are a godsend.
Here are the reasons I slowly grew to love my little green book and everything it could do for me:
1. Pretty good, reliable advice. I spent about three weeks this year in Cancun. Mostly between trips, and completely unplanned, but as such, I got to know the city pretty well. I’ve stayed in or visited most of the hostels in LP’s guide, and their advice was spot on. This really sold it for me, they had picked the standouts, not based on online reviews (which can be flat out wrong) but on what places were actually the best, cheapest and most reliable.
Keep in mind: Newer places, naturally, won’t be in the guidebook. For example, Hostel Quetzal, currently the highest ranked Cancun hostel on Hostelworld.com isn’t listed because it opened after the publish date.
2. You know what you are getting. There is a certain backpacker aesthetic. People want clean beds, as cheap as possible, a place to hang out and relaxed atmosphere. If you stay at a backpacker hostel, it’s different than staying at a cheap hotel. You’re more likely to make those one-day-friends. You’ll be surrounded with people that are traveling just like you.
Keep in mind: If you’re working, or otherwise not in the mood to chat with a bunch of Aussies all day, while you try desperately to get something done, a backpacker type hostel can be a more of a distraction. It’s almost impossible not to make friends when you’re there, so I like to change it up, giving me some time to get caught up and still be social.
3. It gives you really practical advice about basic things. It takes a while to figure out the correct prices for everything in a place. That’s why taxi drivers at airports try to charge you outrageous prices ($65 at Cancun, $100 at Panama City). Knowing what a reasonable price from the airport to downtown or for a taxi across town can save you tons when you’re still getting your bearings.
Keep in mind: Since the books are always a few years old by the time they get into your hot little hands, everything seems to be slightly more expensive than listed. If it’s a dollar or two, I don’t worry about it.
4. Quick ideas about what places are like, when you are offline. I love researching online. But plans change. Internet can be scarce. You find out there is a festival in the next town over, but do you want to actually go there? Is there anywhere cheap to stay? How much is a bus there? All these general questions can be answered, even if you’re not online.
Keep in mind: Of course the book doesn’t replace actually going there, checking it out, doing your own research or talking to people. But for a very basic idea of a place, it can’t be beat.
So in short, I don’t use my guidebook to plan my trips. That’s not really what they are for. But this afternoon I went to the Panama Canal and I wanted to find a certain book in English. I found out the price for a cab driver to the canal ($15 roundtrip and they wait while you go in) and the largest bookstore in Panama City. I could have asked around for this. I could have gone online and found it. But I didn’t have to, it was there, waiting for me, in my guidebook.
I still talk to people, get off the beaten path, find places to stay, research and all that fun stuff. I’m still a traveler. I just have a back up plan.
What about you: love em or hate em, tell us how an example of why you feel the way you do about guidebooks (for example: that time in the Amazon when you used the phrasebook to dire results or the amazingly cheap and wonderful time you had because of a recommended sidetrip out of Venezuela).
I bumped into someone who was researching updates for the Rough Guide when I was in Laos last year and was impressed at how diligently she was doing her job, putting a lot of time and effort into visiting places (and not just phoning up or asking other people).
One of the things that guide books can be useful for is it find the places to avoid – if a sight is listed as a highlight in the Lonely Planet, you can guarantee it’ll be mobbed. Places that only get a brief mention (or no mention at all) are usually much emptier.
I really regretted leaving my Central America guidebook behind when I was on a bus journey from Chetumal in Mexico to Tikal in Guatemala via Belize – we got loads of misleading advice from locals we asked questions from, badly advised on where to break the journey, and ripped off on the border (and this is despite speaking Spanish). Having the guidebook with us would have helped us to avoid some of those problems.
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The term is GUIDEbook, not YOU-MUST-DO-IT-THIS-WAYbook. I like to use them as just that, a guide, a starting point. And I agree with Geoff and try to stick with the lesser mentioned places.
Gillian´s last blog post..Nostalgic Already?
The first thing you must do is check the date on the guide book. Through no fault of the author, there could be out of date stuff in the guides that’s out of date as soon as it hits the streets.
I’m still a little bit embarrassed about the ‘super bar’ I once recommended in a magazine article. When I visited two years later, I found that it had, in the meantime a) been taken over by a biker gang, b) Raided at least three times by the Drug Squad and c) The owner received a jail sentence, and the place closed down.
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There is an ‘urban myth’ that guidebooks often contain a small piece of inaccurate, or even untrue information, so that the publishers know if the author’s work has been plagiarised.
Keith´s last blog post..Sign of Spring
I usually do my research first before I travel. Those guide books are my must bring accessories. The Let’s GO book was our bible when we were backpacking in Europe, it help us get around from point A to B. From then, I usually use Rick Steves in Europe and Frommers for everywhere else.
I like using guidebooks, as a guide, especially in the early planning stages. My favorites are rough guides.
I do like guidebooks – but only as one piece of the puzzle that I painstakingly assemble before a trip. What I usually do is check a bunch of them out of the library. Then I choose the one or two I really like and buy them to bring along. But I always supplement what I find in them with lots of online research and also culling information from people I know who have been to the place I’m going (and since my parents are semi-professional travelers and have been most places, I can usually get some information from them.
I tend also to look for guidebooks about a specific aspect of the place I’m especially interested in. For example, I bought Hungry for Paris by Alexander Lobrano before our trip to France last summer. Every single one of the restaurant recommendations in there was dead accurate.
But I can’t remember ever taking a trip and relying solely on a guidebook.
you could also ask the locals where they spent their own vacations to find some nice places
Guidebooks are a helpful resource. I don’t use them to determine my trip, but they are useful with border crossing (i.e. best towns in Vietnam to get over to Laos). The city maps are usually very accurate too. Good for an orientation. They also tend to have a lot of little towns that one would not know off hand, but are worth a visit.
The accommodations really comes down to the type of travel you’re involved in. If you are traveling alone and want to meet other travelers then it’s great. All migrate to the same places in the book. If not, skip the section all together.
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For us, it’s absolutely Rick Steves for Europe. We own ten of his guidebooks and we have used them for over twenty trips over the last three years. He really knows his stuff; he and his people do their research thoroughly and they update the guide books each year. For our most recent trip, however, we found that Sardinia is not included in Rick’s Italy so we used Lonely Planet. LP covers many more towns and cities than the Rick Steves guides but we were quite disappointed with the vague information provided. Also, we kept coming across the line, “Please check with the local tourist office” which we found hilarious… and not at all helpful.
Ultimately, people should do whatever they are comfortable with. We are not traveling around the world… we are based in Barcelona where we live and work full-time and have long weekends and week-long trips in which to see places we have always dreamed of visiting. As such, we don’t have much time to get lost on the way to a museum. For some (ourselves included), Rick’s detailed, information-overload approach is perfect. It’s clear that others would prefer less information and planning… and opt for the more organic experience that unfolds when you travel without a guidebook in hand.
I’ve always loved Let’s Go because they have tons of historical and cultural information about their destinations. It’s nice to know a little bit more about the places you’re visiting than simply directions to the nearest hostel.
This post is a refreshing change from the “burn your guidebook” type posts that have become popular of late. I like researching online but I can’t be bothered printing out reams of paper to take with me. Then once you are on the road printing is completely impractical.
James´s last blog post..Travel Photo: Oriental Pearl Tower, Shanghai – China
So far Google and guidebooks (as well as travel blogs and hearsay) are what is planning our route. Being a beginner traveller you need somewhere to start and I definitely feel some (but not all) guidebooks do this. My favourite so far is First Time Around The World by Doug Lansky (Rough Guide) – excellent tips and snipets of info. I hope, once I become more travel savvy, to be able to just use the books for the basic info and plan a trip 100% myself. Great article and I’m glad to find that even the most experienced travellers still pick up the books. xx
I have to say that I don’t use guidebooks like I used to before the advent of Tripadvisor, Facebook, Twitter, Travelwriters.com and the like. I typically used a guidebook as one piece of my research and was very particular about the type of guidebook too. Lonely Planet and Rough Guides worked for the most part. But in the last few years, I’ve discovered that I can gather more recent and relevant info online. Because I’m almost always traveling for a story, I need specific info and I’ve found what I need with other journalists online or expats. I do like the idea of a good guidebook, they can be very handy on the road. I just haven’t used one lately.
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Your list is spot on, Christine! Like most of the folks here, I don’t use guidebooks exclusively, but more as a skeleton upon which to build some decisions.
My husband and I both like DK’s Eyewitness Guides, not merely because they’re the general size of any purse I own, but because they cover all the regions of a country, have very detailed street maps, gorgeous photos, and alert us to random sights and towns we’d otherwise have missed. For instance, the crazy geological formations at El Torcal in southern Spain, between Malaga and Granada; I’d never seen anything like it, yet we were the only Americans there.
If something looks interesting in a DK Guide, we’ll use any one of a gajillion sources to do further research online — but still, the book travels with us.
I’ve also had a lot of fun with the Style City books, specifically for London, Paris, and Barcelona. Especially time-sensitive, these are guides to the most unusual, design-y, independent small museums, restaurants, boutiques and shops a city has to offer. In London, in particular, we made trips to parts of town we might not have found otherwise just to find a vintage record store or a Burmese restaurant.
In the meantime, we as bloggers will continue to fill in the gaps. After all, it’s our collective job!
Melanie Waldman´s last blog post..Travels Without Turtles
I too am a fan of the guidebook and have defended their use to budget-conscious travelers. I’ll save space here and link to the original:
In Defense of Printed Guidebooks
In my own experience, I find they make it easier to simply take off somewhere without a plan and still end up with a well-rounded experience.
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I am addicted to guidebooks. Although I buy used books all the time, I buy NEW guidebooks because even new ones are already out of date, as you point out.
Second thing I’ve learned is that one imprint does not cover all places well. Slowly,I’ve learned to choose different guidebooks for different places and purposes. One is good for attractions, another for hotels. One knows Europe very well, but another is best for Southeast Asia.
And unlike some of your readers, I avoid Rick Steves because many people follow him too slavishly, turning his “unknown” spots into circuses. I still laugh when I think about walking past a Rome sidewalk cafe and seeing four couples consulting Rick Steves guidebooks.
Finally, I promote literature for travel at my web site. In a rare departure today, I’m posting on some guidebooks, and will include a link to your excellent post.
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Here here. As a guidebook writer myself I completely agree. The problem as with most things is we tend to realise that one time we went to see something recommended in a guidebook and it had closed 6 months ago… not the 20 other things we did that week that the guidebook recommended and we had a great time doing. You always hear the scare stories… you never hear the ‘I bought a guidebook and it did exactly what it said it would do for me’ because that doesn’t make good headlines. I am totally fastidious – I just spent 10 days literally walking every street in Seville to update several hundred hotels, restaurants, bars and attractions. I personally made sure each one was still there and the details were up to date. It’s a labour of love… because it’s my book and I am very proud of it. Most guidebook writers – even on the bad days when they have been walking so much they have the blisters to prove it – would feel the same way.
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Sorry… it’s getting late… I meant to say … We tend to REMEMBER… in sentence #2 not we tend to realise (doh!)
Jeremy Head´s last blog ..72% of Press Releases are made up crXp!