Lonely Planet Vietnam Cambodia Laos & Northern Thailand (Multi Country Travel Guide) Paperback Author: Nick Ray | Language: English | ISBN:
174179823X | Format: PDF, EPUB
Download Lonely Planet Vietnam Cambodia Laos & Northern Thailand
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- Series: Multi Country Travel Guide
- Paperback: 520 pages
- Publisher: Lonely Planet; 3 edition (March 1, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 174179823X
- ISBN-13: 978-1741798234
- Product Dimensions: 2 x 3 x 0.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Having become personally involved in the hospitality branch in Vietnam I can testify that it is not true the writer stays in all of the hotels. I can only speak for Ninh Binh, Vietnam a sleepy town that has seen rising numbers of tourists. Assume the writer would have stayed in all of the hotels. Then he would be grounded for one month in just this place alone. Simple mathemethics tell this is not possible when travelling throughout the country in one half year as he did. So he has Vietnamese informants. And there you have a serious problem.
People who have traveled in Vietnam know that anything can be arranged for some "tea money". I regularly talk with the local hotel owners and know for a fact that these assistants announce their stay with the remark they are from the Lonely Planet. Needless to say these persons are being treated like royalty. The hotel owner continues to please them by sending a present on the following Vietnamese New Years. That is how some hotels in Vietnam secure their place in the book. I have this confirmed from different sources.
Hotels that were already listed in the previous editions are not re-assessed. The info can be as old as one decade. Some hotels have rested on their laurels and the service and amenities have gone down the hill. Now that there is TripAdvisor, this can easily be detected. Just check the reviews there for the budget hotel in Ninh Binh, that is highly recommended in the book. Reviewers talk about the "trap of Lonely Planet".
And there are other recommended hotels in the guide book that are very poorly rated on TripAdvisor. Two listed lodgings actually double as a brothel. Others are virtually empty most time of the year. A cook is being praised where he has long left the hotel.
First and foremost, I used to LOVE Lonely Planet guides. They were always my first (and usually my ONLY) choice when I travel somewhere. I used to always consider their guidebooks to be worthy of 4 or 5 star ratings. Their target audience has always been people like me -- younger budget travelers and backpackers. Lonely Planet used to be very impartial. However, if this guidebook is any indication, it's now become very much the exact opposite.
Case in point, take a look at the sections for Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City. The section for Phnom Penh dedicates an excessive amount of article space to convince tourists to go check out a place called the "Foreign Correspondents Club", where they can sit and have overpriced drinks with other tourists, rather than experience any of the actual culture of the city itself. There are thousands of places to get drinks in Phnom Penh, yet they tell you that the "must visit" place for foreigners is this place (which just happens to be 5 to 10 times more expensive than local establishments). This is by no means the only example, but it seems to be one of the most blatant. It makes me question whether Lonely Planet gets paid by these businesses to write these types of articles, which would SERIOUSLY undermine their credibility to their target audience.
The same types of issues appear to exist for Ho Chi Minh City. Their 2009 guide book had an interesting article regarding the "Rex Hotel", which used to be a barracks for US service members during the Vietnam War. Now, they don't even list this particular hotel in their listings of places to stay, despite it being one of the most popular and historic. What's the matter, Lonely Planet? Did they not pay you enough to be included?
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