Lonely Planet Taiwan (Country Travel Guide) Review

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Lonely Planet Taiwan (Country Travel Guide) ReviewI have relied on Lonely Planet guides and phrase books to help me through India, Europe, Japan, and the USA and have had nothing but good experience with them up until this new release of the Taiwan travel guide.
First off the strong points:
- The book provides excellent places to check out.
- It has enough variety to accommodated any travelers interest.
- It is nicely laid out to find the information you are interested in with relative ease.
Now the reasons for the Two-Star Rating:-English spelling of many of the Chinese street and place names were highly inaccurate.
I know Chinese is hard to translate in English spelling, but it really through me for a loop when I arrived in Taipei expecting the street names with the book's maps spelling to line up with the actual street names. It would have been nice to have a warning that, for example, Xio, Zho, Sho are common spelling variations when translating Chinese to English.- No Chinese on the books Maps + Poor place translation = No help from Locals
It didn't help that there is no Chinese on the book's maps to asks the locals to at least point me in the right direction; and when I did ask proficient English speaking Taiwanese for directions with the books maps, they were just as confused as I was about the spellings.-Outdated prices and information.
Hotel and transportation costs were usually 30% more expensive then the books advertised price and even sometimes double than what the book said it should be in high season (and I was in Taiwan in mid-low season!). Also a few of the must-go-restaurants in Taipei were out of business, so be sure to call or look on-line to make sure places are still Open.
-Outdated Public Transportation Routes
Most of the bus numbers it says to catch don't match up with the actually numbers in Taiwan. Some of the places where the book states there is only two to three trains a day I found completely False. On multiple occasions I found trains were available all day long. So be sure to ask the train station first before ruling out that it is not possible for you to go somewhere.
-Maps can be confusing
Since you cannot rely on the spelling of street names I wish they included more landmark buildings such as police stations or posts offices to better your bearings on an area.What makes me so upset is that I pre-ordered this book from Lonely Planet so I could have the most up to date information and get the most out of my trip. Instead I had to constantly worry about all the small things this book should have solved for me. Multiple times a day it set me back. If you are heading to Taiwan I would recommended getting this book only to get ideas of natural wonders or temples you may be interested in visiting. Since the prices are not accurately reflected in this edition, all older editions should have the same basic information as well. If you happen to fly into Taoyuan Internationale Airport be sure to stop by the Information counter which has wonderful maps of both Taiwan and Taipei in both English and Chinese as well as other information. I found these free materials to be more worthy then this book. I still have faith in Lonely Planet, However, do not rely on this New Taiwan Edition to get you through the country smoothly. Edit August 22, 2011:
This is the only book I felt compelled enough to write a review about because of how much it failed to guide me. After recently travelling Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos with Lonely Planet and having no problems with any of them I have decided to downgrade my previous rating of two stars down to one. Taiwan might be a fast changing place, but this book should have little excuse. Why buy an outdated and inaccurate book when you could get up-to-date higher quality literature for free at the airport?
Lonely Planet Taiwan (Country Travel Guide) Overview

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