Malta & Gozo by The Lonely Planet

Malta & Gozo by The Lonely Planet

Malta and Gozo are both very small islands in the midst of the Mediterranean Sea. The Professor and I had the wonderful opportunity to visit in the summer of 2013. The trip itself was a strange and incredible experience; we visited ancient ruins, dined with interesting people, met with the minister of Finance in the Palace of Aragon, and dipped our toes in what HP would describe as “Gin blue waters.” Before our trip, we picked up this guidebook to give ourselves a crash course in the Islands.

The book itself isn’t very good. I have complaints about the way it is organized, and the appalling lack of pictures, given how cinematic the settings it describes can be. Instead, we get entirely too much focus on specific restaurants.

This is the second or third time I’ve been less-than-dazzled by the Lonely Planet as a publisher of guidebooks. Time to try a different press.

Shanghai City Guide by Lonely Planet
A useful overview of one of the world’s megacities. It seems clear that the authors didn’t particularly enjoy their time in Shanghai, but then, I can also concede a number of their observations about the pollution and exhausting climb for status and wealth that seem to so occupy the citizens. Their several sidebars on “The jews of Shanghai” also struck me as a little odd, as other ethnic minorities don’t seem to get similar coverage.

Lonely Planet guides are typically a little better than this. And not a single one of the various drivers I had was able to decipher the map in the center of the book, which made it more or less useless too. So, maybe try a different guide if you need an overview of Shanghai.

Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson


I love Bill Bryson. His great natured goofy commentary on anything and everything makes him a charming companion to explore almost any topic alongside. Neither Here Nor There lets the lucky reader tour continental Europe will Bill, from the frozen northern reaches of Scandinavia to the overcrowded bazaars of Istanbul. Along the way, you get to watch Bryson drink a lot of beer, fantasize about various Euro-lasses, and take a lot of trains.

You also get a fine history-lite commentary on many of the cities he visits.

Bryson is, simply put, a treat to read. He feels like a friend, and one whose opinion on nearly everything you’d be eager to hear. His everyman’s tone masks his interest in the erudite, and his sense of humor neatly disguises all the education he’s able to slip in to every work.

Great, fun stuff!

Vagabonding by Rolf Potts

Recommended on Amazon and by a few friends, but...

Rolf Potts had nothing new to say. The only interesting parts in his book were the quotes from other, smarter people, who had already laid down the philosophies he so clearly ill-understood. The quality of his writing was poor, and there was little to no substance. Dr. Seuss managed to capture the core spirit more succinctly in “Oh The Places You’ll Go!”

Potts was mighty proud of himself for being a person who had done some wandering, had a bunch of experiences seemingly at random – (yeah, okay, I get it, you scored with a Hungarian girl one time on the road – good for you) --and seemed to have drawn few useful conclusions from them. (“When you get home, your friends won’t understand you.” Being about the most profound— better summed up by Wilco a decade earlier.) His constant looking down his nose at others who are doing the EXACT same thing as he was irritating (see the section on “Trustafarians” and “Tourists” for examples). Aside from being a good refresher on “Common Quotables: From Thoreau to Muir”, I just didn’t see much in the book. In short, it was self aggrandizing without substance.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against “vagabonding” as a way of spending some time. I just don’t really see either capital-T “Travel” or capital-V “Vagabonding” as an actual lifestyle or philosophy; just a way of making the act of seeing new places both more and less profound at the same time.

Four Hour Work Week was a far better look at similar topics.

The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

Now this was something actually new! I stopped into a bookstore in Canada; a bookstore I really don’t like, I might add. I was irritated with the fiction I’d read recently and wanted to learn how to do something new.

I ran across Ferris’ book and opened it up with great skepticism. I was delighted. Ferris advocates a type of lifestyle design that is empowering, realistic, and entirely possible, if not for everyone.

In brief, Ferris encourages you to recognize that almost nothing is out of your reach and that most of the reasons people give for deferring their dreams are simple excuses. He goes on to give lots of great advice for how to manage one’s time more efficiently – sort of a “habits of highly effective people” bit – then he dives into a collection of chapters on how to reform your work/life balance in a fairly radical way. He gives further advice on a wide range of topics, from “outsourcing your life” to how to structure companies such that they aren’t a horrific burden on their leaders.

I loved the book, and have become a follower of Ferris’s blog, and, in large part, the lifestyle he advocates. It was the sort of book that well stated a number of beliefs I’ve had for quite some time.

In short: The rules don’t have to apply to you, because there are no rules. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. You can have the life you want; it’s there for your taking.

Highly recommended for anyone who is paralyzed by all the bullshit fears in life that prevent them from actually having one.

Ferris reminds us that learning new things is cool, that you can be anything you want to be, and that life is yours if you but choose to participate in it.

Bangkok City Guide by Lonely Planet
Bangkok, crown of Thailand, tropical jewel of southeast asia is a world unto itself. It sprawls for miles on either side of the peaceful Chao Phayra river and rises up to touch the polluted skies in the form of hundreds of modern glass and steel skyscrapers.

My well traveled friend Dave L. loaned me this handy pocket size city guide to the city before our departure, and it proved a welcome companion to the more robust but diffused knowledge in the general book on Thailand. More than once, I was able to get where we wanted to be by unfolding the front cover map and pointing out our desired destination to the patient, but sometimes English-lacking tuk-tuk drivers.

I will definitely buy a city guide to any mega-city I intend on visiting in addition to the general country guides. The two in tandem provide an excellent introduction to a place.

The Lonely Planet Thailand

The Lonely Planet guides to various countries have long been a staple for backpackers and the adventurous mainstream traveler. This one is thorough, detailed, and possessed of a great number of useful maps, phone numbers, etc. At over eight-hundred pages it’s also quite a bit too big to take with you on the road. So it’s a helpful book to read through in detail BEFORE you buy your plane tickets and plan your itinerary.

So that’s what I did. Over the course of several rainy nights in Vancouver I plowed through all the descriptions of the different cities and provinces, skimmed the restaurant and hotel reviews for the most part, then selected three destinations for The Professor and my trip there over New Years.

This is a book review site, not a travelogue, so I’ll skip all the details on the trip, except to say that Thailand is an incredible place, which I look forward to returning to—and that the Lonely Planet: Thailand helped prepare us for the trip quite well.

My only complaint is that the section on health towards the end of the book tends to be a bit scarier than it needs to be. It’s got grisly descriptions of all the various jungle diseases that one MIGHT contract; enough to make the faint of heart say, “I’m NEVER going there!” Which would be a major mistake…