The Lying Planet: Why Is My Travel Guide Wrong?
At least, that’s how I imagine her. By the time I caught up to Claire and the eight beautiful Irish girls she laughingly referred to as “the mates”, I had developed my own frustrations with the world’s most popular travel Guide. My hotel did not have the cheap rates, friendly staff or talking elevator as promised and I was more than fed up with not getting sufficient information to avoid being taken for a ride. I was patient enough with the first few errors but after three weeks I had lost faith in even the most reputable of guides. So had Claire. And so had the mates. That there are a few inaccuracies is not surprising when you examine how travel guides are actually put together. The Lonely Planet updates their guides on a two, three or four year cycle depending on how liable that information is to change. But its worth remembering that the process of commissioning, researching, writing and editing takes about eight months, so by the time the guide gets printed, packaged, shipped, displayed and finally delivered into your anxious hands, you could be looking at an even longer delay. Let’s Go, which bills itself as “the world's most popular budget travel series” updates their most popular titles annually and most of their other guides biannually. Plus, its researched and written entirely by students, which definitely gives them an authentic claim as a guide “entirely researched and written by young adults for their peers”, and if you’ve ever used the guide they live up to the claim (though for my money, LP has better background detail on history and culture and more interesting sidebars) (plus I’m not in my twenties anymore). But it’s worth reading the fine print. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of Harvard Student Agencies, Let's Go can only employ full-time, degree-seeking Harvard students. Now, call me elitist, but I’m not convinced that the average Ivy League student who can afford to take the summer off to travel Asia and Europe instead of working in construction to save up that outrageous tuition fee, is actually in the same financial bracket as I. Nor am I convinced that a twenty-year-old’s idea of the “latest in cool” around the red light district is quite what my wife and I are looking for on our honeymoon. But at least they are striving for accuracy. Both Let’s Go and Lonely Planet actively seek input from their readers, which they incorporate into their subsequent editions. And if you have ever noted something that ought to be corrected or included, it’s likely worth your time to log onto their websites and send them the information. For one, you might be saving some other poor soul a day’s worth of grief and a pocketful of money. But with LP it’s even more lucrative, since they reward the very best suggestions with a free guidebook. And, of course, context is everything. I know of a guest-house in the Greek Isles that has been run by the same family and hasn’t changed their prices in over ten years. Most of Europe is the same; it’s been a tourist destination for centuries, you can see the same sights now that your grandfather did, the economy is stable and prices aren’t changing very rapidly. Claire and I met in Viet Nam, a country that is experiencing more tourists with each passing year and where the government exercises strict controls over the number of official hotels and guest houses that are allowed to operate in any given city or region. This clash of basic market economics and bureaucratic communist controls is a sure-fire recipe for inflation. It’s a no-brainer, really: when increasing demand meets limited supply, it guarantees that hotel rates are steadily increasing in a way that no guide can keep up with. Worse, the value of the currency in some southeast Asian or South American countries is notoriously volatile. The exchange rate of the Laos Kip, for instance, seems to vary on an almost daily basis even at the official currency exchanges. The cost of simple goods seems to have two prices, one for the locals and another wildly different price for “farang” (westerners). Sometimes its clear that a vendor has simply inflated the prices and its easy to move down the street and get a fair deal, but eventually even the most seasoned barterer has to accept the fact that she will never pay a “local” price for a jacket like those worn by hill-tribe peoples. I understand this. So do Claire and the mates, apparently. “Let’s see what The Lying Planet has to say on the subject,” I heard her saying two days later as she compared a tableful of guides. I couldn’t help but think that while they are tremendously helpful, people like Claire and I need to know when to put the guide down. It’s a guide after all, not a bible. Have fun, strike our on your own and stop blaming the book for being slightly out of date when, in the long run, its never really promised to be anything more than a useful starting point. Stay tuned for Claire’s experiences with Vietnamese tailors … |
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