Product Description

The Rough Guide to Southeast Asia is the essential hanbook to this stunning region, covering nine countries, plus Hong Kong and Macau. The region is rich with magnificent temples, outstanding beaches, spectacular hikes and enchanting towns. For a visitor on an extended trip to the region, this is the ideal guide, full of practical information on getting around within the countries as well as overland border crossings, ferry routes and local flights. The guide offers critical listings of the best places to stay, eat, drink and party - from five-star cosmopolitan luxury to rustic beach huts. There are detailed maps and plans for every region, making trip planning and navigating simple, with hotel and restaurant listings pin-pointed on the maps.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60795 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1232 pages

About the Author
Written and researched by a team of veteran authors, each contributing their expertise on different countries and regions.

Customer Reviews

Very Useful for those travelling to Southeast Asia
If you are planning to go to Brunei, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and/or Vietnam, this is the perfect guide. It is well desiged, with lots of detailed information for each place. It includes a section on the basic information for all the areas, and then goes into detail for each country. The bigger countries are devoted much more space, but there is a fair amount of information about the smaller countries too. I think it is a very useful copy to have if you are going to the region.

Beware - Incomplete Coverage!
Despite the title, this book doesn't cover all of Southeast Asia!
Two of the region's 11 countries are completely missing. These are Burma/Myanmar, which seems to be omitted for political correctness, and Asia's youngest country, East Timor, omitted simply out of ignorance - the publisher's policy appearently being that if few people go there, why bother with including it?
Also conspiciously missing from the book is the entire eastern half of Indonesia, the largest country in SEA: Papua, Maluku and West Timor. These are some of the region's most exotic and interesting places, with Asia's most extensive virgin rainforests and best preserved traditional cultures, so leaving them out just like this is a real shame.
So even if you are normally a Rough Guides fan (and I know many of their books are good), unless you are determined to stick to the well beaten tourist-tracks in places like Thailand and Malaysia, give this book a miss and go for Lonely Planet, which, while also far from perfect, at least does cover all of SEA!

The best for Thailand, Laos and Cambodia
I used the last edition of this book for Laos, Cambodia and Thailand and found it great. The hotels and restaurants were always decent places - that felt like they had been properly selected by the writers - unlike the LP Thailand book (which I also had) - where they felt like a random selection of often cramped and run-down places. Good on background too. I don't know about the other countries but it was great for these three.