Product Description

Contains recommendations for activities from hiking to diving. This work also includes a colour chapter on Vietnamese cuisine. It provides cultural coverage, including insightful interviews with locals.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87964 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 540 pages

Customer Reviews

OK but there is better out there
If you buy this then you will get a lot of information from it and you will survive. However, I used it for a month and decided to ditch it for "The Rough Guide" after borrowing it from a fellow backpacker and comparing it to my LP. The Rough Guide's writing was much better/wittier, tips were more helpful and the recommendations more accurate. Having used only LP guides for years I have been converted to The Rough Guides for now.

The Emperor's New Clothes
What is it about Lonely Planet? Like a rash, their guides are everywhere - sometimes in the most unwelcome of places. Nicely packaged and handy they may be, but they are often woefully inaccurate and incomplete. This is no exception. Cutting and pasting a few paragraphs about history and culture, this really skims the surface of a fascinating country, and leaves many fascinating places out. If you're a twentysomething Australian back-packer, then this book will probably make you very happy; if you're more discerning, and looking to explore the country's lesser known areas and learn more about its culture (and if you're interested in accuracy), then I would go for the infinitely better Rough Guide.

I'd go for the Rough Guide
having left our copy of the Rough Guide to Vietnam in a taxi in Saigon during the first week of our trip, we had no option but to purchase a copy of Lonely Planet. We were very disappointed, if you stuck to the Lonely planet, you'd only see a quarter mile radius of where you land, and miss out on so much that vietnam offers. It felt as if the author lands at the local backpacker haunt, then does door to door reviews of the closest hotels, bars and restaurants. The reviews also seem to act as a reason for a price hike as prices don't reflect what the lonely planet suggests. Yes, there's inflation, but it was published only last year and the prices really did seem way off, even though we were traveling during the low season.

You'd be able to get by with the lonely planet, and if you're not an adventurous traveller and are happy to follow the crowd, then this would be a fine purchase for you, but the Rough guide seemed to provide so much more detail. The one positive in favour of the Lonely Planet over the Rough Guide, is the language section which provides Vietnamese phonetically which makes getting your tongue round the tonal language much easier.