The worst travel guide ever!
929513
This is NOT a travel guide! I didn't find this book very informative but rather annoyed by the author's political comments. The entire book is politically loaded, with comments against Chinese government on almost every page of the book. Yes, I know that Tibet is a politically sensitive region and a good travel book shouldn't avoid the topic.  However, the authors goes too far to turn this travel book into a personal political statement. In addition, as a Chinese reader, I found many details described in the book highly selective and biased. The author was trying to demonized Chinese - not only the Chinese government but also the average Chinese people! I bet you'll never dare to go to Tibet after reading this "travel guide" because the place was described like a communist hell!
4351416
I recently checked out this book (among others) from the local library prior to a trip to Oahu. For my trip, I was disappointed by this book, and found this to be one of the less-useful ones.

First, this book was largely useless because the author omitted almost any information about accessing different tourist sites through Hawaii's tourist-packed mass transit system, The Bus. Most tourists I met relied on mass transit and tour buses. What good is a guidebook if you don't know how (or whether) you can get to the things the author mentions?

Secondly, the author frequently lacks discernment and context in his suggestions. For example, the Waikiki Shopping Plaza is listed as offering "about a dozen [budget] ethnic and American restaurants", without context. When I visited, I discovered the usual set of food court fry pits that could be found in any American shopping mall. Why would anyone interested in "Hidden Hawaii" be interested in these?

Needless to say, I rapidly tossed this book in my hotel room, and carried around the Rough Guide around. Thud.
319330
It seems like the author Has "sold out" to advertisers. Not a good guide book and can not even be considered as a place to start your "bucket list."  Some of the places listed, you would probably  die before you saw them; they are in dangerous and hostile areas.
Book does not provide adequate information about the sites because it is listing places to stay/eat. I travel widely and the places listed are not the nicest nor the best value.
1220244
We are planning a trip to the southwest so bought several guides including Frommers, Lonely Planet and Mobil Southwest.  The Mobil guide is by far the least helpful with no pictures, limited useless mapping and tepid listings of lodging and restaurants.  Do not buy this guide if you want lavish descriptions of the attractions, geography, lodging and dining, helpful maps, interesting pictures, etc.  I don't understand who could possibly want a Mobil guide when there are so many better ones.
4441391
We purchased both this latest edition and the previous edition of this guidebook prior to travelling to Ecuador for an eleven week stay.  Eight weeks into our trip, we have found these guidebooks to be virtually worthless - they are full of dated, incomplete and inaccurate information.  We consider them to have been a complete waste of money.  If you have a computer, utilize Trip Advisor for accurate information and ratings by real fellow travellers.
568642
If you are budget travelling in Europe buy this book (or the appropriate country guide), and then buy a "real" travel guide (i.e. Rick Steves, Frommer, Lonely Planet). Generally, I use this book for accomodation recommendations and eating while I use the other book for information on sites to see.  The reason is that these books are poorly written with inscrutable directions and lackluster descriptions of the sites.  For example, if you are not already an expert on the forum in Rome, any attempt to use Let's Go to make heads or tails of it will fail utterly. Also, be careful about the information given in the books especially if you go off the Eurrailer trail.  I discovered (while in Sicily and Malta) that despite their claims to the contrary, the book is not fully updated every year.  The maps are often wrong; half of the hotels may be closed that they list and none of the resaurants may exist anymore.  More worrisome, the boat schedules for some minor fairies may not in any way resemble what the book lists. By the end of all of my trips with Let's Go, I had a list of errors written out, ranging from the irritating to the frustrating to the nearly disastrous.  So, buy this book if you are budget travelling especially if you are sticking to a standard Eurrail tour, but be careful and take any information about more obscure locations with a huge grain of salt.
2011814
I read this in 30 mins on my lunch hour. No real meaningful content, just a very general and superficial once over of London. Hints such as:  don't eat in the touristy areas as the food is overpriced, and, you'll miss seeing the sites if you take the Tube; were sophomoric at best. My favorite was when the author advised us to be polite to any drunks we might meet on the late night transports so as to avoid a problem. Wow, what insight! Save your time and money. There are better tour books available.
4488131
I wish I had read the reviews for this guide before I wasted good money on it.  First of all there is no format for this book.  It is just one test question after another.  Some of the questions are repeated again and again.  There are questions concerning typesetting which are completely irrelevant.  It's confusing and the glossary of terms and information in the back are good but after looking at the questions, I don't even trust the information. Don't waste your money on this guide. I only give it one star because I had to pick something in order to proceed.
2823602
This review only deals with the Kindle version of the book. In my view it is simply terrible: Navigation between sections is awful and complicated, the maps are tiny and can't be zoomed, let alone the fact that there are no hyperlinks: you see a landmark on the map, but it doesn't make sense clicking it, the map is not interactive at all.. It's very hard to find anything useful, and there are no photographs making any sense, which was typically the primary reason why I was purchasing DK travel guides.

It is obvious that whoever was porting this guide to the Kindle platform did everything mechanically, without thinking or trying to embrace the new capabilities. This guide was a complete waste of money, so do not repeat my mistake!
It's a pity one can't return Kindle books like mobile applications... Having looked at the book for five minutes, I immediately wanted to return it.
3978276
Having lived in Paraguay for 2 years, I found the majority of the information in this book to be grossly inaccurate.  Many of the "ideal" day-trip itineraries are not achievable given the time allotted even with access to a teleport. The distance and time required to travel between cities is much greater than indicated.  The itineraries also would not permit a traveler to interact with the people and culture of Paraguay, even on the most basic level.

The beauty and attraction of Paraguay resides in its people.  I found the author's descriptions of many of the social and economic aspects to be rather offensive.  It paints Paraguayans in a bad light, constantly pointing out only the negative (e.g. poverty, lack of education, etc.) and never the positive (e.g. kindness, hospitality, sense of humor, etc.).

If you are a theologian and enjoy going on "church crawls," this book is for you.  If you want to learn about the people, culture and true amount of happiness that exists in Paraguay, you would be better served by a different guide book.
4748790
Awful travel book, do not buy! no maps, no pictures, no addresses, just random paragraphs for the entire book! don't buy, scam!
2228876
This book is a complete rip off.  Based on the information offered, it is impossible to plan a trip. There are very few maps and the descriptions are woefully inadequate. If you want a book to look pretty on your coffee table, it's probably ok.  If you actually want to travel to one of the 500 places, look elsewhere. Waste of money!
4059205
Absolutely terrible. Organization by arrondissement makes it so you need to know in which arrondissement your destination is located. Coupled with an almost unusable index mages the green guide not worth the money nor the physical weight.
1686510
I am on a quest to see all 50 states and Hawaii is my last one. I like to see the whole gay scene when I travel, too.  This book had very little info on Honolulu and I am very surprised how shallow the hotel suggestions were and there was no tips on the high parking charges and the housekeeping fees some the hotels, including the ones suggested, charge the unsuspecting tourist.
I went to an on line travel reservation agency and navigated to much cheaper accomodations.
I will take the book with me to see how the gay scene, in person, matches up.
This book was of no help and I thought the writer may not even have gone to Hawaii.
I will let you know!
820636
I was so excited to read another travel book, but this one has highly disappointed me. I have put it down in disgust a few times only to attempt to give it another shot later- only to be disgusted again!

I see I am not alone in my feelings; Rita is too self absorbed and I learned nothing I had hoped from a woman who traveled for 15 years. The sentences and thoughts are choppy, the characters underdeveloped, there is too much name dropping to even keep track, too much "I'm so special and have so many friends-everybody loves me-yadda yadda."

Rita probably enlisted no help in writing this book obviously because she feels so highly of herself. She should of had a ghost writer. The entire time she is just patting herself on the back. Instead of giving a reader the opportunity to armchair travel, she is rubbing her lifestyle and "serendipitous" moments in their faces.

I can describe this book in one word: sickening.
3098046
I recently bought two Michelin green guides before a family vacation to France - one for Brittany and one for Normandy.  As we traveled, I found that these were the least helpful travel guides I have ever used.  Information in the books is not organized in a way that makes it easy to find.  For example, there is no overview map with page references for more detailed maps.  (Apparently if you want useable maps, you have to buy another of this company's products - maps are referenced in the guide but not included.)  The maps that are included in the books contain little more than the suggested driving tours and some in-city street maps, so they are of little use for finding your way around the region.  Also, the cities in the guides are listed alphabetically rather than by location, making the guide disjointed and hard to follow while traveling, requiring constant flipping to different places in the book.  Even finding city names was not easy, since even the alphabetical part was jumbled (it is not based on the first letter of the first word in the name of the town or area.)  The information within the guides was typical of any travel guide, but because these books were so difficult to use I will not be buying a Michelin guide again.
2611536
I have used a few dozen travel guides in my life but I have never come across one so full of inaccuracies, so poorly written, and so illogically constructed as this one.

To start off, the history section sums up a few thousand years of Bangladeshi history in a couple pages of sweeping generalizations and the text is sorely lacking in organization.  To make up for the atrocious writing, a time-line is provided to help the reader make some sense of the jumble in the prose.  The dates in the time-line, however, are not even mentioned in the text so it is completely impossible for the reader of this mess to make any connections between the text and the time-line and come up with a logical understanding of Bangladesh's history.

The maps in the book do not at all reflect reality.  At least half of the places I visited were incorrectly placed on the maps.  Buildings were non-existent, streets that were not on the map were roaring with traffic on the ground, and many places seem to have just been placed somewhere near their actual location due to laziness on the author's part.  Totally unacceptable.

Most importantly, a lot of the information was just plain wrong.  For example, one of the border crossings to get into India was described as being easy to find and well signed but it was not even possible to cross the border at this place, nor had it ever been possible.  The actual border crossing was not even mentioned.

The descriptions of the historic sites were vague and inaccurate.  In a country with few signs describing monuments and sites, a one line description in the guide book is not nearly enough, especially when its wrong.

Lastly, the writing was uninspiring, bland, confusing, and often grammatically incorrect.  I know that this is not as important as the actual information contained in the book, but having to stumble through some of the descriptions in this book (especially in the history section) was like torture.  The author's command of the English language is at an elementary level and this, in my opinion, reflects badly on Lonely Planet.

Bangladesh is an amazing country filled with wonderful, hospitable people, but this guide really does nothing to facilitate a trip through the place.