Travel to China

Lonely Planet Hong Kong & Macau (Lonely Planet Hong Kong and Macau)

Format: Paperback
Author: Steve Fallon
ReleaseDate: January, 2006
Publisher: Lonely Planet Publications
Rating:

Lonely Planet Hong Kong & Macau
This book gives ou a nice overview of the region, and incredible specific tips for visiting HK and Macau.

Good overall guidebook...
Often times, we'd have questions about things like poverty level, health coverage, average income, quality of water -- and found that the guide pretty much answered all of those, and more. I found this book to be extremely helpful in covering all the bases of transport, taxes, tipping, typical business hours, history, background, and a good overview of what's where, and how to get there.

The maps aren't super, and because of the size of the book, it made it difficult to carry. Besides, if you're asking a local for directions, you'd want a bilingual map, as the English names of cities/stations drive them crazy. (ie, Mandarin romanizations in a Cantonese city) I do give it credit for accurately pointing out the numerous obscure markets in Tsim Sha Tsui, as well as the various shops in Hong Kong City. The walking guides were surprisingly useful.

The reason why I give it 4 stars is because HK is all about food and shopping, and the book came up seriously short on the food portion. (no pun intended) Despite it being only 3 months since publication (12th edition, Jan 2006) literally *every* restaurant this book recommended (of which we attempted to find) turned out to be non-existent, had changed ownership and had turned into some other shop. I attribute some of this to bad luck, but I seriously doubt the restaurants didn't *all* go out of business in the last 3 months, but rather that the information on the guide was a little outdated.

The section on food is one part I really relied upon to book to help me out, and was pretty disappointed when it didn't come through for me, as the alternatives to an English guidebook aren't great. The alternatives are to ask the hotel clerk (who will recommend the hotel restaurant), or a random stranger (who will recommend his friend/family's restaurant), or read a weekly magazine about which eateries are good (which require Chinese reading skills).

Despite my frugal 4 stars, this guide is considerably better than most, and is worth the small change to purchase, especially when compared to the amount of money you spent to book your vacation.

Great Guide!
I loved it because it provides a historical as well as a modern background on the cities being visited. This was the first time I bought a travel book from Lonely Planet. The recommendations for dinner, site-seeting, etc were great! The only thing I would've added is a rating of the top sites to see if you are only in the city for a short time. .

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