Travel to Australia And South Pacific

Tahiti & French Polynesia Guide, 4th Ed. (Open Road Travel Guides Tahiti and French Polynesia Guide)

Format: Paperback
Author: Jan Prince
ReleaseDate: 01 February, 2005
Publisher: Open Road
Rating:

Don't go to Tahiti without it
If you're planning a trip to Tahiti and don't already have it, I suggest you buy it immediately. Jan Prince's book Tahiti & French Polynesia Guide is undoubtedly one of the best books on Tahiti out there. Between this book and True Tahiti Vacations, our incredible travel agent in Moorea, we planned the honeymoon of our dreams. Now, I'm using the book again to plan our vacation back to Tahiti this year. Thank you Jan!.

Stereotyping by an expat
I bought this book on the strength of the reviews on Amazon. My husband and I went to Moorea two weeks ago to visit my daughter, who was doing research there.

It's hard to see how passages such as these got by the editors: "[The Tahitian male's] long, well-shaped legs with the prominent thigh muscles also have nicely developed calf muscles from years of playing soccer on the beach or sports field. His big feet, which are normally flat with the toes wide apart, are good for climbing coconut trees, and he has the dexterity of an amphibious animal in the water . . . If the Saturday afternoon soccer game is canceled . . . he quickly becomes fiu (bored, fed up, non-talkative, non-responsive) and nothing can appease him. " (page 48)

If you can ignore these passages and the equally offensive ones on Polynesian women--my daughter is close enough to several Polynesians to consider them family, and she found this portion of the guidebook insulting--and the "undulating movement of their bodies and long pliant fingers," this massive (it's about 1. 75" thick and really too heavy to pack) guidebook is okay. The maps are inadequate, and the spotty, incomplete "General Index" needs work: we remembered reading about a Restaurant Pauline somewhere and then couldn't find it again, because the index includes only a few restaurants, shops, and tours. (They are grouped by region in the body of the book. )

It would have helped us to have this advice before we left:

1. Get a phone card and call ahead if you go anywhere. At least three of the places we tried from Prince's book had been closed, some for over a year, according to locals.
2. Don't expect anything to run or start on time, including the buses and ferries.
3. Avoid Papeete unless you are shopping at Le Marchý for souvenirs. (And on Saturday afternoons, practically the whole city shuts down, including the buses. )
4. It helps to know some French, even just a little travel vocabulary.
5. Be prepared to pay two to three times as much for everything, especially food, as you are used to paying.
6. Ask your hotel or pension manager for tour ideas and advice.
7. Use your ATM card to get local money; you'll avoid long bank lines and the service charge.

One of the best travel guides
2005 and found it to be very helpful. Took this book to French Polynesia in Sept. I always buy 4-5 travel books for each destination, read them all during the planning stage, and then take 1 or 2 on the trip with me. I found this book to be very accurate and extremely helpful. We referred to it many times while on the trip. Don't miss this one if you're going to French Polynesia!.

Related products:
click image or link for details on these Australia And South Pacific travel books.

	Moon Handbooks Tahiti: Including the Cook Islands
	Insight Compact Guide Tahiti & French Polynesia (Insight Compact Guides)
	Hidden Tahiti and French Polynesia: Including Moorea, Bora Bora, and the Society, Austral, Gambier, Tuamotu, and Marquesas Islands (Hidden Tahiti)
	Lonely Planet Tahiti & French Polynesia (Lonely Planet Tahiti and French Polynesia)