Without a doubt, Kindle owners traveling to Thailand should buy Lonely Planet Thailand Kindle Edition. Despite notable drawbacks (e.g., maps are difficult to read), the search function, bookmarks, hyperlinks to other sections, and most of all portability make it indispensable whether you are temple spotting, questing for the perfect curry, or relaxing on the beach.
Remember how heavy your daypack always ends up by the time you get everything you may need during the day? The portability of the Kindle and Lonely Planet combination eliminates at least a few pounds compared with even the smallest country-wide guidebooks. This is a blessing you will count every evening on the trip.
The primary flaw with this book on the Kindle is the difficulty with depicting the maps on the screen. Due to limitations of screen size on the Kindle 2 (or 1), the well-known and useful Lonely Planet maps are broken into smaller sections, typically quadrants. Finding a restaurant, for example, requires navigating to the fourth page to view the legend, then to the page containing that portion of the map. Although frustrating at first, you will quickly become used to it; and, free maps abound in Thailand.
As anyone familiar with Lonely Planet guidebooks can tell you, this book has everything you need to know about Thailand. Worried about whether or not there is a departure tax to leave Thailand? Need a hostel in Koh Samui? How about a five star hotel? Wonder if you should begin a malaria regimen before your jungle trek? It is all in there.
Before buying, I noticed a number of complaints about this book containing a large amount of politics. Fortunately, it is a guidebook, and you need only read interests you. Thailand has something for everyone; so does this book.
I appreciated having this book with me, especially without the weight of the paperback, and enjoyed the frank opinions on sleeping, eating, and experiences in Thailand. Buy it and carry it along as you create your own paradise in Thailand.
Just short... - Canaan - Austin, TX
When I travel, I swear by Lonely Planet, so I'm used to a certain standard of content and clarity. Although I only used about a quarter of this book's total content on my last journey, there were certain instances where more information would have been certainly preferred; and had me and my partner not been as savvy as we were, whole days could've been compromised. However this guide was still extremely helpful, overall.
Lonely Planet Guidebooks Are All the Same..the Maps Are Horrible - run50 - Boulder, CO
A friend and I have done annual cycling trips through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and I have also done Malaysia and Indonesia/Bali. In most our/my trips, we've taken along the Lonely Planet guidebooks to use for accomodation recommendations, restaurants, etc. There are many negatives I have found using Lonely Planet guidebooks. First off, the maps they have in their guidebooks are just plain awful. We can always tell whenever we come into a city wherever we're riding that we're going to have a problem finding the recommended accomodations, because you'll see hoards of backpackers standing on curbs with a Lonely Planet guidebook in their hands trying to make sense of some silly little map they have in the book. They are so bad that we have changed the name of Lonely Planet guidebooks to Lost Planet guidebooks because they will definitely get you lost.
I would think the guidebooks are ok if you're coming into a city by bus or train, but God forbid if you're on a bicycle, motorbike or car. Why they cannot show the main highways entering the cities so you can get your orientation, I don't know. The thing that always gets us, is that they will list street names in the maps, and yet 75% of the cities when you get there, don't have street signs!!
I wrote a letter to Lonely Planet last year after our cycling trip with a recommendation that they should provide in the guidebook reference for accomodations, hotels, etc., the GPS coordinates. This would facilitate very easy and quick access to find these places. Most travelers these days (even the backpackers) carry some sort of GPS, whether it be on a iPhone, other smartphone, Garmin device, etc. The guidebook companies are missing out on a unique opportunity to really provide travelers with something useful...like GPS coordinates. And you don't necessarily need the detailed maps of a city for your GPS to get to these places if you have the coordinates. But, in typical Lonely Planet fashion, I got no response of course.
Accomodations...where do they find these places? Many of their recommended places are so dilapidated, bug infested with cockroaches and mosquitoes, dirty linen that sometimes looks like it hasn't been washed in weeks. And yet, the place will display a sign, that we are recommended by Lonely Planet.
We stopped paying full price for the Lonely Planet guidebooks a long time ago. What we do, is on a stop in Vietnam or Cambodia, we will buy the knockoff/pirated versions for and use. Yeh some of the pages may be faint to read but then the maps are worthless anyway. Paying for a Lonely Planet guidebook in my opinion is a big waste of $$$. You can get much better information buy just going onto the internet when you get to a city and finding cheap clean accomodations and whatever else you need. Save yourself the $$$ on these guidebooks....they aren't really that helpful and you can do it all on your own.