Lonely Planet Vietnam Cambodia Laos & the Greater Mekong (Multi Country Guide)

 (10 customer reviews)

Lonely Planet has really cornered the guidebooks market but in this case, I feel it's not deserved. I just got back from a trip to Vietnam (a destination I settled on after reading the book and gauging the amount of time I had) and all the information in there was outdated and inaccurate. I also had Rough Guides a friend gave me last minute and I much preferred it. The print says it was last updated a year or 2 ago and I understand that's the nature of the beast but it was still disappointing.

I spent six weeks in May and June 2008 backpacking around Southeast Asia, and this was my primary guidebook. Overall, I found it to be helpful for the macro-level stuff: planning my itinerary, getting a general overview of each country's history, and budgeting.

I give it three stars, however, because although it's unreasonable to expect it to be as in-depth as the individual guidebooks for Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, I often found that the authors omitted useful listings for lodging, places to eat, and sites that were included in other books.

If you plan on taking only one guidebook for VN, KH, and LA, this is a good choice. (Another option is Moon, but at the time of my trip it was even more out-of-date than the LP guide.) Just keep in mind that you'll want to refer to other guidebooks, which I found to be readily available from hostels, cafes, and other travelers in this well-traveled region.

We just returned from a three week trip to Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. We spent about 10 days in Thailand, one week in Laos, and only four days in Cambodia at Siem Reap visiting the Angkor Wat complex. As we only had time on this trip to hit the highlights, this book was just fine. We actually brought along the Lonely Planet Thailand book and for such a short trip, it was too big and definitely in the way. If you're really backpacking and traveling for many weeks or months through Southeast Asia, I wouldn't recommend this book (buy the individual country books), but for a standard vacation it was a great resource.