I have a complicated relationship with guidebooks.
While I’m in Canada and daydreaming about my next trip, guidebooks are like crack to me. Before leaving for West Africa last summer, I read Rough Guide and Lonely Planet’s West Africa books and Bradt’s Burkina Faso guide front to cover at least four or five times each. Over the last couple months, I’ve read Central America or Guatemala books by Rough Guide, Moon and Lonely Planet. I read the stuff before I go to bed, when I’m supposed to be writing essays, and even in the bath.
Then when I leave Canada and actually start to travel, I ignore the guidebooks entirely (aside from the occasional hotel recommendation.)
I wander around towns blind, pick restaurants based on how they look, and skip “must-sees” if I don’t feel like seeing them. (I must be the only person that’s been to Guatemala but didn’t “feel” like going to Tikal.) If I want to go out drinking, I don’t look under “nightlife” to find a town’s “hottest disco.” I go with word of mouth. If I want advice on safety, I ask trustworthy people that I’ve met. The guidebook starts to collect dust.
Then, six months later, I’ll go back and read the guidebook entries to the cities I’ve visited that I feel I know well. I’ll barely recognize the places! For example, in most guidebook entries on Ouagadougou (probably the foreign city I know best), most of my favourite places are conspicuously absent. Where is my favourite budget hotel (Pension Sarah) where interesting African and non-African guests sit and chat in the pretty courtyard? Where’s my favourite maquis (outdoor bar), where you can lounge around, sipping big bottles of beer and eating cheap grilled meat and a gloriously slow place? What about Le Festin, Ouaga’s answer to a cheap diner, where you can sit in clean, comfy booths and eat rice with a spicy peanut butter sauce? I think: this guidebook is not describing my Ouagadougou (or my Quetzaltenango, or my Paris…)
But then I go buy three more guidebooks for my next destination. And repeat the whole process. What gives?
Comments 4
Good way to use travel guides.
I never really got the hang of reading them for recreation, but perhaps this is their best use.
As far as using them for travel information, I must say that I can’t use them anymore:
I would rather have no information than misinformation.
If I am not pointed in any direction then I can find my own way, if I am pointed in a bad direction, then I am going to expend a needless amount of time and energy trying to trace someone else’s path who has left difficult to decipher tracks.
I often have a difficult time believing the the Lonely Planet authors really traveled to many of the places that they “researched.” They are just way too wrong way too often.
Good entry.
Walk Slow,
Wade
Posted 07 May 2009 at 11:17 am ¶Heh… very true on your last point. I have heard some rather dubious stories about guidebook entries!
As for reading for recreational use… seeing as you’ve been mostly on the road for 8049238545 years, you probably don’t need a daydreaming aid like those of us that are waiting to travel again. (One month, nine days till I leave again, but who’s counting?)
But then again, I’m weird… I also read cookbooks for recreation even if I never use the recipes!
Posted 08 May 2009 at 10:19 am ¶Haha, no way! I am always dreaming about traveling to other places. Dreaming is an integral part of the fun of traveling haha.
Wade
Posted 11 May 2009 at 1:15 pm ¶Recreational use of guidebooks, indeed! Never really thought about it that way, but that’s kinda what it is to me too.
Before each trip I spend countless hours in the net surfing for whatever information i can get about the places where i’m going and scribble down notes about “must-dos”, “best prices” and so forth, and reading the travel guides i can get a hold of, just to ignore those well folded pieces of paper between my calendar that I probably never open while on the road, except for confirming the flight times before returning home. Putting it this way it sounds like time wasted but then again, i guess it’s my preparation routine. To make me feel more comfortable about going to the new place, thou at the same time i keep on telling myself the best part of the travel is the shock of being in a new place… Self-betrayal i guess!
Anyway, good to hear someone else too is reading recipes without ever using them, food can be enjoyed in many ways and not all of them include having it physically infront of you! But, then again, to get back to travel, food is a great reason to travel..
Posted 14 Jul 2009 at 12:29 pm ¶Post a Comment