Dear Lonely Planet...

Your maps are absolutely horrible. In fact, they are beyond horrible. I think a more apt word to describe them is "useless". Not a single map in my guidebook has all the street names in it. Maybe ten or twenty percent of the streets have names on them in most of the maps I have. How am I supposed to navigate a city with such a map?

Asia is NOT Europe. In Europe every hostel, guesthouse, and hotel has beautiful maps to give out for free. They are either provided by the local government, or a company that makes money by selling advertisements on the map. Unfortunately, Southeast Asia is a little behind, and many cities lack good, free maps. That's one reason people buy guidebooks! Nothing is worse than arriving to a city tired or hungry, and not being able to find the restaurant or guesthouse you are looking for.

Last night, when I was trying to hire a motorbike taxi to my hostel (which is two streets north of the most touristy street in the entire city of Bangkok), even the motorbike taxi drivers had a hard time figuring out where my hostel was! Dear Lonely Planet - when local taxi drivers can't figure out how to get somewhere on one of your maps, it means it's time to invest in upgrading them.

To my fellow (and future) world travelers, I have this advice: until Lonely Planet upgrades it's maps, do yourself a favour and buy your guide from the "Rough Guide" line of books instead. I met a couple people with "The Rough Guide to Southeast Asia", and all their maps had every single street named. It made navigation much less stressful. Let's Go has maps just as crappy as Lonely Planet, so I would skip their book as well. In truth, when it comes to getting recommendations the most important thing is where to stay. That is because once you're there, you'll meet other travelers that will probably give you better advice about restaurants and attractions than any guidebook.