Is it best to buy guidebooks at home or when I am abroad?

An important part of planning your trip is to invest in a good guidebook. If you go on a multiple country trip though, it's not wise to buy guidebooks to all countries you want to visit in advance, unless of course it is impossible to find them on your destination.

Guidebooks are heavy and if you travel for a long time your luggage space is limited. To pay overweight on flights is expensive and you need some space as well if you want to buy something on the way.

If you go on a multiple country trip to a specific region like South East Asia, Central America or South America, we recommend you to buy a Lonely Planet Shoestring Guide before you start your trip. The book doesn't go very deep on every country, but is good for some general information about highlights, practical information, budgeting your trip and preplanning a route. If you already have read a little before you start travelling, your are better prepared and it is less chance you will be a victim for scams.Don't plan to much though. Make room for some flexibility in your itinerary.

The Shoestring Guides don't replace good guidebooks to a specific country. If you buy more guidebooks from home, just buy one for the first destination. Once you are there, at least in well travelled countries you can ofter trade guidebooks with other travelellers that have just come from the next country you want to visit, or you can buy them locally. This will save you luggage weight and space, as well as money.

A guidebook is important and very useful when planning. Just make sure you don't make it your new bible.There are also places to visit, eat and sleep that are excellent, which are not covered in the major guidebooks. A disadvantage with popular guidebooks like for example Lonely Planet, is when they become too popular, which is often the case. When to many travellers use and rely on the same guidebook, a majority of them go to the places recommended by the author. This often increases the price, but not the service level, and after one or a few years after the guidebook is written, the restaurant or accomodation doesn't live up to the quality described in the guidebook. A positive side of this is that if you are looking to meet other backpackers, these places are usually where the party is.

Similar things as described above with accomodation and restaurants can happen with so called "off the beaten path" destinations. Many travellers want to go to wonderful places, where not many other tourists have been. Most of them follow recommendations from the guidebook, but because so many people read the same guidebooks and all of them want to go to the paradise described, there will probably be many other travellers going to the same place, and the "off the beaten path" status will not stay for long.

What about electronic guidebooks?

A very good alternative to the conventional guidebook is an Electronic book. We recommend especially the Amazon Kindle. This product is already for a long while the most sold product on Amazon in the United States. You can store thousands of books on one lightweight, electronic device.You can download books in less than 60 seconds with free 3G wireless access in over 100 countries. The books are mostly a lot cheaper than conventional books and think about that this device is lighter than a single guidebook, weighs less and can contain thousands of books. The Amazon Kindle is easy to navigate, you can read in sunshine and you can even make the Kindle read the book for you.

Read more about the Amazon Kindle here >>

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