China - Part 2: Book Deal

After flipping through most of the China travel books at the local B&N (Union Square), I end up deciding to order these two from Amazon.com (it was cheaper):


Lonely Planet China - I'm too used to the format. They're pretty much all set up the same way. It's easy to find stuff for me. They also got the 2 days / 3 days itinerary for each city which helps a lot. Also, this book has some random cities we might be in: FuZhou (Simon), GuangZhou (Kingman) and ShenZhen (Me).


Beijing and Shanghai (Eyewitness Travel Guides) - I found this one very useful. It tells me what and why I'll be looking at touristy things instead of just standing there looking at it. It also has pretty pictures and maps.

Shameful Shit: Lonely Planet Writer Admits To Fabricating Guide Book

"Shameful shit fellas...Shameful Shit." - Clay Davis, The Wire

Lonely Planet Writer Admits To Fabricating Guide Book Based On Info From Girlfriend

From Consumerist.com: "Who needs to actually travel in order to write guide books? Not Thomas Kohnstamm.

From Reuters:

The Sunday Telegraph said Kohnstamm also claims in his new book "Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?" that he accepted free travel, contravening company policy.

He said in one case he had not even visited the country he wrote about.

"They didn't pay me enough to go to Colombia. I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating — an intern at the Colombian consulate," the newspaper quoted Kohnstamm as saying."

(via consumerist.com)

- Always a good idea to get info from more than 1 source.