Lonely Planet Thailand: Detailed Itineraries | Travel Like a Local | Insider Tips | Covers Bangkok & Around, Phuket & the Andaman Coast, Chiang Mai Province, Ko Samui and more (Travel Guide) Paperback – Folded Map, April 30, 2024

Lonely Planet always comes through. Great guidebook. If you're traveling to a developing country with spotty Wi-Fi, a book you can hold in your hand and refer to is a must.

Great resource when you travel to Thailand!

I have been using Lonely Planet books for 15 years and they have always been my first go-to source. Not only were they extremely helpful and the foundation of my trip planning, they were also my personal ‘souvenir’ for every place I traveled. So much so that I didn’t even bother looking at the reviews when I purchased this book.However, after receiving this book (and the one for Vietnam), I was so taken aback by the new god awful layout and frank omission of any practical information that I had to look back at the reviews to see if I was the only one feeling this way. And sadly, I am not alone here.The new format feels like it was written by social media influencers incentivized to peddle various micro transactions for a small cut. Most pages are full of giant highlight photos with no actual content, no lists or recommendations for lodging, restaurants, transportation, and no genuine tips/insight for backpackers or travelers of different socioeconomic backgrounds. I wouldn’t be surprised if the team responsible for its content had never even traveled to the country of topic. I am genuinely saddened by the downfall of this great company, but until that changes, I will not be purchasing these books again.

Used this like a bible throughout my travels in Chiang Mai, Bangkok, and Koh Tao. Great info, tips, recommendations. Can get heavy so I ended up ripping out sections for long days walking around the city. The neighborhood section maps and bar crawl recommendations were great.

Ok but laborious to read. Easier on internet. Also too heavy to carry

We planned so much of our trip with inspiration and ideas from the book. We also bought the Vietnam book which was equally as helpful. The book is divided by region, making it super easy to plan based on where you are going.

I am a travel agent. I have shelves upon shelves of travel guides. They are typically a one stop shop for everything I need to know about a destination, to effectively plan a trip. Even guides that are 15-20 years old are still useful.Lonely Planet Thailand was great for the first 15-20 minutes. I was excited about all the itinerary suggestions and it is packed with information. From markets to elephants to best dishes, it's all there......if you can find it.I should have trusted the other reviewers who mentioned the layout. It was apparently compiled by a team of editors with ADHD, where each person got a small section of every page to put whatever they wanted on it. For example, one page discloses 3 bars in Chiang Mai (that's 3 in total, not 3 per page), along with a blurb about animal welfare.Furthermore, the extensive information provided isn't all that useful. You will find paragraphs in each city listing dozens of restaurants - without any indication of where in the city they are, never mind a physical address, hours, or a website. You must flip through every page of a chapter to find where they put the hotels, but they're only going to give you 3. If you're extra lucky, they might show you those 3 on a map, but then again, they may not. It depends on the city. If you want to know about the dozens of airports in the country and which ones are near your destination, this isn't the place to find that information.It's a stretch to call this a "travel guide." It's more of a paperback coffee table book, with random interesting facts and colorful pictures. The Indonesia guide has the same useless layout. Meanwhile, I have Lonely Planet's 4th edition of the Caribbean Islands from 2005 and it has everything you'd expect from a real travel guide. I don't know what happened in the last 20 years, but Lonely Planet is now one of two brands on my Do Not Buy list.Save your money and your sanity and find a different book.

Lonely Planet has been my go-to travel companion for 30 years, so when I decided to make my first visit to Thailand this year, I was excited about the release of this new edition. When it arrived, I was dismayed to discover that it omits items I have always found most useful (e.g., lists of places to stay and eat sorted by location and budget) and makes the practical nuggets that it does still have hard to find. Places to stay in Chiang Mai? Flip pages at random until you spot a sidebar mentioning three hotels with no contact or address information, and no corresponding map. Best ways to get there from Bangkok or other cities? Who knows? Within the section for each region of the country, information is presented in such a chaotic fashion that it feels like a tour guide trying to sell me on seven different packages at once, never answering a direct question, and never getting out of my way.