Travel Guides

After reading reviews at Amazon.com, I decide to go to Barnes & Noble to see which travel guide is “readable” to me. My top choices are Rough Guides, Eyewitness Travel Guides and Lonely Planet. Julee’s already bought the Rough Guides for both Egypt and Jordan, I feel that I should buy something different so we cover everything we need between the both of us.

photo above: Rough Guide to Jordan book cover

What a nice November afternoon! It is sunny with clear blue sky. I figure the temperature is exactly like what I will experience in Cairo, 55ish during the day. I find a vacant chair and carry it over to the foreign travel aisles beside the big window. I sit down for two hours basking in the sun in front of a pile of books.

My criteria include content (does the book cover the places I am visiting?), weight (since it’s a back-pack trip, it’s got to be as light as possible), pictures (I am a very visual person. I learn things the quickest way if there are pictures on the side. What drudgery if I were to read a travel book only described in words!), humor (this is very important especially for pre-trip reading.)

The Rough Guide to Egypt is almost 900 pages. It has some pictures. Each page is thin so the book is just about a pound (Amazon info). I read the entire section on Women Traveler - two pages as compared to the two paragraphs in the Eyewitness Travel Guides’ section on women traveling. My mind is more at ease after I read the info. They both say the level of harassment on female travelers is not more than that in Morocco. In Morocco, I have never felt threatened or insulted. No one has groped me or hissed at me. People are friendly, a little pushy at times but never rude. A lot of times they greet me with “Konichiwa” thinking I am Japanese. I correct them if I am in a good mood and say “Nihao” back. But my friend Rella WAS groped in the temple in Egypt even though she was with her husband. So I guess it is sheer luck.

The Eyewitness Travel Guides has 350 pages and over 1000 pictures. It’s my kind of travel book. A good visual preview into the museums and sceneries just gives me a lot more to look forward to. This is a turtleback so it feels much heavier than the 800 page Rough Guide (0.5 pound more according to Amazon).

The Lonely Planet book is packed with information and almost no pictures. I am not sure if it’s because of the font or the lack of pictures, I am scared to even read into it.

The only guides I dig out from the shelf on Jordan are the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet. This is a no brainer for me. The Rough Guide is not as thick as the Egypt one and I already chuckle several times just reading a few sections.

So now I own the Eyewitness Travel Guides for Egypt and the Rough Guide to Jordan. I can’t wait to start reading.