Travel World guide

I have expected to see more information about the lodge and food in Beijing today. I guess Beijing is just too big and changing too fast for the authors to explore completely.

Out of several books I purchased from Amazon, I found this compact and most informative for touring BJ. It was indispensable on my recent independent travel in BJ, although a few sites described were closed. It would be more helpful if there’s a crossed reference between attractions on the maps and their respective pages in the book. Like Lonely Planet’s books on China, this book is somewhat political and judgmental on the Chinese Government. I oftened detect an air of disdain and many unnecessary disparaging words unrelated to travel.
It would have been a better book if it just sticks to travel information and leaves politics to historians; I would have given it a higher mark.

Small enough to take w/you on the trip but enough content to read ahead of time to get familiar with Beijing. Would have given 5 stars if it had more/better maps.

Nice size and fold-out city map included, but info on “must-see” sites is often very brief. Organizational mode used – “Beijing in 1 day…2 days…3 days” is not to my liking; would prefer sites in same quadrant of city together or similar sites e.g. museums listed together (index no help if you don’t know exact name); nothing found on Beijing Zoo (what about the pandas?) and less space devoted to lodging and dining. More info on distances and travel times – Beijing is vast, traffic heavy, and taxi drivers speak very limited if any English and do not READ English!

I went to Beijing for the Olympics; bought every travel guide I could find. This travel guide was far better than all of them. The restaurant recommendations, though sparse, were right on. Very handy to have so I could show the Mandarin characters to the cab drivers. This guide was so invaluable, I lost one of the subway and had Amazon.com deliver a replacement to my hotel! FYI, I have both the 2007 and 2008 version, the 2008 version is FAR better than the 2007. This book made my trip far more enjoyable.

This book does its job of explaining the basics, but that’s all you will get. I would say use the book while you are going around the city but check online for the latest directions/information on how to get to the sites you want to go to.

I had an issue with the directions in the book – it lacks consistency, and sometimes it is hard to find when you are just scanning a particular section on how to get there (because it is buried within a paragraph). Would prefer to have a consistent layout in the book, with a consistent place for directions all the time. Book also needs to update the directions with subway information and also the subway map (some of the names are now different)

Based on the tonality of certain sections, the author must have had a bad experience in Beijing….

There are a lot of travel guides, and I particularly like the Frommer’s guides because they take care to include a handful of very local experiences in each category that are generally difficult to find and more rewarding than a typical tour-bus barrage.

I also like them because I am familiar with their layout and know the basic biases of the reviewers (skewed luxury, where there are several multi-hundred dollar a night hotels and just a handful of cheaper accommodations), but one inconvenience is that the book marks you as a tourist and is a bit hard to carry if you’re trying to navigate Beijing without a fanny pack. I’ve always wished they had an electronic guide – like the iPhone app they have for San Francisco. The closest I have found is the hoodhot travel Beijing taxi guide, which works great for finding the Chinese addresses to the stuff you see in the book.

This book is pretty good on the basics but it quickly becomes apparent that either the editors are not working hard enough to keep up with changes or China is changing to fast to keep up with or both.

For example- the subway system in Beijing is sparkling new, with English signs and announcements and electronic tickets. Completely different from the description provided in the guidebook.

For history and background it is a good resource.

The purchase was made based on Frommer’s guides reputation and the fact that this was a “day-by-day” guide allowing to make walking tours with daily itineraries in order to take advantage of my very short trip to Beijing. The folded map that comes with it was neither very useful nor accurate but the subway map on the cover and the smaller city map in the inner cover were extremely helpful. In my opinion the way the information is organized, is not very practical, with cross references all the time: this is not something you want to do while visiting a place, flipping pages to find the info. Some places described have no indications on how to get there, whereas some do. Distances and the time needed to get from one place to another are not accurate either. I rated it 3 because it was anyway a somewhat good tool for orientation in a humonguos size city.