Lonely Planet Hong Kong and Macau

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 434 pages
• Published by: Lonely Planet Publications; 12th edition January 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1740598431
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1740598439
• Book Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Weighs: 14.4 ounces

Book Description
You'll fall in love with Hong Kong. And why not? Glittering skyscrapers and a world-famous shopping scene. Frenetic wet markets and the best dim sum ever. Spectacular hikes through jungle-covered islands. And don't forget the devil-may-care casino-hop through Macau. This indispensable guidebook is the key to all your Cantonese adventures.

FIND YOUR WAY up winding side streets, navigate through every district - detailed and accurate maps make exploring easy.
UNLEASH the gastronome within - insider reviews of the city's outstanding restaurant scene, from HK$10 noodles to decadent Chinese banquets.
ESCAPE TO MACAU - extensive coverage takes you to historic cathedrals, temples, and the infamous casinos.
SLEEP LIKE AN ANGEL in this city of bustle - the best accommodation options for every budget.
EXPERIENCE a taste of China - shop to your heart's content in Shenzhen, then soak your tired feet in one of Zhuhai's hot springs.

Publisher Description
Who We Are
At Lonely Planet, we see our job as inspiring and enabling travellers to connect with the world for their own benefit and for the benefit of the world at large.



What We Do
* We offer travellers the world's richest travel advice, informed by the collective wisdom of over 350 Lonely Planet authors living in 37 countries and fluent in seventy languages.
* We are relentless in finding the special, the unique and the different for travellers wherever they are.
* When we update our guidebooks, we check every listing, in person, every time.
* We always offer the trusted filter for those who are curious, open minded and independent.
* We challenge our growing community of travellers; leading debate and discussion about travel and the world.
* We tell it like it is without fear or favor in service of the travellers; not clouded by any other motive.



What We Believe
We believe that travel leads to a deeper cultural understanding and compassion and therefore a better world.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Lonely Planet Hong Kong, Macau (10th Edition) (Paperback) Disregard Amazon's reader reviews that precede this one. The earlier comments aren't based on this book at all, but were simply ported to this page from the previous edition's. The well-deserved complaints about "Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou," Ninth Edition, do not apply to "Hong Kong and Macau," 10th Edition. Note that "Guangzhou" was dropped from the title. I never go on vacation somewhere without first buying the Lonely Planet travel book on the destination. So it's been with some frustration that for the last three years, the Hong Kong book has been among the weakest of the series, at least among those I've bought. But the long-awaited update has some badly needed changes and updates. The previous edition came out in January 1999, several months after Lonely Planet had released another, entirely different Hong Kong book titled simply "Hong Kong." The "Hong Kong" book was pretty skimpy, including a mere ten pages or so on Macau. But it did have some helpful color maps at the back of the book. When "Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou" came out, it included some badly needed material on Macau, as well as the Chinese border cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai. Unfortunately, the book also lumped in about ninety pages on Guangzhou, and another eight-page supplement on "Hong Kong Film." For 99-plus percent of the people who are visiting the Hong Kong area, these pages were only dead weight. Virtually nobody visiting Hong Kong plans to visit Guangzhou, and why should they? It's a long trip, and by the book's own admission, there's nothing there for tourists anyway. Even worse, this book was out of date from the moment it hit the streets. Both the "Hong Kong" and "Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou" books gave the location of the Hong Kong Museum of History as Kowloon Park. But the museum had already moved when I visited Hong Kong in November 1998, when the "Hong Kong" book had just came out. And so I was more than a little surprised that "Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou" repeated the same mistake in its January 1999 printing! But what *really* annoyed me was that "Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou" didn't have the easy-to-read, easy-to-find color maps of the earlier "Hong Kong" book. Instead, the larger book had ugly, hard-to-read black-and-white maps scattered willy-nilly throughout. This has changed under the book's all-new author, Steve Fallon. (Damian Harper does not get credit in this edition, despite what Amazon says.) Fallon has dropped the Guangzhou section and other useless padding, making the book a lot more portable. The Museum of History's current address is in there now. And the color maps from the slim "Hong Kong" book also are in the back of the new "Hong Kong and Macau." The new book still uses the hard-to-read, hard-to-find B&W maps for the border towns and Macau's islands, but that's a quibble I can live with. Other general information throughout also seems to be current. I've been looking over the new book for several days now, and overall, it seems that while the worst parts disappeared, the best stuff carried over to the new edition. For instance, I was glad to see that the map of Shenzhen still has the names of landmarks and hotels in Chinese, as well as English. Showing the Shenzhen taxi drivers the Chinese name of where you want to go is usually the only way for non-Chinese-speaking tourists to communicate their intended destination. While the new edition is a great improvement, it was at least a year overdue. Three years is a long time to have to wait for an update when so much has changed here, given the change in sovereignty in both Hong Kong and Macau. The ninth edition came out just a couple of months after the Hong Kong handover, and *before* the Macau handover, for crying out loud. I don't know if I could have honestly recommended the ninth edition of "Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou," but I certainly can do so for the 10th edition of "Hong Kong and Macau." Even if you don't plan on visiting here in the immediate future, it's an interesting read.