Insight Guide Philippines

This book contains magnificent photographs of the Philippines - its attractions, its people, its history, its festivals. In addition to detailed descriptions of the main Philippine cities and towns, it also contains over 80 pages of "Features" (essays on the culture of the Philippines). As such, this book is an excellent introduction to the country. It is not primarily a travel guide (though it can be used as one) but a book that you will enjoy browsing through again and again.

I have lived in the Philippines and visited there many times. I find the Insight Guide Philippines to be informative, accurate, easy to navigate and a pleasure to use, with beautiful photography! In addition to tourism information, this book gives a fairly in-depth review of the history and culture of the Philippines. It also contains good cross-references to map locations of sights of interest. My informed Filipino friends have asked me where they can get a copy of this book! I have also used the Insight Guide Thailand, and find it equally as good!

This book has a great introductory value. It shows how diverse and beautiful this country is. The photographs are of outstanding quality. The truth is, some of the places I visited looked much worse than their photographs in this book (like Vigan, for example). One must understand though that this book is NOT a travel guide though (despite some tourist info it contains). It is more like set of National Geographic articles with great illustrations. I still give it 5, because it is so fascinating and beautiful.

More than a travel guide, it spends more time on background and the meaning of sites in the Philippines. Many beautiful photos. Good book to learn about Philippines without going. My American friends that have read this book say it was BiG help to them in understanding not just travel only.

This is one of the books you should get when you're going to the Philippines. It is a very long book filled with good detailed facts. The photographers who took the pictures got very good shots of the Philippines. Another good thing about this book is that is has very good information when your touring the Philippines in the back of the book. It tells you information about the weather, lodging, holidays and festivals, what should be worn, and even how to speak basic Tagalog (the official language of the Philippines). There's a lot of things I haven't mentioned. If you want a good quality guidebook on the Philippines, then you should try this book!