Let's Go China

This book was indispensable when my husband and I lived in Beijing for 6 months. I bought it together with Lonely Planet's The Best of Beijing, but found later on that I preferred to use this book because it contained a lot of leads to great deals on shopping, restaurants, etc. (Read: Good but cheap, and that's where most locals go) After checking out places from both books, I found Lonely Planet's contained a significant amount of "high end" places. Gave this book four stars only because I found that some prices quoted on particular restaurants are a bit outdated. Other than that, I loved it.

After just returning from a two week adventure in Chile, I found the guide book very helpful navigating through the major destinations in the country. Not only does the book give travel information, but interesting background information such as history, government, and social norms any traveler should know before setting off. The information is accurrate and really easy to use. The only flaw of the book is that it does not include some of the really small towns. However, these towns seemed to have no real major attractions in them. The book helps normal travelers and those people who like to experience a country on their own schedule.

The only other review declared that they "used this book during our trip to the Atacama Desert. It was not helpful..." Well, I imagine it wouldn't be very useful, seeing that the Atacama Desert is in Chile, not in China! I generally prefer the Lonely Planet guides over the Let's Go guides, which tend to sound like they are written by know-it-all teenagers with too little life experience to be offering advice to real grown-ups. This guide on China, in contrast, is informative and pragmatic rather than preachy. Just one cautionary note: If you are actually planning on traveling around China on your own and don't speak Chinese, get a couple other guides and review them also-China is one of the few remaining countries where you cannot count on every shopkeeper and hotel manager conveniently being able to speak English.