Fodor's Thailand: with Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia, and Laos (Full-color Travel Guide)

We took this guide with us on our honeymoon to Thailand and visited Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Koh Samui. The information for Bangkok and the cultural sites there was pretty comprehensive and we referred to it frequently for ideas on what to see and where to eat. The information for Chiang Mai and Koh Samui was also good with respect to the "what to see" part, but we found the restaurant recommendations to be more touristy or kinda dated in those locations. Maybe this was personal preference, though. Our biggest complaint was that the maps could have included more of the places mentioned in the book, especially when it came to the shopping locations covered in each city. The guide discusses multiple places to go, but gives fairly vague descriptions of the locations, such as a street name- which occasionally turned out to be a very long street with few markers or indications of where exactly we were trying to go. The guide did give addresses for the hotels and restaurants/nightlife and depicted those on seperate maps for each city, but it would have been really helpful if they had also depicted the stores and/or shopping sections on the maps or given addresses as well since those proved to be the hardest to locate. Overall, it was a decent guide for basic info, but the maps and locational information could be better.

Thought it was a good idea to buy a guide to covers both Thailand and Cambodia as I will be visiting places in both countries in the near future. However, after receiving this guide and flipping through it I actually think it was a bad idea to buy this guide.Sure, the guide touches upon most sights in Cambodia and Thailand and has many great full color photographs, but for my purposes (city travel in Bangkok, beach life in Phuket, and visiting Angkor Wat in Cambodia) it does a poor job.Firs of all, almost half of the contents of the guide is devoted to lodging and dining. Sorry, but I am not longer a backpacker and have all hotels booked already. Secondly, I prefer to wander around the neighborhoods and see what restaurants I might encounter. No need for a guide to list that ("telephone book" anyone?)Third, the city maps of Bangkok are pretty bad and the sites mentioned in the text are hard or almost impossible to find on the tiny maps. Fourth, there was no map of Phuket and scant information on beach/water activities.In the end, I decided to just go with Eyewitness Thailand for Bangkok travel as they have the same great photographs but provide much higher quality maps and a better background section. Not to mention less emphasis on hotels and dining.For Phuket I think the pocket guide from LP will work fine, while Angor Wat will be done without a guidebook.

Great for preparing for trip. Honestly didn't find it that useful once in the country. I more just went with the flow of the Thailand than consulting the guide book. But good for background knowledge before the trip!

Some of the maps and information is incorrect. This caused much confusion in Chiang Rai and Yangon. You cannot walk all the way around Inya Lake as the book says (we were lost for an hour.) The lake in Yangon that you can walk all the way around is Kandawgyi Lake.

this is NOT a backpackers travel guide. its more for people that want to spend $100 a night on lodging. Not useful for me specifically. I feel like the people that spend that much in these countries are NOTusing a book anyway, they have a travel agent and a tour group. Good book, good maps, but useless for the budget traveler who wants to get off the beaten path.

Fodor's has always been our go to book for travel. this book did not disappoint with the amount of information, tips, maps and recommendations!

Very well organized. A wealth of information including higher end accommodations not always included in travel guides.

It was really useful when I went on my trip to SE Asia. Plenty of details and photos. Thank you!

Extremely informative - but no pictures.