Bali & Lombok (Lonely Planet Travel Guide)
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Scramble down rocky cliffs to find a private surf beach, then climb back up to your motorbike, tanned and supercharged, p. 79. Flip yourself over the edge of a boat while diving the blue depths off the Gili Islands in Lombok, p. 306. Dance the day's sand off your feet at Kuta's rowdy clubs or spruce up for Seminyak's sleek bars and restaurants, p. 112. Sip honey-ginger tea in a rose-petal bath, drifting back to earth after a mandi lulur massage, p. 84.
--Two great authors, 68 days of in-country research, 51 detailed maps, 133 bottles of Bintang.
--An all new outdoor activities section with detailed diving and surfing information.
--Features a Food & Drink chapter by renowned Ubud restaurateur and author Janet de Neefe.
DESCRIPTION:
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 915.986044
EAN: 9781740599139
ISBN: 1740599136
Label: Lonely Planet
Manufacturer: Lonely Planet
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 396
Publication Date: 2007-03-01
Publisher: Lonely Planet
Studio: Lonely Planet
SIMILAR ITEMS:
• Bali and Lombok (Eyewitness Travel Guide)
• Indonesia (Lonely Planet Travel Guides)
• Bali Encounter (Best Of)
• Thailand (Country Guide)
• Periplus Guide to Bali: The Island of the Gods (Periplus Adventure Guides)
CUSTOMER REVIEWS:
Customer Rating:
Summary: solid, if not stunning, guide to bali
Comment: I spent almost a month in Bali, carrying and using this guidebook. It focuses on places to stay, major attractions and places to eat with a slant toward western-style comfort. It has reasonable, if brief, descriptions of the art, culture and religion of Bali. And like any guidebook, it is best used as a starting point. If you aren't willing, for example, to walk around Ubud or Lovina and see what's there, you are going to miss a lot, guidebook or no.
The introduction to Balinese culture, religion and art, descriptions of major temple sites, places to stay and eat were all helpful and generally accurate, if brief. We successfully used the guidebook to plan wandering itineraries throughout central and northern Bali.
My one criticism of this book? Like most, it doesn't really offer a clear description of the author's point of view. Knowing how the author travels (backpack, three big suitcases?) his or her preferences about food and lodging (five star or food stall preferred?) and approach to historical/cultural sites (linger for days or knock them off the to-do list) makes books like this more useful for me.
As for the reviewers that complain that the guidebook didn't "warn" them of bali belly or the persistence of hawkers and taxi drivers... these are such common features of "third world" travel that they hardly seem worth spending many paragraphs of guidebook print. In the same sense, depending on a single guidebook without doing other reading about a country's language, culture, way of life almost guarantees one will have a difficult experience, especially when the culture is as different from our everyday western world as Bali is.
Overall, if you aren't a Fodors-kind-of-traveller and are just going to buy one guide, I would make it this one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not the best...
Comment: I never saw a guide with so FEW pictures of the destination! Good information, but I would buy a different one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great guide for Bali
Comment: I was in Bali last winter and should have gotten this then. I am going again this year and will find some of these wonderful places to see and things to do. We stayed in home stays and ate in warungs. Everything was very reasonable. This guide is really a good thing to have.
Customer Rating:
Summary: just get the Indonesia book
Comment: I bought this along with the Lonely Planet Indonesia book...and well, this book didn't have much additional information than what was covered in the Indonesia book. Some sections were actually taken verbatim. Compared to other Lonely Planet books, I actually found the general Indonesia book to be quite detailed, so I think you should be fine without this supplement.
Customer Rating:
Summary: be skeptical.
Comment: We spent three weeks in Bali using this book as a guide. For overviews of different parts of the island, we found it very helpful, and we relied on the maps to sort of get our bearings. However, I suspect we could have gotten those things from any travel guide. The Lonely Planet book in specific was recommended to us by our travel agent, and because of the witty and intelligent writing, we thought it would be well-researched and trustworthy.
Not so! We were very disappointed with a lot of places reviewed well by the authors of this book. We stayed in the hotel marked "our pick" in Seminyak and it was much more expensive, we couldn't get hot water, and we got eaten alive by mosquitos. It recommends an "art market" in Ubud that is probably worse for rabid hawkers than Jalan Legian in Kuta. It hugely understates the presence and tenacity of hawkers and touts. The authors seem unaware of Bali Belly, traveler's sickness, Montezuma's Revenge, whatever you want to call it, and there's no advice on avoiding that. It neglects to mention anything that I could find about women being barred from temples during "that time of the month" or where sarongs and sashes are required and how they're supposed to be worn.
I don't think this book works as a stand alone guide. It paints a picture of Bali as the nicest place on earth, full of charming this and breathtaking that. We followed its advice and found a version of the island overrun by tourists, rife with scam artists, with culture and history pushed aside by Bintang t-shirts and anything else that could generate a quick buck. We also found amazing places and wonderful people, but only once when we put down this misleading book and started trusting our instincts.
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