They weren’t lying when they said it was BIG, May 14, 2010

Customer Video Review Length:: 6:03 Mins

This video shows you how many books I fit in my backpack!

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Very comfortable; very useful. Perfect for laptops!, October 23, 2005

By 

B. T. Denyer “Web designer” (San Francisco, CA) – See all my reviews

  

Something I didn’t know when I ordered this online: The pocket behind the Jansport logo has inner pockets for pens, phone, calculator, small book, rocks, old socks… whatever you want. My other Jansport had the bottomless pit of pockets that was a nightmare to dig through to find a pen or change for that horrible Starbuck’s coffee I keep buying.

The straps are thick and harder than the previous Jansport straps. ALMOST too stiff, but they should soften up with use. The nice part about them is that 65 pounds (of books) with these S-shaped straps doesn’t feel as bad as it did with my other straight Jansport straps.

The “Chocolate Cherry” color is realy burgundy, or better yet, a nice cabernet. I don’t know about the other colors, but Jansport is pretty good about the color in the picture matching the product.

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Great backpack, January 31, 2006

I am very happy with my purchase of this backpack. The color is great, and it has plenty of compartments but not so many that you don’t know what to put in them. I especially like the mesh holder on the side, I put my water bottle in there so I don’t have to carry it around. I’m a graduate student so I have a lot of materials I have to lug around, and this backpack is perfect for it. The straps are very sturdy and don’t cut into my shoulders. It is very comfortable to wear.

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For real planning or for dreaming…, March 11, 2011

By 

Luanne Ollivier – See all my reviews

  

  

I just love this cover – that little red and yellow micro bus just calls out ‘Get in and let’s go find an adventure’!

When younger, more adventurous or those seeking a different agenda for their trip come into the library looking for travel books, I try to put a “Rough Guide” in their hands. Why?

From editor James Smart:

“When we started writing Rough Guides we wanted to share the kind of travel we had been doing ourselves. We wanted to push travel a bit further, inspiring our readers to get away from the established routes, even if that meant getting lost occasionally, and seek something that little bit more special and authentic – in short, to settle for nothing less than an ultimate travel experience.”

Well, Make the Most of Your Time on Earth has detailed 1000 of those unique travel experiences. Thirty years of Rough Guide writers’ personal recommendations are included, with 200 new additions in this 2nd edition. And indeed, the world is covered!

I’ve been reading this book off and on for a couple of months now. The fold out front cover has a colour coded legend to the geographical areas. The bottom right corner of the pages have that same colour block, allowing you to flip quickly to a certain section. A map begins every section (I must admit, I read in no particular order, I just jumped to whatever grabbed my interest.) Full colour photographs punctuate the descriptions. The writing style is informal and breezy, reflecting the overall tone of the book. Each chapter ends with a Need to Know page that includes phone numbers and web addresses for the attractions listed. A Good to Know page includes general facts about that particular region, as well as interesting notes about etiquette, quotes and odd facts. (There’s only one country in the world with a three dollar bill – answer at the end of the post!)

The focus of each experience can vary greatly. Sometimes it’s the scenery, the culture, wildlife, nightlife, festivals, sport, food, adventures and the unusual. Booklovers might want to visit Hay-on-Wye in Wales where the ratio of bookstores to humans is 40:1! It’s been estimated that there are over a million books in this tiny town. I discovered countries I had not heard of before. The smallest nation in Africa is Sao Tome and Principe – home to some of the best chocolate (coca beans) the world produces. I was thrilled to see that I had done many of the things listed in the Canadian section – I’ve skated on the Rideau Canal, been to the Calgary Stampede, cruised Georgian Bay, seen Niagara Falls many times and a few more. I’m hoping to travel to the East Coast this year and there were lots of suggestions for that side of the country.

There was just so much to see and read about. Our world truly is amazing. Make the Most of Your Time on Earth does a fantastic job of showcasing 1000 things to see and do. Great reading for the avid traveller – armchair or otherwise.

(That three dollar bill? Found only in Roratonga!)

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Great Book for the Travel Hungry!, December 30, 2010

I love this book I got it as a present and think it is a great starting point for my future adventures. There is a lot of information here and it is broken up both by region of the world and by the activity in that region. Keep in mind that this book doesn’t specifically say “go to Belize and do this through this company and here’s their website.” Instead it is the authors talking about the most amazing experiences they have had and you are going to have to do the leg work of researching the destination, plane tickets, travel companies, etc. This isn’t an all-inclusive guide that tells you exactly what to do, it is more of a jumping off point to see which adventures pique your interest and going from there.

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Make the most of your time on earth!, November 30, 2010

This book is great! Lots of wonderful pictures. It gives a place and then a short 1 page of information about that place. It’s enough to tweak your interest and see if that will be a future travel destination.

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doesn’t hold up, July 8, 2011

Pillow smelled like plastic and packaging when it arrived had to air it out for a week. Did not hold up. After one trip the material stretched out and had NO shape or support. All of the beads fell away from neck and proved useless. Go with a memory foam pillow, not the beads.

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comfy & stylish, November 17, 2010

By 

J. DaCosta “Poppet” (NC) – See all my reviews

  

This is a very comfy and stylish travel pillow. It has a chemical smell to it so I left on a hanger for a month before using it. I wish it were inflatable to make it more space efficient but over all a great little pillow. Used it on a 10 hour flight.

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Great Fashion Travel Pillow, April 11, 2012

By 

Aimee Johnson “wii family” (Blaine, WA) – See all my reviews

  

I travel alot and the airplane is like a rocking chair for me – just puts me to sleep. This pillow is nice because the fabric is slick nylon and does not mess your hair up and is cooling so you don’t wake up with that big red mark on you cheek or neck from a hot spot. I get lots of compliments on the design since it is not your plain old solid color that is typical. The only reason I did not give this 5 stars is due to the fact that it has no attachment snap built into the pillow. My last one snapped at the bottom and I have seen some with snap loops so that you can easily attach the pillow to your luggage handle. I just used a loop of velocro to attach it through the solid hanging loop that the pillow does have. Great price too!

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Good Reference Material/Starting Point, December 7, 2003

This is a good guidebook and fairly accurate. In a country like Indonesia, however, things change quickly so use this book as a reference not as a bible. Do you own research and talk to other travellers. Since the LP Bali is the default travellers’ guide to this region, most of the restaurants and hotels covered are not the best values. Many get a steady stream of customers just because of a good review and never bother to maintain the facilities. The best deals require a lot of footwork and bargaining! Learning some bahasa indonesia always helps. The language section is adequate but the phrasebook is much better.

Nightlife is making a big comeback with the reopening of Paddy’s Reloaded (did they really need the weapons terminology?) and the return of the young aussie crowd. Check Bounty for the college age crowd, Seminyak for the posh/club crowd.

You can also avoid the moneychangers altogether by going to the BCA ATMs. Look for the ones that give you bills in 100,000 Rp denominations. You get a more reasonable maximum with these machines.

The activities sections are good, particularly the surfing one. They do a poor job of covering Lombok however, if you are planning on heading out there for an extended stay, I would recommend the LP Indonesia. Be forewarned though, the constant soliciting outside of the Gili Islands in Lombok is extremely tiresome. For scuba, skip Gili altogether and head to Flores or Sulawesi (or even back to Bali’s Menjangen). Many of the sections are blasted out and the whole place is overfished.

Finally, if you want to book a boat trip to the Komodo Islands, you have a couple options, the pricey Perama boats (better and more luxurious boats) or the cheapo independent boats (very basic converted fishing boats). The second option is very very basic – you sleep on dirty mats and the snorkeling equipment doesn’t work. The food is pretty good though and you do get to all the major sites with no hassle. If you don’t mind all this, you can book these boats pretty much anywhere on Lombok. The dragons are all worth it – we saw a couple fighting over a mate.

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be skeptical., September 16, 2007

By 

G. Means – See all my reviews

  

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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Fantastic guide, July 22, 2006

I’m just back from Bali and took three guidebooks. The Lonely Planet guide was far and away the best. It was funny and in the best guidebook tradtion, it did a great job of stearing me away from popular places like Gunung Agung and Besakih Temple – which are two of the worst tourist traps on the island. The author seems to have actually spent time posing as a tourist in these places to uncover all the scams. The rest of the book does a good job of finding all the new places to go for dinner and drinks in hot places like Seminyak. Make this your only Bali guidebook.

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Concise Bali Resource, April 12, 2012

Excellent resource for someone traveling to Bali. Created by an American who has lived in Indonesia since 1982.
Very consise and practical information.

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Fabulous resource for anyone thinking of going to Bali, April 12, 2012

By 

C. Pinstin (Memphis) – See all my reviews

  

What a great job Ms. Benzin did on describing Bali. Her short and concise book really makes me want to go NOW. I loved her explanation of the different festivals, and especially the life cycle events.

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Practical and enticing, April 28, 2012

Reading this book is easy because it’s like having a conversation with a local about the place she knows and loves. It gives you enough practical information to make you more eager than ever to plan a trip to Bali. Thanks to this book I now have specific things I will do on this island and I know how to do them. Especially intriguing for shoppers are the step by step bargaining hints.

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Adapter plugs/jacks, September 5, 2010

The plugs and jacks do indeed provide the means of converting from just about any pin configuration to
just about any pin configuration. They perform as advertised.

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Worked great!, January 13, 2012

By 

K. Shattles “Avid reader, TX” – See all my reviews

  

I used the Australia adapter. I took 3 different adapter sets, not being sure which ones would work. This set was the best. For such a little piece, I kept it in my makeup bag, I used it with my flat iron, computer, and phone charger! Worked flawlessly.

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Quality Adapters, April 22, 2011

The adapters were sturdy and worked perfectly when I was in Spain (I only used 1 specific adapter).

No problems or complaints. I only wish they came with a simple pouch, like some of the other adapters I’ve bought from Radio Shack in the past.

I recommend products like this if you’re going to 1 specific country.

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Maybe for a novice, February 6, 2012

I found this to be pretty much a waste of time. Nothing new here. “Look online”. “Be flexible”. That’s about it. Perhaps if you have never, ever purchased an airline ticket there might be something here for you. Not for me, sorry.

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Surprising sound, February 12, 2007

Great sound from a little package. This is the tiniest unit and you would never guess but it has a huge sound for it’s size. I have an Acer laptop which I love. It’s performance is practically flawless — Except the speakers, which are the worst. You can barely hear music from them. So I purchased these speakers for a boost in sound and they work great. I think they’re priced a little high, but they do have a tremendous sound for the size. Very portable and easy to take along.I would recommend them for the traveler. There a great addition for a laptop with low sound performance and very portable.

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Terrific Little Speaker with Clear, Strong Sound, September 6, 2007

After reading several dozen consumer reviews describing laptop speakers I puchased this one. You simply plug it into your laptop, or USB hub, swivel the gooseneck to position the speaker where you want, and you’ve got an excellent speaker that fits in a small laptop utility bag.

The only complaint I have is that there is no quick volume control; once you’ve plugged it into your USB port, it overrides the laptop’s volume control “knob”. You have to open the volume icon in your Control Panel every time you want to adjust the speaker volume, which can be too slow when you’re being blasted by a loud video.

This is not to say that there is anything wrong with the volume modulation in the speaker itself, just that there seems to be a wide volume range across items I view–YouTube, email messages with videos from friends, etc.

If this speaker had a volume control knob it would be perfect!

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NOT RECOMMENDED FOR DELL LAPTOPS, September 1, 2007

After several weeks of light, mid-volume use, the speaker stopped working on my Dell Latitude D500 and I began receiving error messages noting a “device malfunction”. After trading emails with J-Lab customer service, I was instructed to return the speaker by mail (at my expense) for a refund. The refund I received was 80% of the original purchase price because, according to J-Lab, the device was still “working” upon receipt. The representative handling the return acknowledged that there has, in fact, been a history of compatibility issues with Dell laptops– in other words, a “working” speaker may not always operate correctly when connected to a Dell laptop. Is trying this speaker on your Dell worth the risk of paying two sets of shipping charges, losing 20% of the purchase price, and spending time emailing representatives and repacking/mailing the device? If not, maybe it’s worth considering alternatives.

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3 Weeks in Greece with Lonely Planet, December 10, 2000

By 

Marvin S. Hipsak (Anchorage, Alaska USA) – See all my reviews

  

Greece was my first time travelling alone and this book was recommended by my friend from Greece. I brought other books but I never needed them. This book is laid out in an easy to read style and one can find information very quickly. When I was in Greece, everybody who did not have a Lonely Planet book was asking to borrow mine. Another nice thing about the book is the size, it seems as if the authors designed it to be carried around. It is not heavy, even at 700+ pages. I carried it everywhere. The accomodation recomendations were accurate and excellent choices. The locations of some of them could not have been better.

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Lonely Liar, August 9, 2001

The Lonely Planet came with me for a 6-week stay in the Corinthia. Overall I found prices to be very outdated. When I turned to the book looking for specific information, most of the time I discovered it was either scant or missing.

In Athens, I stayed in a couple of budget accomodations in Plaka that received glowing reviews from the guide — both places didn’t even come close to the authors’ high praise. In Delphi, the phone number provided for the hotel where I wanted to stay actually rang at a completely unrelated pension several blocks away. A description of which bus to take into Athens from Bus Terminal A and B would have been incredibly useful, and saved me an afternoon of wandering.

I also referred to this book many times for information about the towns and sites around Ancient Corinth, only to find it totally useless. Clearly the authors’ own distate about places accounts for this gap. For example: "Loutraki: The town was devastated by the 1981 earthquake, and subsequent reconstruction has resulted in its reincarnation as a tacky resort with dozens of modern, characterless hotels along the seafront. Loutraki hardly warrants an overnight stay." That’s it.

Color-photo sections are a nice selling feature of the book, but don’t help much when you’re trying to find your way around Greece. When I referred to this book I often ended up more lost than found. Browsing through some of the comparable guides, such as the Rough Guide or Let’s Go, I unfortunately found them to have very similar shortcomings. Lonely Planet forced me to approach more Greeks and ask directions, and to learn how to find my way around on my own — perhaps something I can thank them for after all. Next time I go to Greece, I’ll leave the guidebook at home.

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Just OK., September 3, 2001

This review compares the Lonely Plantet Greece (4th Edition) with the Rough Guide Greece (8th edition). We spent 2.5 weeks in July, 2001 in Greece, our first visit, and these were our guide books.

A relucant 4 stars to each, and a slight preference for RG. We certainly found the books serviceable, and they gave us good ideas of where in Greece we wanted to go. But they were much less valuable in their listings for individual destinations. They were the least valuable compared to the other LP and RG travel books we’ve used (Portugal, Italy, Thailand, Tokyo).

As usual, they both overstate their hotel rankings which to me make sense only if you’ve been sleeping out on the beach from necessity, and now have finally scraped some money together for a room. An exagerration, but I’ve lost patience with gushing praise for facilities which are usually no better than serviceable and sometimes less than that. And, we’re not into spending money on fancy accommodations. Occassionaly the books are on the money, but often not.

On the smaller islands RG usually had more accommodation listings, but occassionally LP did. There were at least two instances when LP had none, just saying that rooms were available.

The ferry schedules in the books, pretty much consistent between them, bore little relation to reality, even though we were there in the high season.

I want to complete with my usual gripe about these and other guide books: we don’t know which restaurants and hotels were actually visited by the writers (and by which one) and when. To paraphrase from my review of RG Portugal:

LP is out front in saying that its reviewers do not stay at all the hotels or eat at all the restaurants they list. I would like it if the reviews would be initialized by the reviewers with the date. This would allow us to learn each reviewer’s tastes and standards, not to mention seeing which places they actually visited.

One LP writer (not I think an author of this book) in discussing restaurants wrote: "As one of those LP writers I can tell you that it is not physically possible to eat even a ‘little bit of a meal’ in each of those restaurants What we all tend to do is eat at a broad cross-section within the norms of natural eating times and visit the other restaurants and talk to the owner or even the diners if it can be done discretely. In the same vein we don’t sleep at every hotel!"

Talk to the owners for your evaluation! Says it all.

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