Guidebooks aren't a Bible

There's been a loss of fuss in the press recently after one of the Lonely Planet guidebook editors claimed he plagiarized and made up large sections of his books. Thomas Kohnstamm's claims have hurt LP's reputation for sure but this Blog posting by Ben Groundwater in the Sydney Morning Herald puts it all into a certain perspective.

Why guidebooks have to lie

"The waitress suggests that I come back after she closes down the restaurant, around midnight. We end up having sex in a chair and then on one of the tables in the back corner. I pen a note in my Moleskine that I will later recount in the guidebook review, saying that the restaurant is, 'a pleasant surprise ... and the table service is friendly.'" So quotes the back of Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?, the tell-all book by Seppo travel scribe Thomas Kohnstamm that currently has the Lonely Planet editors of this world all a-flutter.

What has them tearing through their back catalogues are claims by Kohnstamm, who contributed to a few of Lonely Planet's South American guides, that he embellished, plagiarised, and in some cases plain old made up the information he committed to the "backpackers' bible".
It's become a pretty big deal - he claims he sold drugs to supplement his income, and didn't even visit Colombia, despite contributing to the guidebook (a claim he's since retracted). But for me, the biggest surprise wasn't that some of the information in the old LP might be made up - but that it's taken this long for someone to blow the whistle on it.

And even still, I don't think there's much cause for concern, with either Kohnstamm's claims, or the quality of guidebooks. For starters, let's not forget that Kohnstamm readily admits to embellishing his work for Lonely Planet, so it's pretty easy to believe he's lent that same imagination to his recent work. And even if what he says is true - is it so bad? The problem is that travellers treat the word of their guidebooks as gospel. How many times have you heard a traveller get told by a local that such-and-such a restaurant doesn't exist, only for them to reply: "But my guidebook says it does." Guidebooks are supposed to be just that: a guide. (Although "Rough" Guides further downplay their significance.) It's the travellers themselves who decide to cling to them like some sort of papery life preserver. If you do everything your guidebook tells you to do - like, say, only eat pho in the one restaurant it recommends to you in Hanoi - then you deserve what you get.

I usually have a guidebook on hand when I travel, if for nothing else than to read up on the history of a place, and look at the occasional map. I've found plenty of the information really helpful, and plenty of it completely wrong. In a lot of those cases it's not the fault of the publisher, as most books are only reprinted every two years. So if you pick one up towards the end of its cycle, the information is nearly two years old, meaning most of the hotels, restaurants and bars have either closed or changed hands (or rested on their laurels having attained the all-powerful LP inclusion), and everything has gone up in price. Occasionally I've found genuine errors, like a town appearing on the wrong side of an island on one of their maps, but nothing that asking someone on the street wouldn't fix. I reckon guidebooks are a lot like Contiki tour leaders - and trust me, having basically been one of those myself, that's not much of a compliment.

Like a tour leader, a successful guidebook has to create the illusion of being all-knowing, the highest authority on its chosen topic. That makes nervous rookie travellers feel a bit safer about diving into the big wide world. Most of the time, however, it's all bluff and bluster. Tour leaders and travel writers alike are not paid enough to see every destination properly, and sometimes have to call on their creative skills on particularly obscure points. But that's the way guided travel - whether it's with a person or a book - works. You've gotta fake it a little bit, and as long as everyone has fun and gets home safely, there's no problem. The joke here is really on the travellers who treat their guidebook like the bible. After all (to hopelessly misquote Monty Python): travel writers aren't the Messiah - in some cases at least, they're very naughty boys.

Note: On the subject of Lonely Planet Guidebooks, the latest Cambodia version has been written and is with the LP team in Melbourne for final editing before a release later this year. It'll be the sixth edition of the Cambodia book, the last being published in August 2005, and the first in September 1992. One of the original authors, Daniel Robinson has returned to team up with regular in-country author Nick Ray to pen an expanded edition this time around. Also look out soon for a brand new book on Siem Reap and Angkor, also from the LP stable.