| “Fodor's World Weather Guide” | |
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To help plan the best time of the year, weatherwise, to visit a destination we use this excellent guide to the Wold's weather. |
| “The Traveller's Handbook” | |
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We were bought this book as a present. It is a treasure trove of information for travellers of all types and is highly recommended. |
| “AA Mexico Explorer” | |
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This is the guide that we used during our tour of Mexico. It is full of good pictures and packed with information and background to the country. |
| “The Mayan Prophecies” - Gilbert & Cotterell | |
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This book investigates the Mayan prophecy that the world is going to end in 2012! It contains some pretty dubious theories but also some interesting and plausible ones. Putting all that aside, it is also an excellent, historical guide to the various Mexican civilisations which closely followed the tour that we went on. |
| “Malaysia Rough Guide” | |
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This is the guide that we used during our stay in Kuala Lumpur and we found it very helpful. It paid for itself when we followed its directions and used the very cheap local buses to get to the Batu Caves. |
| “AA China Explorer” | |
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This is the guide that we used during our tour of China. It is full of good pictures and packed with information and background to the country. |
| “Lonely Planet's Japan” | |
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This is the guide book that we used while we were planning and touring Japan. We picked it because it looked the most comprehensive available and all of the place names and tourist attractions were also written in Japanese. This occasionally helped us to get around as we could either compare the Japanese in our book with signs or point to this Japanese writing when asking for directions or instructing a taxi driver where we wanted to go. This book was the most popular one we saw being used by other tourists but we didn't like it! Its biggest fault was in its directions - they were often incomplete or ambiguous. |
| “Japan Rough Guide” | |
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This is very likely to be a better alternative to the Lonely Planet guide but it hadn't been published when we went on our tour. Well worth a look particularly if you are touring by independantly. |
| “Dave Barry Does Japan” | |
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A hilarious and grossly exaggerated, but nevertheless excellent, introduction to Japanese culture for Westerners. |
| “Insight Guide to Peru” | |
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This was the guide book that we chose to take with us on our tour of Peru. It doesn't have the down to earth detail of the Rough Guide (which we didn't need because we went on a guided tour). It covers Peru's history and its attractions well and is full of quality pictures. |
| “Peru - The Rough Guide” | |
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This is the book that we probably would have taken with us if we had been touring Peru independently as it not only covers the attractions but it is probably the best guide to getting around that you can buy. |
| “Full Circle” by Michael Palin | |
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We saw Michael's entertaining television series of this book before we went to Peru which definitely contributed to our desire to visit the country. We now have a signed copy of this book from when we saw Michael at Destinations 99 in London. We have been to many of the places covered by his tour including Peru and it makes it an excellent souvenir of our trips. |
| “Arrival of the Gods” by Erich von Däniken | |
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We wouldn't normally recommend a book like this packed with exceedingly tenuous
theories about the purpose and origin of the Nazca Lines but it's worth buying just for its photographs of them. To his credit,
Erich von Däniken did make the Nazca lines famous through his earlier book:
Chariots of the Gods and is
therefore partly to blame for our visit to Peru. |
