Lonely Planet Vietnam: Detailed Itineraries | Travel Like a Local | Insider Tips | Covers Hanoi & Halong Bay, Ho Chi Minh City, Hue and Hoi An PLUS Angkor Wat (Travel Guide) Paperback – Folded Map, October 17, 2023

The format of this book is much improved over some of the recent years format. It feels like more of the older style only planets, where the regions of the country are separated, and you can quickly navigate to one town or city in the book and understand what to do there. I much prefer this format and glad that they went to the older format that was used previously. This was a very good travel book for Vietnam.

I have been using Lonely Planet books for 15 years and they have always been my first go-to source. Not only were they extremely helpful and the foundation of my trip planning, they were also my personal ‘souvenir’ for every place I traveled. So much so that I didn’t even bother looking at the reviews when I purchased this book.However, after receiving this book (and the one for Thailand), I was so taken aback by the new god awful layout and frank omission of any practical information that I had to look back at the reviews to see if I was the only one feeling this way. And sadly, I am not alone here.The new format feels like it was written by social media influencers incentivized to peddle various micro transactions for a small cut. Most pages are full of giant highlight photos with no actual content, no lists or recommendations for lodging, restaurants, transportation, and no genuine tips/insight for backpackers or travelers of different socioeconomic backgrounds. I wouldn’t be surprised if the team responsible for its content had never even traveled to the country of topic. I am genuinely saddened by the downfall of this great company, but until that changes, I will not be purchasing these books again.

Great great great

A typical lonely planet release. I found the maps less detailed and useful than they used to be.

Great!

I usually love LP and use them for everything. I find this particular one very frustrating. I know of places from word of mouth from expats and when I search in the index I am unable to find them (Yok Dok national Park, Dak Lak province, Cao Bang). These are not uncommonly visited tourist locations and they’re not even in the index. It’s very frustrating and I’m finding I’m using the internet way more than the LP for planning trips.

I gotta sadly agree with the other reviewers that the new design is just not good. Lonely planet has been my go to travel guide with so much information packed in the covers that it’s always been so useful that I carry it with me everywhere I go. I used to love that they covered stuff like the arts and books and CDs and different things so I could learn more about the culture through the arts. I see almost none of that here. And the travel information is pretty sparse. Instead they replaced it with highlights as if the entire book is some kind of a day trip special must see thing that makes everything really hard to distinguish. I don’t like it at all and if it continues, I will be buying other guides instead. as far as information goes, I think they cover all the basics. Rough guides are better now. They need to rethink this.

Good edition of Vietnam but the map was missing. Not a big deal but annoying.