As I plan my upcoming trip to Norway, I realize that, while there are many good sites out there on the subject, and while many good-hearted people offered ideas and comments on things to do and see, when it comes down to it, there is no substitute for a good guidebook.
As much as I tried to get by with some of these other things in my planning, the fact is, I ended up spending a great deal of time thumbing though, dog earing, scribbling in my copy of Lonely Planet Norway.
What to do? Well, Tim Wu over at Slate takes a look at Wikitravel, a site that we have discussed here a few times, and while he finds use and benefit in the process, he discovered that a lot of user-generated travel doesn’t quite live up to what professionals can provide. The listings for Thailand, where he is headed, come across he says, as “too vague” or useless or, in the case of Bangkok, Thailand’s capitol city, virtually non-existent.
He has better things to say about the site Travelfish.org, which, unlike Wikitravel, is a professionally written site. But as of now, it only covers Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand.
I’ve checked out lots of user-generated sites over the last few years, and while some of them, like Boots N All, are quite good, and perhaps better than Wikitravel, I do have to say that even now, I am still dependent on my Lonely Planet.