The Rough Guide to Indonesia, Second Edition

Rating:
Summary: Poor travelling companion
Review: I should have known once I looked at the first map and Vietnam was mislabelled as "China". Poor editing, unreliabale information, inconsistently updated. I chose this guidebook because it was recently published (Feb '03) - MISTAKE! For instance, some prices were up-to-date and some were out by a factor of 5 (if the prices were consistently low it would have been easier). Dates were wrong, telephone numbers quoted had changed in early 1990's, hotel listed were in the wrong towns, maps were difficult to follow. I have travelled with Rough Guides before, so I hope this is an exception, but DO NOT BE TEMPTED TO TRAVEL WITH THIS GUIDEBOOK.

Rating:
Summary: 2nd editon worse than the 1st one
Review: While the first edition was very good, the 2nd one was updated by completely omitting one of the 8 major regions of the country (Maluku) just because there was some political trouble there around 1999-2000 (well over by the time this edition actually got published) - it is now worse than the Lonely Planet guide which, with all its mistakes, at least does cover the entire country.