Not a lonely planet for everyone!

I apologize for my long silence--I've gotten caught up in catching up on research and making sure I make it to Laos next week. Speaking of research, there comes a point in everyone’s life when they must acknowledge that someone else is better than them. For a Let’s Go RW it’s a difficult and painful acknowledgement when the person in question is their Lonely Planet counterpart and nemesis. Don’t get me wrong, though staunchly loyal to Let’s Go, I’ve never actually had anything against Lonely Planet books and I’ve never before experienced any inkling of emotion towards a specific writer. But over the past month I’ve come to resent the Lonely Planet Northern Thailand researcher. For no other reason than that he’s better than me.

And I don’t mean better in general. That’s a completely different question, and one that I can’t settle without actually meeting him. I suspect that I’m probably younger, more attractive, and hold a degree from a more prestigious university, but as far as my research is concerned, I always feel slightly inadequate. Let’s begin with the fact that he lives in Chiang Mai. I found that out as I was eating a pleasant dinner with fellow farang at Libra Guesthouse. One of them, a slightly tipsy Englishman, asked me about my job. He seemed very interested, but soon I realized that the interest was merely aggressive skepticism. He asked me to read aloud my research notes. "Why don’t you have a look at them yourself?" I suggested, seeing that everyone else wasn’t as excited to hear my thoughts about restaurants in Tha Ton. "No, I want you to read them to me," he retorted belligerently. I read him a sentence of my marginalia. "How long are you in Chiang Mai for?" he asked. "Two weeks," I lied (I actually only had a week and a half). He nearly jumped, "Two weeks?!" and proceeded to tell me that two weeks wasn’t enough time to research Chiang Mai. (Of course it’s not.) Could we imagine a Lonely Planet researcher only spending two weeks in Chiang Mai?! My Chinese-French neighbor confirmed his suspicions, and told me that the Lonely Planet researcher actually lives in Chiang Mai with his Thai wife (memory is creative; I may have made up the Thai wife) and certainly spent more than two weeks time researching Chiang Mai.

He lives in Chiang Mai?! That must be why their food section is so well researched and organized. I felt the first stab of inadequacy. After that, everywhere I went in Chiang Mai I was following his ghost. Restaurants that we list would proudly advertise that they have been recommended by Lonely Planet for 4 years already, with no mention of Let’s Go. Amazing Sandwich was most impressive, with a list of about 10 guidebooks and maps (some of which I’d never heard of before, meaning they’re too obscure to be sold in the best travel bookstore in Boston) that recommend the restaurant. No mention of Let’s Go. I was tempted to cut them.

The final blow came the other day in Pai. I was checking out a tourist police box, the most useless and least English speaking tourist-geared office in any town (actually, I take that back; in Mae Hong Son, right in front of the official tourist information office, is the "tourist volunteer center" a 24-hr tourist information booth staffed by a guy who couldn’t answer my question, "what do you do?" and didn’t have enough English to give me directions to the post office; but he did give me a completely useless maps identical to the one distributed of the official tourist office; and then I signed the guest book), and in this marginal, isolated booth, I heard from the police officer that the researcher for Lonely Planet had been there last year. And that he speaks Thai.

He speaks Thai?! I might as well give up now. If I could speak Thai I wouldn’t have to spend half an hour trying to find out when the pharmacy opens! People would never have to pore over my Lonely Planet phrasebook deciphering the miniscule Thai characters, and thinking that I was asking them when the sun rises. I would breeze from shop to shop from office to office and gather accurate, comprehensive information. And I would be in no hurry, since I would live in Chiang Mai, and my Thai wife might even accompany me and help me out with my research.

But alas, I’m merely a Let’s Go researcher, forced to gather accurate, comprehensive information at the record speed of three towns in three days. And I guess I better go do that now.

PS. Case in point: I was on a bus to Phitsanulok, sitting just behind a group of middle-aged Americans. Their guidebook looked pleasantly familiar. "You’re using Let’s Go?" I asked. "Yeah, we’ve misplaced our good one," they answered. Fortunately they got off the bus before they had a chance to ask me why I on earth I would lug a computer around with me on a trip to Thailand.