The wild story behind Lonely Planet's first Thailand guidebook

[buksida]

The recent news that Lonely Planet Publications was shutting down its production offices in Melbourne and London almost entirely, and totally eliminating its widely admired magazine and all non-guidebook titles, didn't take me completely by surprise.

With planes grounded, borders closed and people staying home all over the world in response to the Covid-19 health crisis, any business associated with travel and tourism is on its knees at this point.

Still, having been a Lonely Planet guidebook author for 25 years, I feel it.

I watched the company grow from a fledgling two-person start-up in the 1970s to an empire with more than 500 office staff on four continents. In the 1990s, when I was visiting LP's headquarters in Melbourne two or three times a year, a steady climb in sales and production forced the company to shift to a larger location three times.

Thus for me, and I'm sure for many others who grew up hopping the globe with dog-eared guidebooks close at hand, the closure of Lonely Planet's original headquarters signals the end of an era.

In my life, that era kicked off when I first read "Southeast Asia on a Shoestring" while on my way to work in Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1977.

Nicknamed "the yellow bible" by its legion of devotees, the rustic guide was written by the UK's Tony Wheeler, who together with his Irish wife Maureen, created their DIY imprint four years earlier after finishing an overland journey from London across Asia to Australia. Their stapled-together "Across Asia on the Cheap," complete with hand-drawn maps, sold 1,500 copies on street corners down under.

Each chapter was devoted to a different country in Southeast Asia, and although the info was skimpy, and the maps barely usable, I was nevertheless impressed that someone had actually done it.

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/ ... index.html


I actually travelled around Southeast Asia using that book in the 1990s. Damn, I miss the Thailand back then, can't say much about the current state of the place which is more akin to North Korea at times.

[Bamboo Grove]

The books were good. I still have at least my China version. But some of the information was ridiculous. For example from Thailand I remember one thing about Krabi downtown. They have? (had) this ship as a restaurant in the and the guidebook sayd something like: "The food is not great but it's a great place to have Mekhong (the drink) and watch the tide coming up and going down." Yeah, a great way to spend your day. Another one was about a guest house in Trat mentioning that it has the best collection of western music (C-casettes) in the country. Truly important thing to know while getting to know Thailand.

And yes, I used many of them in the 80's and early 90's; China, North-East Asia, Thailand, India, Singapore come to my mind.

[Sabai Jai]

I first encountered "Southeast Asia on a Shoestring" in 1978. I was in the infamous "Pudding Shop" in Istanbul looking for passengers to travel to Delhi (and subsequently to Kathmandu) in my minibus and a Japanese guy who joined us had a copy. It's not easy to recall in this age of Google and instant information just how difficult it was back then to obtain any, never mind accurate, information that you needed to make this kind of journey.
I used quite a number of the "Earlier" books on my later travels in South Asia, Thailand and Egypt to mention just a few.

Shame there may not be one on Motorcycling in the Himalayas....

Kind regards
Sabai Jai

[Bamboo Grove]

lonely planet.jpg (109 KiB) Viewed 345 times

Yes, I still have two of them.

[Ratsima]

In 1977 I travelled around the world using "Across Asia on the Cheap" and "Southeast Asia on a Shoestring" as my main guide for this part of the world. Those books were good because they didn't try to tell you exactly what to do; instead they tried to teach you how to travel. They helped you learn how to find the sorts of restaurants, hotels and transportation that would allow you to travel cheaply.

Here's the entire section on Koh Samui from the 1977 edition of "Southeast Asia on a Shoestring":

Ko Samui - A beautiful and so far un-touched island off the east coast. Nice by itself or a base to reach other nearby islands. To get there get to Surat Thani and then take a boat from Band Don (a 5B bus ride from Surat Thani) every day at midnight and returning at 23.00 -- the six-hour trip costs 15B deck or 25b cabin class. Or you can do it in half the time for the same fare on the 12:30 speedboat service, it returns from Ko Samui at 07.30.

Around the World 1977 - Thailand