Moon Fiji by David Stanley

Most people who travel a lot – especially budget travelers – have at one time or another invested in a guide book. Lonely Planet and Rough Guides are well known names in the genre; less well known are the Moon guide books. In fact, I had never before read a Moon guide until a copy of Moon Fiji came my way, courtesy of author David Stanley.

I have never actually read a travel guide. It usually gets stuck it in my backpack and pulled out for reference when I’m looking for an affordable place to stay, a decent meal, or to figure out which sights are must sees. Moon Fiji, however, is a different kind of guide book. That may be partly due to its author, who has crossed six continents overland and visited 193 of the planet’s 245 countries. For his first trip across the Pacific in 1978, Stanley bought the longest ticket ever issued in Canada by Pan American Airways. Though Stanley has traveled widely and become a specialist on many parts of the world, he keeps returning to his favorite area, the South Pacific.

I read this guide book from cover to cover and I highly recommend purchasing Moon Fiji if you are South Pacific bound. This compact guidebook does everything right. Take, for example, the following examples of what I found within: Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, India! Just saying the word conjures up images of the Taj Mahal in the soft light of dawn, camels trekking across deserts, worshipers bathing in the sacred Ganges, mountains of spices in marketplace stalls, and women wrapped in luscious silk saris. India also means being exposed to filth, poverty, masses of humanity, beggars on the streets, incessant touts, and bouts of “Delhi Belly.”

Planning to travel to India? You MUST get this book!

Nowhere else in the world are these contrasts so evident as in Mother India, and many visitors arrive on the sub-continent wholly unprepared for these incongruities. I saw all this and more when I traveled to India a few years ago. In areas of Mumbai, shanty towns constructed with scraps of scavenged wood and cardboard stretched as far as I could see. Here, people lived in abject poverty, clad in rags and defecating by the side of the road. Garbage was strewn throughout the streets and the overwhelming stench of sewage permeated everything. Homeless wraiths curled along the edges of the sidewalks in front of my hotel each night, yet inside everything was luxury and staff in starched white uniforms. Fortunately, I was forewarned. I had a friend who had been to India and he Read the rest of this entry »