I haven’t read last Lonely Planet Ukraine, but I read and used their excellent guides for India, Nepal and Vietnam. You can ask -  why then  you are recommending it on you site as a good guide for Ukraine ?

Here is my explanation which you can like or dislike – literally as well :).

As for me printed guide for fast and unpredictably-changing  country is useful only for general chapters covering climate, culture, language, customs, food and stuff like that. If you come to specific recommendations on local places (hotels, bars etc.) – real things might be different.

It happened to us many times in India and Nepal. In Delhi we managed to  avoid “closed for festival scam” at the railway station just because I read about it at India LP guide during the flight. And can you imagine – people we traveled with were for the 6th time in India and they trusted  smiling locals trying to sell us tickets 3 times more expensive at some tourist agency right around the corner.

But there was also negative experience with the tea shopping in Kathmandu. Since we are not  tea experts ourselves, we went to the shop suggested by the LP guide. Then we realized that we would better used our common sense and choose ourselves. The same thing happened with accommodation in Hanoi. Looks like being on the Lonely Planet or other popular guide give +100 percent to the price and – 50 to customer service skills.

Another issue  is that despite guide’s standards you would see a little bit of personal view of the author. Good friend of mine from Ukraine who spend 6 years in Nepal published his own guidebook about the country. I bet it is quite different approach you would expect from Lonely Planet Country Guide. It is not better or worse – it is just different like the USSR and the US 30 years ago.

Ukraine is changing a lot and even locals can’t predict what will happen next.

What to do then?

My idea is to use the printed guide (or any sort of book) as map, but remember that territory might be different. Research important subjects on the internet – and pay attention what locals suggest!

Sure, internet has drawbacks – hidden advertisement, scam and other things, but if you are not new to the web at all you will manage. There are some good and trustworthy sites where locals explaining stuff and answering questions. Ours is among them :).

Last Lonely Planet Ukraine was published in 2011 and I hope it is pretty good. But today is 2012 and the whole country was preparing to EURO-2012 (or at least appeared to be preparing) and a lot of things improved and changed.

What do you think? What guides do you use? How handy are they? Please share your experience about country guides in the comments.

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