This guide is interesting, and indeed it offers insights on some aspects of travel in the region which other guides do not address. But it surely does not match the standard of Lonely Planet and similar guides. The advice is not so up-to-date as it claims, and as much as it can be funny and anecdotal, its advice is not always relevant. Maybe a good purchase for the armchair traveller, but not for whom is really travelling to this marvellous region.

This book covers only the hot spots likely to be visited by someone with not over two weeks to spend in the South Pacific. Any place slightly off the beaten tourist track or without comfortable hotels isn't included. Goodwin does tack a few cheap hostels onto the end of his upscale hotel listings, in a condescending way. It's a cleverly written book, well suited to the package tour market. In short, a guide intended to help you spend money rather than save it.

It is very obvious that the author of this book has actually been to the South Pacific - he is very enthusiastic about the area - and sincerely wants his readers to love it too! We have followed the book's on two trips and have found the advise to be 100% accurate. I highly recommend this book - it can be trusted.

'This program has no further Pimsleur Thai learning programs beyond this. This is the only program for Thai that Pimsleur offers (It is a very basic program). Consequently, when you decide to learn more, you can not use this as a stepping stone to intermediate language level. You will have to go to another language program and start as a beginner. No star rating below 'one' is accepted by this site, so I am forced to give one star, although zero is my desire. You will have wasted not only your money, but your time as well. You will regret buying this.'

I used this program as a refresher before going to Thailand for a month, and found it very well structured for review and learning. A shortcoming is the length. I wish there was a longer program like for other languages. The negative comments have some merit but I still would recommend this tape for someone who has never spoke Thai. Just realize there is no magic method of learning another language. It's practice and use of the language in natural settings There are several other very good programs, but I strongly recommned the FSI tapes.

It IS extremely frustrating that the Pimsleur Thai course only lasts 4 hours total. It's certainly repetitive, but it works very well: your vocabulary will not be large, but (and this is key with a complex, tonal language like Thai) your pronunciation will be clear, and Thai natives can understand you. I think that this is the best Thai course out there.

Come on, Pimsleur! Give us some more!

And you find better ones. Lonley planet again fails to deliver with yet another product. The organization is poor, bad choice of phrases, etc..

Heres a tip: skip the book, goto Nepal, meet some Nepali's talk with them, learn a little, then go to the millions of bookstores in Khatmandhu and find a book that fits your needs.

It may be this one, but I doubt it.

The dictionary in the back was helpful, but the organization of the book is not very good and it is awful in explaining pronunciation. After studying it faithfully and trying it out, my Nepali friends, finally, asked in English, "What are you trying to say?" I also learned that some of the information was inaccurate. I hate to speak badly of it, since it is about the only Nepali language travel book on the market, but, hopefully Lonely Planet will consider an overhaul.

I was surprised that the two reviews prior to mine gave such a bad rating. Well, I'm half-Indian, I was born in the north-east of India near the Himalayas with very close contact with Nepalis in my early childhood and I couldn't actually see what the problem was with this book! It's small, compact, glossy, useful and very cheap, I mean what else do you want if you are only looking for the basics.

However, I can read and speak Hindi and know basic customs (which are actually explained in the phrasebook, for example food etiquette) so perhaps that made a difference. Hindi is closely related to Nepali and written in the same Devanagari script. You can actually learn the Devanagari script from this phrasebook which I find sets the Lonely Planet phrasebooks above most phrasebooks. If you don't want to learn the script, then the phonetic tranliteration system used is the correct one generally used by linguists, which ensures a word is correctly pronounced by the student, even when reading in English. This is why I prefer Lonely Planet phrasebooks as once you master the basics of script and pronunciation along with basic grammar (yes, it has a solid basic grammar section as well) you actually have a good base to further learn the language if you want.

I found the phrases in it very useful. You get a very good starting point for customs, ordering food, hotel rooms etc. As I said, it's also in a nice, very small size. Amazing actually how much information is packed in considering how small the phrasebook is.

This guide provided fairly reliable, basic information when I was trekking through Southeast Asia for seven months. When I landed by bus, taxi, motorcycle, truck, boat, trishaw, foot, or (sometimes) horse in a strange town at night where I didn't speak the language, it kept me alive. With its help I could always find the town center, the police station, and a bus stop.

Just don't expect it to enhance your experience, or even guide you safely. It's written in a rather smug, perfunctory style, and despite its budget approach seems aimed at very conventional travelers. There are none of the colorful, devil-may-care suggestions one finds in other guides, and it brings to mind the dour, conscientious tourists one meets on the road who are very nice but could backpack through Borneo without bringing back a single interesting story. This book has no spirit.

Maybe the reason it seems a bit inflexible and "un-hip" is because the editors are not responsive to the feedback of readers. I was very badly robbed a couple of times while using services recommended highly by this guide (for instance by the owners of the "Good Luck" Guest House in Bangkok), and after writing Lonely Planet with a polite request that they caution future travelers, I received no acknowledgment of my letters, and in fact the services in question are still touted by their guide.

This sort of apathy illustrates to me why their latest editions often seem years out of date, and why hotels and restaurants highly praised by them turn out to have closed down years ago. I understand that they have a limited number of researchers, but if they ignore input from readers who actively explore these regions, their book is naturally going to be out-of-touch, behind the times, and useless.

My advice is to buy the book if nothing else is available, because it does provide detailed factual information like phone numbers, addresses, etc. Just don't assume that it tells you all the interesting places and activities in a given city, because that's a laugh!! And don't ever take its advice on quality or safety.

A very useful and reliable, concise guide on South East Asia. Very good information on different highlights in each of the countries, good info on getting there and travelling around. Good to know where and when to go, as every other Lonely Planet guide featuring multiple countries.

Includes Tamil text, trancription, translation and vocabulary (in Tamil script and transcription). I am afraid the book doesn't teach you Tamil per se, but rather conversation and colloquiallisms. Actually the transcription is a half way between transcription and transliteration. The voicing and spirantisation are not marked (only k, not k or h or g), nasal vowels are marked. The Tamil texts doesn't always correspond to transcription.

A surpassing interest in the first of anything is as old asAdam. Just as we are different from the first man and yet in many waysstill the same, Dean Mohamed is also different from the first of Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Chandra, or Shashi Tharoor... You name them .

The main difference is in the use of the language and the market targeted. The similarity lies in the location and contemporary timing of subject matter - their own India!

this book is an excellent introduction for this little known colonial theater of operations with beautifull full color illustraions i recomend this book for anyone interested in colonial campaigns and indian history

An interesting topic for SAS fans but this book is as dry as a popcorn you know what. Pictures are grainy and/or poor quality.
Rather disappointing considering who the author's ancestor was (Charles Dickens!)
Recommend this book if you are doing a research paper and need the info anyway you can get it otherwise look for some other excellent SAS books elsewhere.

A good career book should do two things: stimulate your interest, and give you a push down the path to the goal. Unfortunately, Teaching English in Southeast Asia does only the former, and that not very well. It reads like an almanac, not a hands-on insider's guide. This book will be most useful to absolute newbies to the teaching AND Southeast Asian scenes; those with more familiarity with either area should look elsewhere. If you need to know the area code of your destination or want guidance on which TEFL course to take, buy this book. Otherwise, look to one of the growing number of other published sources of information on schools, teaching techniques and characteristic blunders made by foreign English students. Teaching English in Southeast Asia doesn't have nearly enough specific information. Too bad! This could have been a good chance to add a much needed resource to a badly under-covered subject. Better luck next time

This is so lame and poorly conceived that one would think it was an educational initiative from George Bush. The authors never gave a moment of thought as to how one learns a new language - through building skills through repetition and learning the basic sounds of a language. There is neither here. All there is a poorly recorded (the sound levels change drastically from speaker to speaker) recitation of the accompanying book. The book is a monument to stupidity and nothing short of a rip off.

I have spoken Thai for 37 years. I learned to speak it
in Thailand in 1967 while stationed there with the U.S.
Air Force.

I was stationed in Central Thailand near the town of
Nakhon Ratchasima.

In that part of Thailand, there is a large ethnic Chinese
population. I find that I speak Thai with a Chinese
accent. This book gives me the phrases as spoken in
Bangkok.

The first time I was in Bangkok, people laughed at my
accent. Now I can hear the words spoken as they truely
should be.

This is not a textbook for learning basic Thai, although
some basic phrases are included. It is instead a add-on
to the book "Thai For Lovers."

I personally like the speed at which the words are spoken,
and the content of the material.

I recomend the tapes as a learning aid to using the books.

PUBLISHER’S COMMENTS AND EXPLANATION

We noticed the wide variation in reviews of the "Thai for Lovers Tape Set" -- some users gave it 1 star and some gave it 5! - and felt that an explanation on our part could be helpful. First, the tapes are useless without the "Thai for Lovers" book. They are not a stand-alone product but are meant to be an accompaniment to the book. Second, "Thai for Lovers" (the book and the tape set) is not designed to be a serious language course. Another book and tape set that we publish, "Thai for Beginners", serves that purpose. Instead, "Thai for Lovers" is meant to be a romantic phrase book with no pretensions of teaching the Thai language in a systematic way. The tapes follow the book exactly and phrases are spoken in natural Thai following the English translation. Some listeners pointed out that the Thai was very fast. We asked the Thai speakers to use their natural speed and intonation thinking that this would be what listeners wanted to hear. It turns out that some people like it and others would prefer a slower pace. In the next edition we will reconsider and possibly have the Thai voice talent slow down a bit. In the meantime, we honestly believe that the "Thai for Lovers" book and tape set offer the best and most complete Thai romantic phrase book available. The potential they have to help open doors to new or improved relationships make them a five star bargain indeed!

Our company is doing its best to help our readers with the Thai language and to maintain quality products....