Under Construction:
I am sure you all have seen this first one, but one never knows.
I bought Rough Guide at 1003 pages and Lonely Planet at 1052 and as you can see used a razor blade, knife, saw, whatever worked, to hack out a section that covered where I was traveling. I wish I had been smart enough to also cut out the index pages. I spent a lot of time searching for the pertinent description once I was in a city.
I have no opinion on which book or another is better. I tried to read about a city before I arrived but often never got to it. I almost never used the suggested restaurants. I did spend a LOT of time before I went marking places to stay that said they had English speaking hosts.
I wish I had spent more time “auditioning” B&Bs for my next trip. I was always so busy that the activity never came to the top of the list. I spent too much money and time in fancy hotel. Understandable for a first trip but hopefully I can be a little more adventurous in 2020. It is always a lot more fun to stay small.
Maybe rather than being called a trick one should call the above just another example of 73 year old incompetence. I have taken a picture of the screen of my laptop. The material on the screen helps me get to the next hotel. It has the name of the hotel in Chinese characters so that I can show it to people if I am asking for directions.
Clearly, a younger person would have all this material on their phone and would not have to effect this kludge. The most important dates, addresses, ticket numbers, Chinese characters are in a organizer I use called keynote. The good news is that everything is in one place. The bad news is that the one place is not on my phone. Clearly when I am walking or when I first approach the registration desk, I do not want to have to get out and refer to my laptop. This allows me to access my phone, which is presumably already out. Of course I have to keep track of which phone it is on as probably you know I carried and used 3 different iphones!