Product Description

Feel the frenzy of the tribal drums at a Highlands singsing, follow in the footsteps of history on the challenging Kokoda Track, take a slow boat down the mighty Sepik River or dive into a spectacular underwater realm. Let the best and only guide to Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands take you on an unforgettable journey.

• WATCH WILDLIFE - expert naturalist and bestselling author Tim Flannery give the lowdown on a wondrous environment where kangaroos climb in the treetops and luminous mushrooms light up the night forest

• ENRICH YOUR EXPERIENCE - a comprehensive Culture chapter connects you with diverse and fascinating communities

• REST EASY - all the best places to bed down, from world-class resort hotels to humble village houses

• BE INSPIRED - new highlights, itineraries and planning sections help you dream it up and make it happen

• GET AROUND - user-friendly maps take you from highlands to islands and everywhere in between

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #856488 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
Nobody covers the world like Lonely Planet.' --New York Post, May 2004

From the Publisher
Who We Are
At Lonely Planet, we see our job as inspiring and enabling travelers to connect with the world for their own benefit and for the benefit of the world at large.

What We Do
* We offer travelers the world's richest travel advice, informed by the collective wisdom of over 350 Lonely Planet authors living in 37 countries and fluent in 70 languages.
* We are relentless in finding the special, the unique and the different for travellers wherever they are.
*We update our guidebooks by visiting thousands of places in person to get the details right and tell it as it is.
* We always offer the trusted filter for those who are curious, open minded and independent.
* We challenge our growing community of travelers; leading debate and discussion about travel and the world.
* We tell it like it is without fear or favor in service of the travelers; not clouded by any other motive.

What We Believe
We believe that travel leads to a deeper cultural understanding and compassion and therefore a better world.

Customer Reviews

A Very Poor Guide! :-(
Once upon a time, Lonely Planet had a good guide to Papua New Guinea (371 pages), and an excellent one to the Solomon Islands (279 pages). For better or worse these fascinating countries don't exactly attract hordes of holidaymakers, so after leaving those books unupdated for many years, the publisher has now decided to dump them together in this new edition (272 pages).
The result is basically a new, much slimmer guide to Papua New Guinea, with fewer than 30 pages on the Solomons (where it only actually covers half the country even nominally).
Not only has much of the detail been thrown out, the quality of information has also gone downhill sharply! :-(
The authors have very obviously never visited even major tourist destinations of PNG described in the book - as confirmed by owners of accomodations included in it, who told me they had merely received phonecalls from the author who didn't even visit most of the Sepik Region or the Highlands, for example!
Much of the "updating" seems to have been done by surfing the web, and as a result the book abounds in recommendations for expensive, upmarket places and tour-operators that do have websites, while completely ignoring cheaper, budget guesthouses which have no info on the net. Even excellent, small locally owned places that were in previous editions of the PNG guide are conspiciously missing! And as for what the authors consider "budget": their itinerary recommended for budget travellers includes staying at a 150 USD/night resort!

This book is a real shame to Lonely Planet.
If you are planning on resort-hopping on a short holiday, it will be sufficient, but if you want to explore these two countries in depth without spending a fortune, you are far better off trying to find copies of the now out-of-print old editions, which still contain far more useful information than this new guide.
Check Amazon for reviews and availablity of the old Papua New Guinea guide and Solomon Islands one.

Another cheap little book that may well enrich your travels in either of the two countries is LP's Pidgin Phrasebook.
Those keen on getting way off the beaten track in PNG on foot will still find Bushwalking in Papua New Guinea invaluable!

Review
I bought this book hoping it would be helpful for the Solomon Islands. There was only about 30 pages about the Solomons. This book is a great guide for Papua New Guinea. I would suggest looking for older guides. I bought an older guide from lonely planet that was strictly about the Solomon Islands. It was much better, only the finacial info was definitely out of date.

The first post 2008 revised edition review (this book)
The reviews below have been transfered from the 2006 edition, probably because the authors haven't changed. However this is a mistake. Lonely Planet did listen to customers and the book is now over a 100 pages longer and contains much more information on all regions of PNG and the Solomons. Sure, it's still not what it was when the countries had seperate guidebooks, but now the PNG part is almost as complex and the Solomons are getting there - the section is almost twice the length. So now this is quite a good guide for PNG at least (haven't tested on the Solomons). The advice is very useful as media coverage of PNG is generally only bad and quite false and the listings seemed accurate. As this is the only guide to PNG it probably doesn't need recomendation, but at least now you can buy it knowing that the new edition IS useful!