Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68203 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 330 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781566918046
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
David Stanley, the dean of Pacific Islands travel writers, is still going strong. His latest guides, the Moon Handbooks for Tahiti and Fiji, are reminders of the value of experience and straight-talk in travel journalism. Both guides have the usual Stanley organization: good maps, concise descriptions and contact information, and extremely useful tables with information on everything from population and size of islands to maritime coordinates.

We particularly like a new feature of the Moon Handbooks series: an up-front "best of" section marked with blue tabs. In this section, Stanley gives you his top recommendations for a typical vacation in either French Polynesia or Fiji. All experienced travelers are asked by friends for top recommendations. These are Stanley's, and given his experience, a visitor to either Fiji or French Polynesia could easily build a memorable vacation around just the "blue" section recommendations. -- Pacific Magazine, February 28, 2008

About the Author
David Stanley has spent much of the past three decades on the road. He has crossed six continents overland and visited 177 of the planet's 245 countries and territories. His travel guidebooks to the South Pacific, Micronesia, Alaska, Eastern Europe, and Cuba opened those areas to budget travellers for the first time.

Customer Reviews

A name you can trust
My wife and I are frequent travelers to the South Pacific. Every time we have relied solely on Internet web sites, travel brochures and some travel handbooks we have been consistently disappointed in our accommodations. David Stanley's travel books have always steered us in the right directions. The new Tahiti handbook is full of clear maps, and pictures. This book is full of well researched practical information and advice. Most importantly it is information you can trust.

Makes me want to go to the South Pacific right now!
Tahiti and the rest of French Polynesia consists of 118 islands and atolls scattered over thousands of square miles of ocean. I cannot think of a more challenging place about which to write a travel book, yet author David Stanley appears to have the inside scoop on every one of these places.

The book conveys a wealth of information, the high-end places to stay as well as more modest ones. Interspersed among the travel facts and seasoned advice are interesting stories about the famous residents of the islands, such as artist Paul Gauguin, singer Jacques Brel, and Marlon Brando.

Stanley first flew to Tahiti 30 years ago, he's been writing about this area since 1979, and this is his sixth edition of the book. You don't find his extent of knowledge and experience much in travel books anymore. Stanley's Tahiti is a model of what a great guidebook should be.

Take This Book to Tahiti
How can I describe how good this guidebook is? Well, I would assert, in the extreme, that it would be better to read this book without visiting Tahiti than to visit Tahiti without reading this book.

This book will double, triple, quadruple...the accomplishments and satisfaction of a trip to Tahiti.

Everything about the islands in French Polynesia is here, all the essential info, enabling a visitor to be knowledgeable, suave, and inefficient, rather than ignorant, bumbling, and frustrated.

I mean everything. Maps, a glossary, conversion tables, statistics, history, culture, arts, lodging and dining (of course, and in great detail for each establishment), transportation, sports, entertainment, flora and fauna, healthcare...all wonderfully indexed.

You must, I mean you MUST, take this perfect guidebook with you to French Polynesia.

And you MUST use it to prepare for your trip. It would take you thousands of hours in front of your online computer to attempt to recreate even a small segment of author David Stanley's research, available for a very modest sum in this book.

The only plan better than taking this book to Tahiti, I suppose, would be to take David Stanley, himself.