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By Laurie Ashton

If you’re planning a trip to Sri Lanka, getting your hands on a travel guide is probably one of the things on your to-do list. But then the question arises – which one to get? Here, I review two such guides, one by Lonely Planet, the other by Footprint.

Travel & Transportation

The Lonely Planet guide says that trishaw rides in and around Colombo are around Rs. 30 per kilometre, but twice as much in central Colombo (p. 82), whereas the Footprint Guide quotes Rs. 20-22 per kilometre (P. 39). I seldom pay more than Rs. 20 per kilometre. If I used anyone other than my regular trishaw driver, I likely would end up paying much more, but definitely not as much as the Lonely Planet quotes, not even in central Colombo.

On page 43, the Footprint guide says, “Roads in Sri Lanka are generally well maintained but traffic often moves very slowly, especially in Colombo and its surrounds.” I think the Lonely Planet’s version paints a more accurate and colourful picture: “country roads are often narrow and potholed, with the constant surprise of pedestrian, bicycle and animal traffic to navigate.”

Languages

The Lonely Planet guide has a useful Sinhala and Tamil language guide in the back. It’s brief at only 7 pages, but provides the most absolute necessary words and phrases. The Footprint guide’s Sinhala and Tamil section is even briefer at 4. If you stay in the major centres, English accompanied by pantomiming is usually sufficient in most cases, but if you’re travelling to any villages, then you’re better off getting a phrasebook or an interpreter rather than relying on the language sections.

Information on Sites of Interest, Hotels, Restaurants, etc.

In both guides, addresses, phone numbers, and hours of operation are provided for many places, but unfortunately aren’t available for everything. Both need improvement in this area.

The Footprint guide provides addresses, telephone numbers, and hours of operation for most hotels, restaurants, and major sites of interest, but very seldom for others like temples, kovils, mosques, or churches. In one place, it talks about the Gramodaya Folk Arts Centre, provides no contact information at all, but does say to “ask the tourist office for details.” At least it mentions it. The Footprint guide doesn’t.

But where the Lonely Planet guide doesn’t provide full contact info, it does usually give at least the name of the street and town, which the Footprint guide does not. As well, its area maps have a lot more detail, listing more hotels, restaurants, places of worship, and touristy things to do, on them than does the Footprint guide’s.

I also would have appreciated knowing more about what each individual attraction was like so I could make a better, more informed decision regarding which ones to see, or which ones I could safely pass on.

For example, I went to the Gangaramaya Temple. The Lonely Planet mentions a “compulsory” donation, which isn’t compulsory at all, and both guides could have mentioned the incredible painted ceilings, walls, and doors. They could have mentioned the rows upon rows of meditating Buddha statues alongside miniature stupas arranged stair-case like, or the many paintings and statues scattered throughout the property. They could have also mentioned the history behind this temple. When was it first built? What are its highlights, and what kinds of things would draw people to see it?

The Footprint Guide does expand a bit more on that type of information than the Lonely Planet guide does. Unfortunately for them and the reader, one such incident was in error.

The Footprint guide on page 75 says that the Colombo National Museum is ”very well labelled and organized, a visit is an excellent introduction to a tour of Sri Lanka.”

The museum is not, in fact, well labelled at all. The labels in the museum tend to consist of a one word blanket description for 30 or 50 items in the same cabinet, sometimes in English, sometimes not.

(For more information on this, please see Travel Sri Lanka’s September 2004 edition.) I suspect the author had not visited the museum at all, but rather relied on information from his government contacts.

I also noticed many omissions from both guides. There are many very good established restaurants I’ve eaten at in the last year that aren’t in either guide. As well, the planetarium isn’t listed in either, and while I haven’t been there yet to see how up to date it is or even if it’s worth while going to, it does make me question how many other places are also missing.

Shopping

The Lonely Planet guide, on page 73, says, regarding shopping, “you’ll need to bargain – expect the vendor to start bidding at two to three times the value of the article.” The Footprint guide says, on page 54, “some shopkeepers will happily quote twice the actual price to a foreigner showing interest, so you might well start by halving the asking price.”

I was recently at Pettah market with family, and we’re all pasty white foreigners. A carving of three elephants caught my sister’s eye, and unfortunately, the vendor noticed. He told my sister the price was 4800 Rupees. Despite protests that she wasn’t interested in purchasing, he pursued us as we fled the market to our waiting trishaw. Finally, he knocked the price down to 2400 Rupees and insisted it was a bargain. As we left, our trishaw driver told us it was worth only 500 to 800 Rupees.

If our trishaw driver is correct, and frankly, he would know more than we would, then in our case, the item in question was marked up between six and ten times what it was actually worth. To say that a price will be marked up two to three times the value of the article is optimistic. Vendors here have no problem marking things up vastly when faced with an obvious foreigner and tend to become aggressive when we don’t bite.

Both guides were scant with tips on the actual bargaining process, something which would be useful for people visiting this country.

Money

According to the Footprint guide, “there is no black market money changing in Sri Lanka.” (Page 29). Pure rubbish.

Shortly after I arrived in Sri Lanka, my husband traded in my Canadian dollars, Bank of Hong Kong dollars, and US dollars with the black market money changers. He tells me that they offer better rates than the legal money changers, but they offer foreigners less favourable rates than locals.

Maps

A high point of the Footprint guide are the maps. At the back of the book, there are nine pages of colour maps detailing the provinces. That kind of detail makes it much easier for me to put everything into context as opposed to the typical one page map of the entire country.

But the zoomed in area maps were better in the Lonely Planet guide, showing almost double the places that the Footprint guide did.

Summary

When I see errors, I tend to become suspicious of other information. What else is wrong? Until I’ve been everywhere and seen everything, I won’t know. But that defeats the purpose of a guide. You’re supposed to be able to rely on it for accurate information in order to make decisions on where to go and what to do and how to do it.

In all fairness, though, the mistakes I picked up on were far and few between. However, for a country with as extensive a history as Sri Lanka has, both guides could be expanded to provide more insight into the rich history and culture. Both guides would do well to update their listings for points of interest, hotels, restaurants, banks, and the like to include complete contact information, hours of operation, and enough other information to provide the reader with enough to make a reasonable decision.

I think they’re both doing Sri Lanka a disservice by providing information as scanty as they do.

Lonely Planet - Sri Lanka, 9th edition, August 2003.

By Richard Plunkett & Brigitte Ellemor
ISBN 1-74059-423-1
306 pages

Footprint Sri Lanka. 4th edition, November 2003

By Edward Aves
ISBN 1-903471-78-8
416 pages

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