Singapore : City Guide

by Ben Oakley et al. (Lonely Planet Paperback)

A book review by Nicholas Newman   21 December 2009

If you are looking for a pocket sized book to guide you around Singapore on your lay over between Australia and Europe, there is much to recommend this new edition of Lonely Planet’s paperback guide to Singapore.

 This book is aimed at the independent traveller, looking to add Singapore to his itinerary. The visitor will find useful suggestions as to where tourists should shop, eat out, stay and socialise. It feels like a small telephone directory, that is packed full of useful background briefings and tips about the best sites to visit and enjoy. For those who want to have a real feel for the city the guided walks described in the guide, will certainly prove rewarding.

 However, for the longer stay visitor or businessman, this guide is not as extensive, as it would first appear. For example, it only gives a cursory mention to the island’s network of golf courses, listing five such courses, when a local would know that the island has many more. Particularly galling is that the Warren golf course, designed and built by my father when he was serving  in Singapore, is not even listed in the index!!! Nor does it mention that amongst its many residents golf is a passion, as well as a popular location to socialise and conduct business, even when the ball gets lost in the jungle. This is not surprising since many of the golf courses are of championship standard.

However, many potential users will not find this guide, particularly user friendly.

Those with less than perfect eyesight will find the tiny size of the maps and print difficult to read comfortably. It would have been useful if the book’s publishers had included a plastic magnifying glass to aid reading?

Fortunately, this is not the case for the book in its digital book format, where using a mobile phone or e-reader, makes it very convenient to read, and admire the high quality photos, as one can enlarge the maps, print or images to suit ones needs.

The question I expect the publisher Lonely Planet will be asking itself in the near future, is it time to give up the printed word for the digital book?

Marks out of five

3/5 printed format

4/5 digital format

Also available at Oxford Retailer