Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Guide.world: A compendium of travel guides

guide.world

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–27 of 27 posts

Re: Guide.world: A compendium of travel guides

#21

Post by bryanhogan »

alkh wrote: post #3

For Seoul, I think this is an interesting observation: Seoul is not a pretty city, at least not by most Western standards of beauty. It is a sprawling, haphazard mix with little apparent cohesion beyond a shared culture. Personally, I really liked it because it has a different vibe from a more "sterile" city like Tokyo.

Seoul is such a huge place with tons of different areas that each could be a city by itself.

Edit:

I just checked the (sadly paywalled) beginning of the article and the author also says:

> [...] alley of small apartments and trucks selling garlic, the next you’re in a modern business park so sterile it feels like a doctor’s office.

Re: Guide.world: A compendium of travel guides

#23

Post by merek »

A good lot of them seem to be from Matt Lakeman, whose writing I highly recommend. He goes into detail about history, politics, and tries to understand why things are the way they are in the places he travels.

The list is missing Lakeman's recent travels in Afghanistan: https://mattlakeman.org/2026/01/05/notes-on-afghanistan/

Re: Guide.world: A compendium of travel guides

#24

Post by master-lincoln »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #10
LorenPechtel wrote: post #9

Yeah, amazing what's not easy to find. I recently found out about the ancient roads in China. These days they are hiking paths. I'm quite used to handling myself alone with a GPS track, I don't want a guide. I found one book that it's not remotely clear if it's got what I want as it's discussing much of China and it's old enough I'm not sure what the mapping info will be like.

You'd probably be better off not trying to navigate using GPS in China in the first place, given the whole mapping situation there.

You made me curious and I found this article detailing some background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...

Re: Guide.world: A compendium of travel guides

#26

Post by LorenPechtel »

dewey wrote: post #15
AlotOfReading wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd probably be better off not trying to navigate using GPS in China in the first place, given the whole mapping situation there.

Most popular hiking apps (Gaia GPS, AllTrails etc.) support the standard used in China, do you think people just navigate with paper maps there?

AllTrails couldn't find "Shanghai", but my subscription lapsed years ago. Gaia is what I use on the ground but it's about where you are, not about where the trail is.....but I'm finding one of the ancient roads. A bit of a mess but it looks viable.

GPS works properly in China, it's just the maps are a lie. If someone made a .gpx of a trail someone else could use it. The line is pointy and a bit disjoint so I suspect someone uploaded points to Open Street Map.

Re: Guide.world: A compendium of travel guides

#27

Post by Denkel »

merek wrote: post #23

A good lot of them seem to be from Matt Lakeman, whose writing I highly recommend. He goes into detail about history, politics, and tries to understand why things are the way they are in the places he travels. The list is missing Lakeman's recent travels in Afghanistan: https://mattlakeman.org/2026/01/05/notes-on-afghanistan/

Read his take on Spain. If all his guides are the same... Better don't read them. As libertarian (he is the one mentioning it I did not have to look for it), he spends too much text -wrongly- analyzing the politics. His comment about socialized healthcare is an example of someone having "only one appointment per month" as a big failure of the system, that's rich coming from someone from the Country in which people die because they have to ration their insulin. And apparently Spain is more radical because communists get a few seats every election, but somehow America is less radical despite 30% of the population consistely supporting the fascists. He notes the far-right party without realizing that their platform is almost 1 to 1 to American Republicans... And I am going to stop there, but his takes in general are awful.
Post reply on HN