out of date guide books: why not to buy

Dear Editors, The Lonely Planet Guiding-book,

I am writing to comment in the strongest possible fashion on the numerous and plentiful in-accuracies which I discovered while traveling with my newly purchased second-hand copy of your "Siam on a Shilling: First Edition".

First off, your writer's commentary that an audience with Siamese monarch Ananda Mahidol Rama the Eighth would be easily granted to all visitors of "noble bearing from barbaric lands" was highly mis-leading. When I went to the palace for my audience with his Highness I was soundly rebuffed by palace guards. (Their official garb, I might add, did not resemble in the least that of the palace guards in your enclosed fold-out daguerreotype.)

Further, the neighbor-hood in which your writer advised that I might witness "Siamese dancing ladies of extraordinary comeliness" has, I must add, taken a turn for the worse since your re-search! Many of these "ladies" were little more than painted harlots, and some I suspect, were not ladies at-all! Shocking! Vowing to teach one of these rascals a lesson, I followed your book's directions to the nearest listed buggy-whip importer (Clink's of Prussia - leave it to the Prussians to make a good, solid buggy-whip, eh?) only to find that the business had somehow re-located in the time interceding the research and writing of your (now, I must say, near worthless) guiding-book.

Dis-gusted by the whole experience, I decided to cut short my vacation. Alas, I was greatly delayed, unable to locate the main dirigible landing field despite it's being clearly labeled on your map. Might I suggest a sound thrashing for your cartographer is in order!

Good-day to you, sirs. From this point hence, I travel only with Baedecker's!

Sincerely Yours,

Thadeus Zweibel III, Esq.