David on Formosa

Another book is soon to be added to the list of guidebooks about Taiwan. Rough Guides is about to release their first Taiwan guidebook. This adds to the list of major publishers with Taiwan guides. Currently the market is covered by Lonely Planet, National Geographic Traveler and Insight Guides.

The new Rough Guide was written by Brice Minnigh and Stephen Keeling. Their bios on the Rough Guides website show they are both experienced journalists who have spent many years living in Asia. Keeling spent three years in Taiwan, half of which was spent working on the Rough Guide.

I haven't seen a copy of the book yet. One thing I will be interested to see is how they handle the use of Chinese characters and romanisation. Lonely Planet's guide uses both Chinese characters and Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks to supplement many of its entries which greatly enhances the book's usability. National Geographic and Insight Guides don't use Chinese characters and place names are written in Taiwan's somewhat confusing mix of romanisation systems. 

While I don't know the exact publication date I expect Lonely Planet Taiwan 7 to be released later this year. The second edition of National Geographic Traveler Taiwan will be released in November 2007. In the meantime I look forward to reading the Rough Guide.

*purchase The Rough Guide to Taiwan from Amazon.com