First-time Asia's organization comprises a set of country-by-country mini-guides of a few pages each, followed by (the bulk of the book) compact advice on things like health, security, when to go, insurance, sleaze, discount flights, your first night in Asia, and so on.
The section on Taiwan is five pages long, the same as for Bangladesh, Bhutan and Cambodia. With China at nine pages and Indonesia at seven, this isn't a bad allocation of space for the ROC. Its recommendations here are predictable -- Taroko Gorge, Kenting, Alishan, Tainan and the East Coast Highway, as well as Taipei (Snake Alley and the National Palace Museum). Additional highlights, if you have the time, are listed as Lukang, the Fokuang Shan monastery complex, Sun Moon Lake and Lanyu (Orchid Island). It comments on one Tainan Web site, "Find out where the local people go to pray for a mate or to change the sex of their unborn child, and to communicate with the dead."
Sometimes, of course, encapsulation such as this book specializes in will inevitably add to the concentration of travelers in a few places the authors so lament. A list, for example, of just eight highly-recommended guest-houses, each for under US$15 for two people, is unlikely to add to the more even distribution of budget-conscious foreigners.
Because Rough Guides has the resources to know in advance that they will up-date the book every couple of years, they are able to risk quoting prices in its pages. This is excellent, and just what travelers invariably want and need.
I once met two New Zealand backpackers on a bench in Chiang Mai absorbed in the Insider's Guide to Thailand that I myself had written a few years previously. I sat down beside them and, after a few introductory pleasantries, said "What's that guidebook like then" The reply came immediately: "Bloody terrible! Lots of flowery prose, but it doesn't tell you how much to pay for anything!"
This book must have been relatively easy for an organization like Rough Guides to put together. As a kind of "guide to the guides," it's essentially a spin-off from work already in the can. The company can extract the gist of their guidebooks to individual countries, add salt and pepper, and whisk them up into a marketable confection in no time. Even so, the result is a conveniently compact digest for exactly the audience it's aimed at, first-timers wanting an over-view of the possibilities, and reassuring counsel on the many problems they're likely to encounter.
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