Lonely Planet on the Kindle

See also: Using a Kindle in Indonesia.

I am seriously considering buying a Kindle to take with me to Indonesia. The biggest reason is that I’m an avid reader with eclectic tastes; it can be hard to find books I like (in English) when traveling — and it’s certainly not practical to take 10 months’ worth of leisure reading with me!

I am still debating between the Wi-Fi only Kindle and the one that also has 3G. The 3G coverage looks great in Bandung, so I’m very tempted by that model.

I was thinking how great it would be not to carry a giant Lonely Planet guide book and get that on the Kindle, instead of a hard copy. However, a quick search makes me think that’s not a good idea.

Both this blog post and this article say searching is terrible on the Kindle, and the LP maps are too hard to use in the Kindle format — so I guess I’ll have to carry that big fat book after all. I’m glad I was able to find those two reviews from real travelers who tried to use LP on the Kindle! (I’m a huge fan of LP guides, particularly for Southeast Asia.)

This has not turned me off on the Kindle — I became kind of desperate for fiction while I was living in Malaysia. I found a lot of excellent English-language books there but, sadly, not many by local writers.