Travelling around Japan I was struck whilst sitting in the worst sushi restaurant I’ve ever eaten at in Kyoto (far worse than anything I’ve eaten in Melbourne) that the bald middle aged round-eye man at one end of the sushi train and the young female backpacker type at the other end looked strangely familiar.  It took me about 2 beers and 2 plates of bland soggy sashimi to realise that I had seen them both check into the hotel I was staying at, which was suggested in the Lonely Planet (LP) as was this restaurant, and I’d seen them both at a couple of temples I had visited that day, which were listed in the "things to do" section on Kyoto.  It was only when then old man pulled out his LP that I clicked.  The bastards that wrote the relevant section of the guidebook must be getting some sort of kickback from this shit-serving dive to get a write-up that ensures gullible foreigners will traipse through and drop a few thousand Yen per night.  As my trip continued I witnessed repeated scenes like the one above, the worst ones were in the Greek Islands and Turkey, where you’d walk past a row of restaurants, all serving essentially identical fare in next to identical décor and price, and one would be packed with tourists, and the ones either side would be empty, with some sad tout out the front looking despondent no doubt wondering how he was going to pay for his children’s new school shoes while the bastard next door is getting all his business.  When I got back to my (LP recommended) accomodation I'd check and sure enough the restaurant with all the customers would be the one in the guidebook.  It’s these scenes that make me believe that the guidebook industry must be fuelled by bribes, kickbacks and similar scams, and they're ruining the whole experience of travel for generations to come.  Why bloody bother spending all that money getting on a plane and flying to the other side of the world if you know exactly what’s going to be there when you arrive (ie crowds of mindless fuckers carrying the same book you’ve got, with their ipods and Birkenstocks, and all of you paying inflated prices to some asshole who is most likely forwarding some of it on to the guidebook author who wrote them up).  For fuck’s sake if you’re that much of a Type-A control freak you probably shouldn’t be getting on a plane in the first place.  Mind you having only just cottoned onto this phenomenon in the last couple of years I can’t really talk, but from now on I’ll do my travel research on the net, and give the $50 I would have spent on a travel guide to a charity in the place I'm visiting.  The irony of the name "Lonely Planet" kills me, there's nothing lonely about hoardes of travellers having an identical generic holiday experince that they bought off the shelf at the local bookshop.