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Many local types of cuisine exist as properly. Tex-mex cuisine is popular in the Southwestern US, and out there throughout the continent(although Taco Bell, the commonest such chain, is usually considered an exceptionally poor example of the form). Canada and a few parts of the northern US supply poutine, which is fries lined in cheese curd and gravy. The southern US provides a wide range of specialities, although most are only available domestically.

But the extra significant issue was lodging listings. This would be the Achilles’ heel of Wikitravel’s all-volunteer mannequin. It’s no fun visiting and ranking dozens of grimy hostels and boring motels, particularly once you’re on vacation. Consequently, listings have been sparse. For Railay’s Tonsai beach, Wikitravel listed but two locations to stay. For Koh Phi Phi, three locations for the whole island. Wikitravel Bangkok, astonishingly, had no listings in any respect. Help!

Wikitravel itself shouldn’t be formally downloadable, though third-parties (resembling WikiTeam) had created good backups earlier than many of the group took their open-supply knowledge and joined Wikimedia as Wikivoyage in 2012. Wikivoyage is out there at (replace ‘en’ with the specified language, there’s additionally ‘fr’, ‘sv’, ‘de’, ‘it’, ‘ru´ and ‘nl’ with over a thousand pages every). This is the only strategy to seize a duplicate of the Wikitravel knowledge, simply obtain as the first dump after the Wikivoyage/Wikitravel split was full.

I went guidebook-free with some trepidation. Since my teenage years, Lonely Planet has been my traveling security blanket. Yes, the guides could be grumpy and self-righteous, and are so well-liked that they’ll turn any lost city right into a grungy backpacker mecca. But Lonely Planet faithfully led me throughout Eastern Europe as a youngster and around East Asia thereafter, and I stay grateful. Going without felt like packing no underwear—doubtlessly liberating however a bit of unnerving.