QotD: Stranger in a Strange Land

When you travel, do you use a guidebook so that you're well prepared, or do you go without much prior knowledge so that you're surprised?
Submitted by Jack Yan.

While I am not the slavish adherent to Lonely Planet that I used to be, I must admit to doing a huge amount of research before any overseas holiday.  Partly this is because I travel so rarely nowadays that I want to make sure that I am getting maximum value from my travel time.  Also because travelling with kids cuts down on spontaneity to a large extent and things like having the right, child-friendly accommodation can be quite important.  I rely less on guidebooks for planning though and instead seek advice from other travellers on the Internet through forums such as Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree discussion board and Tripadvisor (particularly good for mid to upper range hotels).  Our last family holiday was to Singapore and Malaysia and we were lucky to have quite a few personal sources of local knowledge to draw on as well as previous experience travelling in these countries.  We planned a pretty fluid itinerary before we left and deviated from this quite a bit while we were away.  Hiring a car for some of the trip gave us much more flexibility to be spontaneous as evidenced by this picture taken during a detour to Kampung New Zealand (just because we were intrigued by the name):

Kampung New Zealand, Pahang State