Lonely Planet, is the guide if you're going to far-off sketchy places only Australians dare to journey. It also is the place for new and aspiring travel writers. And now its at the center of a Peggy Seltzer-esque controversy.

One of their writers, Thomas Kohnstamm's soon to be released memoir Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? dishes on his own lack of professional integrity.

News.com.au reports:

Thomas Kohnstamm also claims in a book that he accepted free travel, in contravention of the Melbourne-based company's policy.

His revelations have rocked the travel publisher, which sells more than six million guides a year - guides that generations of tourists have come to rely on.

Mr Kohnstamm, whose book is titled Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? said yesterday that he had worked on more than a dozen books for Lonely Planet, including their titles on Brazil, Colombia, the Caribbean, South America, Venezuela and Chile.

In one case, he said he had not even visited the country he wrote about.

"They didn't pay me enough to go Colombia," he said.
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"I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating - an intern in the Colombian consulate.

Then Lonely Planet stated on their website that the admitted faker was lying:

Thomas has claimed that he was not paid enough to travel to Colombia when he was employed as an author on our Colombia guide. The fact is that Thomas was not employed as an on-the-ground author on that guidebook. This means that he did not write any reviews - of places or establishments - in this book. His contribution was to the introductory chapter covering history, culture, food and drink and environment. Two on-the-ground authors wrote the reviews for the Colombia guide.

Why would you make up a story about lying? Or why would you brag about being untrustworthy in a non-fiction book?!

UPDATE:
Travel Writer Joshua Berman chimes in.

And NYT reports that Kohnstamm is now saying his words were taken out of context.