Travel

which contain a lot of cultural background, narrative descriptions of the main sights, and best of all, gorgeous color photographs.

The nitty-gritty travel information is in the back, but it has things for every budget.

There are also other guidebook series, especially Frommer's, that cover a wide range of budgets. If you rely exclusively on the Internet, you are likely to encounter mostly backpacker types.

If you have only one specific question, try FlyerTalk. It's a board for people obsessed with collecting frequent flyer miles, but because of that they tend to be 1) well-traveled, 2) more affluent than average. I've gotten some good detailed information from them, especially about ways to travel to various places. Sometimes their political views make you want to crash their planes, but they are good at filling in the gaps that the guidebooks don't cover, like the pros and cons of various transportation options from Point A to Point B.

Their Thailand board is here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/thailand-624/