Roving Candid Camera Snaps Thailand's Sin City

[RICHFROMOZ]

Roving candid camera snaps Thailand's Sin City

Stephen Hutcheon

Sydney Morning Herald - May 28, 2008 - 12:06PM

if you were strolling past the fleshpots in the Thai resort town of Pattaya recently, be warned: you might have been photographed and now, thanks to a company called MapJack, anyone in the world can see what you were doing.Based in Hong Kong and Thailand, MapJack is a geo-imaging company that has already published image sets for six cities - four in the US and two in Thailand, including Chiang Mai, and has another five in the pipeline.

The Pattaya image set was within the past month and includes some photos taken as recently as March.

Like Google's Street View feature in Google Maps and Google Earth, MapJack uses a fleet of cars mounted with special cameras to capture what it calls Immersive Street-Side Imagery.

Unlike Google, there is no attempt to fuzz out faces and blur car licence plates or to use the catch-all privacy cloak of lower resolution imagery.

As MapJack's blurb says, the company wants to give users "an immersive feeling of actually being there" - an effect enhanced by the use of images captured by cameras mounted on backpack-carrying cameramen walking through pedestrian-only zones.

The result is that, in parts of Pattaya, a coastal resort well known as a destination for sex tourism, the MapJack cameras have recorded some fascinating glimpses of street life.

Among the narrow alleys and alfresco bars around the red light district of Walking Street and the area known as Boyztown, almost everyone gets his or her photo taken - Western men, Thai bar girls and even the odd transvestite.

A MapJack spokeswoman, who would identify herself only as Ms Ai-Ling, said the Thai photos were taken a few months ago.

Asked if there had been any privacy complaints, she replied in en email: "No, surprisingly not. We can blur faces or licence plates on request and it's simple to do."

The company, which was founded by a Swede and an American in 2006, published its first street-level image set just one week after Google's Street View went live in May last year - something that was "pure coincidence", she said.

The MapJack feature sits on top of a Google Maps template but it offers a number of different buttons and navigational tools not found on the Google offering.

This month, Google announced it was rolling out a new technology that would automatically blur any human face appearing in its Street View feature.

The blurring technology, which will be retrospectively applied to all existing Street View images and incorporated in all future releases of the popular mapping feature, is intended to mollify concerns about the potentially intrusive nature of the service.

http://' target="_blank">Street View images provide a panoramic, ground-level view of about 40 US cities and their surrounding suburbs.

Australia is expected to become the first country outside the US to get the feature when it is added to local maps and rolled out before September.

[bkkmick]

I was taking a look around walking street (via MapJack) and noticed the camera mounted on top in a reflection.

People in Patters can watch out for this.

[Phil Conners]

Big Deal! Yawn!

[MrIrrisistable]

I was down there in March with a local guy..err gal...It is not a yawning matter.

[RichieH]

Now that is cool!

[LuckyLucas]

That must've been done about 2-4 months ago - i recognise the old duffer sat in Thistle bar

cool stuff

[kurgen]

I was down there in March with a local guy..err gal...It is not a yawning matter.

Geezer bird ?

[Kerryd]

I've used MapJack quite a bit (once I was back on a decent internet connection), and have even used it to provide directions to various places in Pattaya (like a dentist's office and a motorcycle repair shop).

The images (it seems to me any ways) were all taken during early morning periods (9-11 am perhaps ?) when there wasn't a lot of traffic. It's not likely that anyone is going to be seen in/around anything "seedy", and it appears once the images are taken, that's it. They aren't going to be refreshing them on a regular basis (though they may add more streets in the future), so again, it's not likely anyone is going to be seen in an area of "ill repute".

This isn't live cam technology, and in the areas I browsed through (Walking Street, #2 Road, South Pattaya Road, Thepprasit, Sukhumvit, soi 17, soi Buakhao), there are hardly any farangs in any of the pics period.

The heading and content of the article is quite misleading, as it sounds like someone was sneaking around taking pics of people going in/coming out of various "establishments" which might be embarrassing to some if the pics were seen back home.

It would have been a whole different story if MapJack had been taking the pics between 9-11 pm, but capturing scenes of the nightlife isn't the purpose of the site.

[astromash]

On that map Soi Buakhao appears to be called 'Kasem Suwan'. Anyone know why?

[astromash]

On that map Soi Buakhao appears to be called 'Kasem Suwan'. Anyone know why?

You know, this is such an interesting question I think I'll answer it myself

Had a bit more time and googled it. So it seems it is an alternative name for Soi Buakhao. About a year and a half in Pattaya and I never knew that.

Next question: we all know Soi Buakhao means approx "White lotus street". So what does Kasem Suwan mean?

[Kerryd]

Well, not sure what happened, but for some reason when I go to MapJack now, Pattaya doesn't appear on the list of cities you can view anymore.

I've sent them a "feedback" message to see if it's a temporary glitch (or a knee-jerk reaction to a lousy newspaper article). I'm hoping for the former.

[Jandajoy]

Right...... Dentists Office and Motorcycle repair shop.

Given your experience of the city I can not, for the life of me, understand why you'd care about this rip off Google mapping system.

No offence meant and I trust none taken

[Kerryd]

Right...... Dentists Office and Motorcycle repair shop.

Given your experience of the city I can not, for the life of me, understand why you'd care about this rip off Google mapping system.

No offence meant and I trust none taken

Well, in another thread I made somewhat of a similar comment (about it looking like a Google rip-off), and wasn't that impressed with it at the time (had a bad internet connection though, which would take 15+ minutes to load the site).

Once I was able to get in and have a look around, I liked it. Instead of the overhead, high-altitude Google Earth view, I could actually see various places from street level.

I didn't need MapJack to figure out where I wanted to go, but thought it would be useful when giving directions to other people, especially those that may not be as familiar with the city. Trying to draw a map, or trying to highlite a spot on an existing map (if it even shows on the map), just doesn't work as well as being able to actually show a picture of what the other person should expect to see.

As for the dentist's office, I knew where it was, but within a block are 2-3 other dental clinics as well. By using MapJack, I could show a picture of the place I was actually referring to (which helped as well as I knew where the place was, but couldn't for the life of me recall the name of the place).

Same goes for the moto repair shop. There was no way I could easily describe how to get there, as I didn't even know the name of the soi. Using MapJack I was able to screenshot some pics to show another member exactly what to look for if he was going to go there.

It's a useful tool in some cases, and in the event I ever have to give someone else directions to a place in Pattaya, I may use it again. Let's say one of my co-workers here, who has never been to Thailand at all, wants to stay at my place for a week or two. Using MapJack, I could virtually take him right from the bus station to within 100 meters of my apartment. He would know exactly what features to look for, and have an idea of what the neighbourhood looks like, before he even heads to the airport (remembering that I am in Afghansitan at the moment).

Much better than drawing some lines on a napkin. I would like to see it expanded to cover more of the city, but obviously, such ventures cost money. Not sure if they are making anything off their site. If not, it's not likely that we'll get to seem more of the city.