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Need good paper map of CM Province. Where to find?


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Posted

Plz give me some ideas where to shop for such a map. i have 2 maps of No. Thailand but neither is suitable as i am not looking for wats. Both maps are poor, IMO. Neither one shows clean road patterns near CM city.

What does the market place offer instead of smartfone connected google maps?

Posted (edited)

What kind of maps and for what purpose ?

I am a bit of a map fan.. So collect different ones (and would love repros of any old maps of the region if anyone sees any)..

For roads.. Many exist.. Simple..

For dirt trails.. The RideAsia maps are the best here.. You can by sealed (waterproof ish) ones, vinyl ones, and GPS ones.. He also has laos and others.. We collaborate gathering GPS traces for dirtbike routes and they are regularly reprinted.. The work done on gathering and editing these is huge, and Its thanks to Auke and Phil they exist and IMO are a bargain for the work involved.

https://www.facebook.com/North-Thailand-Road-Off-Road-Map-285641561454507/

Don Duvall (AKA midnight mapper) has done similar with Laos, this man has spent the last decade or two mapping every backwater of the HCM trail in Laos..

http://www.laosgpsmap.com/

For OS (ordinance survey) type maps.. The thai military have a superb series.. A decade ago they wouldnt sell them because they (I kid you not) didnt want the data being available to the scary burmese invaders, but you could get them if you were persistent at the bangkok office.. I am told they now sell them happily. From memory these were 1:250,000.. Theres also a (dated) russian military map at 1:200,000 but the trail and road data is from the 80s..

http://www.rtsd.mi.th/service/

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/indochina_and_thailand/txu-oclc-6535632-ne47-6.jpg

http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/130142

By far the fastest developing and progressing mapping systems are Open Street maps (OSM) they are user contributions, so can be a work in progress but have trail and road data thats pretty amazing.. the negative for me is Khmer / Laotian and Thai script is the default in each country. Of course they work on Garmins, android IOS etc..

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=12/18.7737/98.8749

So it depends on needs.. But many good resources out there..

Edited by LivinLOS
Posted

For OS (ordinance survey) type maps.. The thai military have a superb series.. A decade ago they wouldnt sell them because they (I kid you not) didnt want the data being available to the scary burmese invaders, but you could get them if you were persistent at the bangkok office.. I am told they now sell them happily. From memory these were 1:250,000..

True. In another lifetime, I pieced together almost the entire Burma border with this series, but failed to ever locate two sections where the Thais and Burmese regularly exchanged mortar rounds to pass the time, Three Pagodas Pass, and Hill 491.

Posted (edited)

I've just purchased two different map sets, both of which offer a VERY detailed street view of Thailand cities, including Chiang Mai. So detailed, in fact, that I even see the some of the sois near my house that are too small to drive a car through, and streets through the various moobans!

These maps can be downloaded to your computer, added to the free Garmin 'BaseCamp' software for route creation or track making, uploaded into a GPS for on-street use, or printed out and pieced together at what ever size you need. Both have been recently updated, showing local POI, shopping, and utilities. All the maps listed below have English language labels.

http://www.gpstravelmaps.com/gps-maps/asia/thailand.php

http://rotweilermaps.com/index.cfm

The Rotweilermaps site also carries excellent street and road maps for Cambodia, Lao, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Guam (but the Guam map, while accurate for streets, doesn't list POI.)

Edited by FolkGuitar
Posted (edited)

Hello FG. Can you tell us what you paid for these online maps? thnx.

The GPSTravel map was $29.00

The Rotweiler mapS were a donation of $50 for lifetime updates on all maps.

Expensive.... but... I needed maps that I could upload into Garmin's software, "BaseCamp." This allows me to plot out specific routes that I can upload into my bike's GPS, and be able to follow turn-by-turn directions on the bike that I've decided upon while at home on the computer. I also use this for mapping out tracks that we've made (having no idea where we where at the time) and plotting them onto maps when we return home. This enables us to return to theses areas, linking up sections that we enjoyed while remove sections that we found boring, making for longer and more enjoyable riding.

I believe that both of these maps use the Open Street Map maps so that they are constantly being updated as people add their routes and tracks to them. Nothing better or more current exist for Thailand. For off-road (and small back roads) motorcycling or trekking, the OSM maps are a goldmine of information, much more detailed than anything else available. While there are some great 'road maps' of Thailand, once you try to use them for the small sois inside cities or for dirt tracks in the countryside, nothing comes close to the free OSM maps. But unless you are very experienced in converting the OSM data into a format that a mobile GPS can use, these for-sale maps are the way to go.

By the way, there is an ap for mobile phones and tablets called maps.me that uses the same OSM maps that will work just as well as a dedicated GPS for finding locations, and I used that previously when exploring. The smartphones don't have the features that a dedicated GPS does, and usually a smaller screen, but if you are traveling in a car so weather isn't a problem and can use a larger tablet, Maps.me is a great free alternative.

Edited by FolkGuitar

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