Never Get Lost Again!
A Thai Oasis Exclusive Thai Oasis pioneers the use of travel-site GPS coordinates
Like most non-Western nations, Thailand has loads of addresses that don’t mean much to non-residents.
It’s common for numbering schemes to stop as a street name changes, then start up again a few blocks away.
Commonly, addresses on one side of the street have nothing in relation to those on the other.
Street names change arbitrarily.
To make matters worse, Thai maps commonly do not use the “north at the top” orientation that westerners are used to, causing many a traveler to walk blocks in the wrong direction.
(Don’t believe us? Look at the vicinity map billboards at every BTS Skytrain station… see what we mean?)
From the back streets of Bangkok to the country lanes of Chiang Mai, finding addresses can be a horror.
But not any more.
We make it easy for you by giving you GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates for many hard-to-find spots.
By utilizing a hand-held GPS device, you can walk, ride, or tuk-tuk to any of a number of fascinating spots you might ordinarily miss.
We suggest you buy your GPS device in your own country, get familiar with it, and bring it to Thailand.
Our GPS venues will have coordinates listed in red at the bottom of the article.
Thailand is in the process of building its first geographic information system (GIS), which will provide a comprehensive digital map of the country.
The project is being undertaken by the Agricultural Ministry, and will replace a series of disparate maps generated by several governmental agencies.
The new single standard will reflect a single standard at a scale of 1:4,000.
Over 600 people are working on the project, utilizing GPS ground units and video cameras.
When finished, 12,000 data points in Thailand will be logged.
Bottom line: Thai Oasis’ GPS points work today with your handheld device, and will be enhanced when the Thai government releases it map to GPS vendors, which we’d anticipate to occur in mid-year 2006.
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