Maps of Thailand

Beddhist

Member
Joined
Apr 29, 2011
Location
T. Khok Chang, A. Doembang Nangbuat, Suphanburi
Bikes
Guzzi V85TT, Keeway TXM 200
Hi all,

When I spent a year living and touring Thailand I found it difficult to impossible to get good road maps. The exceptions were David's GT-Rider maps which cover only a small part of the North. I also had 2 Berndtson maps, one of N Thailand (scale 1:750000) and one of all of Thailand, twice the scale. Neither of them have enough detail to navigate on the smaller roads.

Gecko maps were recommended to me, but I could not find them, nor any other detailed maps in Chiang Mai's book shops.

Now that sufficient data and tools are available I am considering printing my own maps, which I then want to offer for sale in small quantities.

My questions to you: what would you want from a useful road map? What scale should it be and how big? Synthetic paper exists now, so I hope to make them waterproof and tear resistant.

I'm looking forward to your opinions.

Kind regards,
Peter.
 
Waterproof paper is much better than the laminated maps as the edges are not sealed on the laminated paper maps. once water - moisture has found its way into the edges of the paper and soaked further in the laminated map starts to become useless and floppy due to the extra weight and the the print can smudge.

Tyvek is (mylar produced by Du Pont) is the best way to go but is expensive and you need to use oxidized ink making it more expensive, so not really viable.

We're working on a printed version of Auke's North Thailand dirt track and tarmac gps map now as a printed map on waterproof paper and we seem to have found a solution.



Beddhist said:
Hi all,

When I spent a year living and touring Thailand I found it difficult to impossible to get good road maps. The exceptions were David's GT-Rider maps which cover only a small part of the North. I also had 2 Berndtson maps, one of N Thailand (scale 1:750000) and one of all of Thailand, twice the scale. Neither of them have enough detail to navigate on the smaller roads.

Gecko maps were recommended to me, but I could not find them, nor any other detailed maps in Chiang Mai's book shops.

Now that sufficient data and tools are available I am considering printing my own maps, which I then want to offer for sale in small quantities.

My questions to you: what would you want from a useful road map? What scale should it be and how big? Synthetic paper exists now, so I hope to make them waterproof and tear resistant.

I'm looking forward to your opinions.

Kind regards,
Peter.
 
Thanks for your comments, Phil.

Other plastic brands I have found so far are Pretex, Teslin and Nevertear. There are a couple of interesting topics in this local orienteering forum, where one guy even put his map through the washing machine. However, all theirs have been printed on laser printers and it seems with this I can't go bigger than SRA3. In my opinion that's not big enough for a road map by far.

Now that you have piqued my interest: what is the solution, or is it a trade secret? ;)

Regards,
Peter.
 
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