Away on my honeymoon in Thailand, am I doing any mapping? Not much no! Firstly because my wife wouldn’t consider it a very honeymoony thing to do, but secondly everywhere we’ve been to has been pretty well mapped! The resort I stayed in Krabi is mapped despite being under a cloud in bing imagery.

Now we’re up in the north of Thailand in the historical city of Chaing Mai. Amazingly well mapped! All the temples and every other POI I could ever need within this distinctive square old town area, mapped in great detail.

Of course Chiang Mai is also a popular holiday hotspot, so this probably doesn’t mean the whole of Thailand is well mapped. I remember Matt commenting on this thing when he went on holiday to Mexico a five years ago. OpenStreetMap develops its coverage on an “interest first” basis. Interesting places get mapped, and this means holiday hotspots get mapped a lot quicker and more thoroughly, sometimes while massive cities nearby remain unmapped. Places which aren’t mapped are maybe rather uninteresting (and if you live in an unmapped place, and find this insulting… time to make it mapped place!)

Looks like the mappers in Chiang Mai are other holiday-makers rather than locals, judging by the not-very-Thai-sounding user names in this top mappers display.

(ITO OSM Mapper view ranking top mappers in Chiang Mai based on last touched objects)

Whoever it was, they’ve done a great job. I’m using the MapsWithMe app to view all of this without roaming charges. I can watch where the tuk tuk is driving in great detail.

I was also watching where speedboats were taking us on snorkelling trips to various islands in Krabi. This seemed to reveal a few missing islands actually. On investigation I see a bunch of islands which have ended up without a natural=coastline way. Instead they have natural=wood turning them green on the map. e.g. look at this bunch. I added a missing little one here. Harry’s island. I’ve put the coastline tag on it so that one will show up on MapsWithMe. So seems like there’s some tag fiddling fix-up reconciliation needed on lots of islands. I reconciled things on Ko Ma Phai (“Bamboo Island”) by removing the wood tag, since the whole island is not covered in wood. For starters it has a BIG beach with coral on it.

mmmmm beach.

It’s pretty tough having to survey these things. While I work my ass off on these troubling issues, my mapping friends back in London are busy…

Kicking off the London mapping season TONIGHT! Matt’s organising a walking talking mapping tour. Great for new people who want to learn more about how OpenStreetMap works, so if that appeals to you, or if you know anyone, please let them know.

There’s also an Olympics Park Mapping party (Yes! Two scheduled mapping parties!) happening next Wednesday evening.

All the details: wiki.osm.org/London