Maps Laos
Map Update October 2008
The November 2008 version of updated maps have been released. The update includes more accurate data, additional points of interest as well as corrected street names and auto routing.
To download the latest map please register with our forum; you will find the map within the section Laos - maps and latest project information.
Feedback is highly appreciated. Please feel free to contribute your POI's also combined with your own 1 second tracklogs within the forum.
Project history
In case you are wondering we are not starting from scratch.
We already have complete coverage of Garmin auto routing and topo maps for Laos and Vietnam and parts of Cambodia and Thailand (major highways with some street details in major cities).
These maps were started by our member "rcmaps" around this time last year while preparing a trip to Thailand, Laos and Vietnam and found little or no free maps available at all, hence I proceeded to undertake a project to create my own maps from publicly available data sources. I have most likely spent hundreds of hours firstly extracting the data and then fine tuning and cleaning up the road data to get it to a stage where it could compile correctly.
Since then upon my return, I had collected thousands of kms of 1sec tracklog which I have used to update and re-align the highways and add new roads etc to the maps. Meanwhile some members from Malsingmaps had kindly donated their own tracklogs of travels around Laos. This involved probably another few hundred hours of work to get it into shape.
Meanwhile, asiaGPS (moderator and owner) of this site contacted me and very kindly and generously contributed his expertise and time and at his own costs set up this new community forum to help other users and continue development of these maps.
The vision is to significantly improve these maps from what was a "tourist" oriented map when I began to a detailed and useful set of GPS map for both tourists and residents of these countries to use and enjoy.
If you have benefited from these maps over the last 12 months (currently an estimated 9000+ downloads of this map all around the world), please join us and contribute POIs and tracklogs that you collected during your travels around these countries.
New, much improved map with additional points of interest and new topo/contour data is expected by end of December 2008.