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Paper Maps to Buy from StoresThailandGuru.com > Maps > Paper mapsMaps of BangkokIf you love maps as much as I do, then you will enjoy the selection at good book stores. (I have loved maps as far back as I can remember, drawing my own very often as a kid.) Below, I review some of the different maps of Bangkok that you can find at various stores. Some are excellent quality with amazing attention to detail, useful landmarks and accuracy. Others are little more than a big sheet of paper packaged to sell to people who don't patiently inspect and compare, with missing information all over. There are several Thai words you may want to be exposed to before you look at maps:
thanon = major road, e.g., thanon Sukhumvit
People have asked me to simply recommend ONE map. Which map to choose depends upon what you're doing here in Bangkok. Nonetheless, there are maps by two companies I recommend: PN Map Center and Bangkok Guide. PN Map Center has an excellent book atlas of Bangkok and nice full size foldout maps, but they are a fairly new addition to the selection so I've just added this info to this web page.
The street index listing with coordinates is probably the greatest thing about this guide. However, some bus-riders swear by the bus route guide. Finding the right bus is easy. You just open the booklet, find the origin street, find the destination street, and compare the bus numbers between them. All the bus numbers are written on the map, too, but finding bus routes by following the street maze can be confusing. The booklet makes it a breeze. It's best just to use the map to trace-verify the bus route in the booklet. It's as easy and clear as can be. To boot, the booklet also has a very concise guide to many newcomer basics. Be sure to get the English language, not Thai language, map(s). Note: The "Bangkok Guide" map is in no way related to the "Bangkok Guide" book by the Australia and New Zealand Women's Group. This is a pocket map, not a book. The book also has a map inside (the Groovy Guide) which doesn't come close in comparison. For the business analyst or salesman in central Bangkok, the most detailed one-sheet map of central Bangkok is from Periplus Editions. It shows the different buildings, condos, hotels (not guest houses), government offices, and so on. To get better detail, you've got to turn to street atlas books, not one sheet maps. One hard cover book, a 188 page atlas of Bangkok, with 75 pages in greater detail of central Bangkok, including an index and phone numbers, is "The Bangkok Business Location Guide", offered by:
Proglen Trading Co., Ltd. The website offers delivery to your address, with COD payment, as well as other payment options. Only 550 baht. It is sometimes available at Asia Books, and in the past there were copies at DK Books and Dokya. If they're all out of stock, you can get a copy at the same price at their office on On Nut soi 64 between approximately 8.30 and 17.30, no discount. Another street atlas hardcover book is BangkokMap, produced by the Agency for Real Estate Affairs. I haven't seen this one, only heard of it from a property investment guy. If you are a person who seeks detailed maps of special places, or if you are a businessman who wants map information on a CD, or who wishes to do GPS work, then I recommend the MapMagic maps by ThinkNet Company Limited, which I've used on this website. You can buy their Bangkok CD map as well as their Thailand CD map from some bookstores. Be sure to get the English version. You can also order directly from the company at www.thinknet.co.th or go by their office in the Silom area by the Sala Daeng skytrain stop, at:
ThinkNet Company Limited
Tel: 02-635-5005 Many businesses use these maps to chart out the coordinates of their branches, and/or designate sales regions, and/or display the locations of engineering resources, and there are GPS applications, too. You may have your own special applications. I use the CDs to magnify and print out places in Bangkok and Thailand which I plan to travel to, because it's easier than trying to decipher a smaller portion of a bigger map. In the Bangkok map, the ThinkNet map even has the names of very minor sois, making for complete clarity as you navigate and double-check your every movement. Bangkok is like a giant maze, and when you are in the zig-zagging green routes and back roads walled by 5-level shophouse buildings, it's very easy for a newcomer to feel like a rat in a maze. Your only guides are the street signs, and maybe a compass (which you can get for 50 to 100 baht in department store sports sections). The ThinkNet Bangkok CD map gives you the names of the small sois in those back routes. The Lonely Planet Guide recommends the Tour 'N Guide Map, which I find quite inadequate for either residents or the ambitious traveller, and barely adequate for the common tourists that the Guide is written for. It's one of the worst maps I've found. (Notably, the Lonely Planet Guide for Bangkok is not rated as highly as other guides on websites where many visitors rate the product, and I wasn't impressed, either.) Its most redeeming feature is that it's a simple map at first glance, with wide roads, almost cartoonish. If you wish the world were a very simple place, then this map and book may appeal to your purchasing decision. However, it lacks the next level of detail besides the major roads, and covers only central-central Bangkok. Forget exploring far outside the tourist areas. Forget the small roads, including countless ones in central Bangkok where you'll find many important businesses and residences. Forget any excursion beyond central-central Bangkok. Even in central Bangkok, if you get lost, there are too few landmarks on the map, not even many canals. You might start off with a smile with such a simple map, but you can get lost easily with a map this simple and be lacking the necessary information. The main positive factors are that the map is on tough paper and the bus routes are pretty clear, though it does not have the top class "MicroBus" routes on it which most farangs prefer (just 25 baht (half a dollar) per ride with a guaranteed seat and air con). (Not to knock the Lonely Planet Guide too much here... You should get a copy of the Lonely Planet Guide to Bangkok for touring the city. It's not much help in the practical matters of living and working here, but it's great for touring, as is the Bangkok Handbook by Carl Parkes of Moon Travel Handbooks, and several others. This Thailand Guru website does not address but a fraction of the tour information covered in these guides, whereas these guides do not address the practical matters of living and working in Thailand that Thailand Guru focusses upon.) The Nelles Map for Bangkok is a good single sheet map for central Bangkok if you don't take the bus. Produced by a German company, this popular map is very detailed for central Bangkok and shows many places of interest and landmarks by name. It's main drawback is absolutely no coverage of the bus routes. If you don't ride the buses but take taxis or drive, and if you like lots of landmarks, then this may be a good map to get. There's also no index to streets, though, like some other maps, so you just have to hunt for the names on the map. For outer Bangkok, it's not as detailed as the Bangkok Guide above. A feature of the Nelles Map which I find interesting but many others probably won't is that it shades the different areas of the map according to how developed they are, so that you can see where the still-undeveloped grassland and the most congested city areas are. This is the next best thing to a map made by satellite or aircraft photography. This and the landmarks are what got me to buy this single sheet map, too. Other maps worth mentioning: The Groovy Guides (one for day, one for nite) are heavily marketed but don't have much detail. One of its thrusts seems to be recommending particular places to go, and my guess is that this might be the author's business, to say the least. (He also does bar-hopping tours of the town.) While it points out some good places to go and places to eat (though missed my favorites), I find it lacking in most respects as a map itself. It's a little like a predecessor, the popular Nancy Chandler's map, though I find the Nancy Chandler map to be much more balanced. Both have editorial writing on "the best" places to go by their viewpoints (written ON the map), and have interesting tidbits, but are not very useful as a map for actually finding your way around town due to the lack of detail of these maps. The back of the map lists and briefly discusses places to go. One sheet can't compete with any tour book. If you are in Bangkok as a tourist for a couple of days but don't want to skim a tour books, are taking taxis and the river boat everywhere, and don't mind just going to places recommended by the Groovy Guide, this map may be for you. Plain and simple, "Map 'n' Guide, Your inside guide to what's hot! ... All you need. Buy it now!" Oversold. Surprisingly, the Groovy Guide was packaged with the 1998 edition of The Bangkok Guide book from the Australia & New Zealand Women's Group. But then the Groovy Guide author claims in writing on the front of the map that you can throw out the 250 page tour guide books and just stick with his simple map. Maybe if you want to tour Bangkok for five days (as he notes as an application) by sampling his favored places, mainly in the expat areas, and some being expat culture establishments transplanted to Bangkok. He also runs a Groovy Map web site with some spurious information and some scheduled bar hopping outings for a fee (perhaps he makes commissions from his selection of groovy bars, too, I don't know). For an expat living here, it may be worth skimming for fun, but get another map for getting around town, and if you want to really tour town and Thai culture then don't throw away your 250 page pocket tour book! (Also notable, the map says that the name "'Bangkok' translates as 'City of Mud'". Wrong, and don't repeat that because it might be taken as an insult eventually. As practically everyone who's read much or who has been here long knows, "Bang" means district, and "kok" is the shady plum trees that used to prevail at the district center when Bangkok was a customs post on the way up the river to the old capital city, Ayutthaya. Bangkok is muddy during the rainy season, and jokingly may be called a city of mud on some days, but the word for mud is not in the city name. However, they are correct that "'Thonburi' literally means 'Money Town'", which was due to revenue from the customs post. The city west of the river is Thonburi, and east of the river is Bangkok.) This is not an exhaustive list of the maps out there. Most are one-sheet and pretty basic, no index of roads, not much detail, and apparently targeted mainly at the tourist market. A few can be found as the only map offered at some vendor stands in tourist areas. For more information on bus routes and other transportation, see the ThailandGuru section on Transport. Outside BangkokRoad maps of Thailand are real tricky. I don't know why, but many of them seem inaccurate to me, and others have said the same. I'm normally a very good map reader. The author of the premier Thailand golfing guide book, Neil ffrench-Blake, who gives directions to every golf course he reviews, starts his Foreword this way: "I have ten different road maps of Thailand, and they all show different roads, with diffeent numbers, meeting in different places. It would be a lot easier if this was not the case, but that's the way life is." Like Neil, I recommend the Nelles Map (made by a German company) most of all for Thailand (but don't use their separate Bangkok map much) as one of those to keep in my car, among others. The Nelles Maps show the rivers with detailed contours which you will cross, as well as large hills and mountains in the photo-like shading so with a compass you can get your bearings. The drawback to the Nelles Map is that it does not put road numbers on the small roads on the map. I also have the Globetrotter company's Road Atlas of Thailand. However, it, too, fails to number many of the roads on its maps. I've also gotten lost using the Globetrotter atlas, and believe it might be outright wrong or misleading in some cases. If I travel to a particular region, then I will often pick up a map for that particular region, e.g., one made by Prannok Vidhaya Publisher, Tel. 411-1285 or 411-2594. The Prannok maps have highway numbers on most of the major regional roads. A good place to find maps is the very large D.K. Bookstore in Seacon Square on Sri Nakharin Road (far eastern side of Bangkok). LinksA map of the provinces of Thailand is at http://www.escati.com/maps/provinces.jpg You can get an alternative review of maps here: www.geocities.com/bkkriders/map/
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The company Bangkok Guide (look at the front cover, bottom left, for their compass-like logo -- it's a pocket sized map, notably not the book called Bangkok Guide which has a competitor's poor map inside). The Bangkok Guide MAPS company with the compass logo actually put out many different maps, ranging from giant fold-out maps with both English and Thai versions, and also book versions which go into greater detail on each page.
The single most popular foldout map is this bus map, which has different sizes of streets in different colors, the bus routes (including MicroBus), all the canals and several other landmarks (post offices, hospitals, police stations, schools...), and comes with a separate small booklet that is mainly an index to the streets and where they are on the map by co-ordinates (AA-GK horizontally, 1-84 vertically) as well as a list of all buses that go down each street (which supplements the listing on the map). The map and booklet are in opposite pockets, so you can carry them separately, though altogether they're still very compact.
