Monday, December 20, 2010

New Google Earth imagery for Thailand

Since Google started to push new imagery to Google Earth twice a month I no longer reported on these updates here, as with the more frequent updates there often were only very few areas in Thailand which received an update, and I also did not want this blog to become just to be yet another Google Earth blog. However, the latest update last week was a really massive one, and not only in Thailand it seems they rolled out much more new data than usual.

Already when the inofficial Google Earth Blog reported the new imagery I noticed areas with new data - either because I could remember the area to have no hires yet, or because I noticed that there were district office locations I had not yet worked into my XML because I could not make out the building in the lores imagery. Most notably, these were parts of Phatthalung province (sadly not yet the town of Phatthalung itself), and an area east of Nan town. But with the official KML where Google marks all the updated areas I learned I found just a small portion of all the changes. In the boundary area to Myanmar in Tak province as well as in Rayong and Chanthaburi at the east coast I could finally get district office location very exact, which are now in my XML and my own KML of administrative offices.

As I mentioned Phatthalung before - while the new hires area comes short of covering the provincial capital, it covers the area between the town and the lake. And while browsing around there, I noticed that it has the old palace of the province governor in there, now yet another item on my long list of places I still want to visit in Thailand. This location also nicely confirms the history of Mueang district - in 1917 the district was renamed to Lampam, the subdistrict where this palace is located. In 1924 however the administration was moved westwards towards the newly built train station.

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