allaboutpai.com → Maps

Here's some maps of Pai.

Pai Valley
Maps
The best maps of Pai are the printed maps you can get in town for free or almost free. Someone might just shove one in your face when you get off the bus. Please be a bit skeptical about the quality of their services :)

Here are some maps of Pai from other sources:

  • District Office Valley Map (circa 2007, detailed 313k JPEG file): a surprisingly good map on display on a large sign outside the district office.

  • Pai Post Map (circa 2007): covers the whole valley and has lots of very useful points for guesthouses, tourist attractions, and other services. The map is bizzarely not to scale though, so don't use it to gague distances or even compass directions!

  • Thai-Tour.com Map: a good general overview of the towns in the valley. Also not to scale.

  • HotelTravel Map: ditto.

DowntownDowntown Pai Map designed by Shlomi Rafaeli and Miki Ferrandino in 2005.

Here are some maps of downtown from other sources:

North
Valley
North Valley Map designed by Shlomi Rafaeli and Miki Ferrandino in 2005.

South
Valley
South Valley Map designed by Shlomi Rafaeli and Miki Ferrandino in 2005.

Topo Maps The Royal Thai Survey department publishes excellent 1:50,000 topographical contour maps of the whole country (except a few sensitive border areas with Burma; Pai is close but fortunately not censored). The maps are based on satellite imagery from 1992 (and, we hear, original US military survey data from many decades earlier) but they are by far the best resource available for trekking and getting any sense of the terrain of the region.

Amphoe Pai (Pai District) is covered by Sheet 4647 I of series L7017S edition 1-RTSD. There are also sheets available for nearly all adjoining quadrants.

Here is a roughly scanned sample from the sheet:

Topo Map Sample

As you can see, the map is detailed but out of date (for example, the major road that turns north off the highway, passes Belle Villa, and goes to Ban Wiang Nua was not yet built when the map was made and is just a dotted line.

You can purchase these maps at Suriwong Book Center in Chiang Mai (and sometimes also DK Books Chiang Mai or the large art suppy store on Ratwithi road).

You can also purchase these maps online at several different websites.

Google
Maps
Here's the most detailed Google Maps available for Pai. As you can see, only rough (20m?) satellite data is available and the road coverage is still pretty sketchy. Note that Google's big green arrow for "Amphoe Pai" is not really anywhere near the center of downtown Pai.

Satellite (click the "Sat" button if you don't see the satellite image):


View Larger Map

Street:


View Larger Map

Pai's GPS coordinates are (19.358889, 98.436667). You can access satellite and street maps from all the online services at the Wikipedia GeoHack site for Pai.

Historical
Maps
Of purely historical interest is this totally cool 1950s US Army Map Service map (6.7MB JPEG) of "Indochina and Thailand" quadrant NE 47-2, "Chiang Dao," which is part of a larger series on this website. Here's a scaled-down excerpt:

1950s US Army Map of Pai Region

Looks like Pai had an airport then, and a military one at that! No highway either; just a dim dotted grey line where the crappy "road" leads to Chiang Mai.

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