City maps are great, but they simplify and don’t provide the level of detail a satellite picture shows. Satellite pictures on the other hand are often not very useful on their own, since they usually don’t come with place names and it is time consuming to compare the satellite image with a map and find ones way. Google Earth communities combine the advantages of both approaches by superimposing place names on satellite images provided by Google Earth.

For Thailand there is a Google Earth Community, which provides the Thailand Placemarks version 7.1. The good news is that Thailand 7.1 provides information in layers. There is layers for roads, restaurants, supermarkets… and hospitals. After playing around for a short while I was able to turn off most of the layers except the hospital layer and get a great picture of central Bangkok with place marks and names for most of the hospitals mentioned on this site.

For those who need to book a hotel the Thailand Placemarks also make it possible to check how near or far the hotel really is from the nearest BTS station or a specific hospital.