Last Sunday I participated in a bike race just out of Vientiane. During the registration I studied the race course and was happily surprised to see the following OpenCycleMap printouts:

The 450 year road is (finally) no longer under construction (as it was one year ago) and allows a perfect road ride.

www.openstreetmap.la has been launched yesterday at the Barcamp Vientiane!

www.openstreetmap.la provides the slippy map in Lao and Latin script, information about OpenStreetMap in Lao (more to come) and data downloads in different formats.

This week I've completely revised the www.openstreetmap.la homepage. The user interface is now built on ExtJS, GeoExt and OpenLayers. Furthermore I prepared bash scripts to create Shapefile extracts of Laos (using pgsql2shp and ogr).

Further plans (in random order):
- more information about OpenStreetMap ("about this page" tab)
- translate the page to Lao language
- "edit" tab links to Potlatch on openstreetmap.org done, 08/11/2010
- provide routable Garmin maps (gmapsupp.img) done, 10/11/2010
- provide KMZ Google Earth files done, 15/11/2010
- provide more downloads (e.g. GPX pois, ??)
- improve the map rendering
- slim down ExtJS and OpenLayers library to save bandwidth done, 12/11/2010
and:
- promote the page (and thus OpenStreetMap) in Laos!

Further ideas:
- integrate Nominatim search

One week ago the first Kentucky Fried Chicken branch opened its doors in Vientiane.


Now there are two "KFCs" in Vientiane:

• The new Kentucky Fried Chicken: osm.org/browse/node/760420535


• The established Kouvieng Fried Chicken: osm.org/browse/node/485745010

It seems that the choice for my lunch gets bigger and bigger: White or yellow noodle soup, fried rice, thai curry, falafel, papaya salad and new also chicken burger. Hmmm?? Maybe ...

Edit 29. August 2010: Some weeks and a legal case later this fast food restaurant is named "Speed fried chicken". *lol*

We had another mapping party in Vientiane with interested users from the Laozaa community. It was mainly about how to add and edit data e.g. how to add Lao names to existing nodes and ways. Potlatch and JOSM have been introduced (although unfortunately Potlatch can't display Lao words properly).

Just one impression:

For more pictures, please see: http://www.laozaa.com/thread-10365-1-1.html

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Today The Agrobiodiversity Initiative kindly provided village locations for the Phonxai and Phoukout district. These locations have been collected and surveyed on field trips.

Please see:

osm.org/?minlon=102.3300326&minlat=19.6837286&maxlon=103.1554833&maxlat=20.0959335&box=yes

and

osm.org/?minlon=102.6658383&minlat=19.375516&maxlon=103.2784138&maxlat=19.8992014&box=yes

In January the new Hinheup bridge across the Nam Lik on road 13N has been opened.

On the weekend I rode up to Vang Vieng and back. On the way I tracked this new bridge, mapped it on OSM and enhanced the detail accuracy of road 13N (altough not yet finished).

This is the new bridge funded by the Japanese government:

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Last weekend I rode rather accidentally than planned parts of the new 450 year road (see my previous posts). This time I didn't miss to take some pictures. As one can see, I wasn't the only two-wheel rider.

Anyway, if you come across big concrete tubes filled with all kind of building rubble, huge blocks of stone and tree trunks on top of it, it probably means that the road is closed.

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Two things concerning the new 450 year road:
1. The 450 year road is actually the road that leads from Dong Dok junction to Thadeua aka Friendshipbridge and not the smaller one to the new stadium ... I corrected my mistake.
2. The road is closed again to finish it. Unless you are riding bicycle or motorbike you can't use this road at the moment.

Since I'm working from now on once a week in Dong Dok, I intend to improve this parts of Vientiane.

Just added the new road to the new national stadium opened for the 25th SEA Games in Vientiane. There is the two-lane, divided road that starts from the junction 13S/Dong Dok and will lead probably to the friendship bridge (still under construction). From this road a smaller one, called "Road 450 Year", turns left to the new stadium (2010 Vientiane celebrates its 450th anniversary!).
When I rode back by bicycle I crossed the rider from Timor Leste. The next day I saw him again at the time trial. Unfortunately for him he couldn't keep up with the best time trial riders...
Actually I wanted to map this road already last weekend, but I was stopped by a flat tire.

I mapped the residential ways (in Lao: ຮ່ອມ, pronounce hom) in Dongpalane Tha village and in Fay village. Based on theses street names I decided the village places Fay and Dongpalane Tha. Ban Fay was quite easy to map since there is a placename sign at the beginning and at the end of the village.
Hom 2 and 3 in Dongpalane Tha are still missing ... But I'm sure I saw them, at least I saw two ways without name signs ;-)

Update: meanwhile I discovered and mapped ຮ່ອມ 10 in Dongpalane Tha... are there still other ຮ່ອມ in this village?

Vientiane gets a new road along the Mekong riverside. I entered the approximate routing but haven't yet deleted the restaurants "Mekong Deck", "Mekong Riverside" and the Vietnamese "PVO".
It's too bad about these ...