Loca Maps - Lao Maps

The map of Laos, made in Laos.

Every country should have a digital map of its own. This one is built from data we survey and record ourselves, so the country is not dependent on anyone else to know where it is.

WHY A LOCAL MAP IS DIFFERENT

In Laos most streets have no name and most buildings have no number. Maps built from a distance get it wrong: shops that closed years ago are still listed, shops that opened last month are missing, and the road it sends you down sometimes isn't there.

We don't scrape this. We drive it, photograph it, ask the owner and record it ourselves. Nearly half this map comes from our own survey work and our local partners. That isn't a vanity number — it is the difference between searching for something and actually finding it.

53,000 places, named in Lao and English, searchable in both.

A DIGITAL ADDRESS FOR ANY POINT

Two letters and eight digits, accurate to a six-metre square. A front door, a factory gate, or a spot in a field. The length never varies, so there is nothing to remember but the shape of it. Your phone works it out on the spot, with no signal needed, and typing one into search lands on the exact square.

In a country with no street numbers, one code gets a delivery to your gate.

EV: NOT JUST WHERE THE CHARGERS ARE

Tell the app how far your car goes and where you want to be. It places the charging stops along the way, tells you what charge you will arrive on at each one, keeps a reserve it never spends, and shows what there is to eat while you wait. One button starts turn-by-turn through every stop to the destination.

Eight charging networks on one map, with the power and the connectors each site has. No single provider's app shows you all of them.

TURN-BY-TURN, IN LAO

Spoken directions in Lao, English or Thai, using real street names. Drive past a turn and it works out a new route without you touching anything. It keeps working with no signal, if you have downloaded the province.

ALL 18 PROVINCES, IN YOUR POCKET

In the mountains, on the back roads, near the border — the signal goes and the map stays. Download a province before you leave and the map, the search and the digital addresses all still work.

VIENTIANE BUSES

22 routes with every stop, drawn on the map, and how to reach where you are going.

PUT YOUR OWN PLACES ON IT

Add a shop the map is missing, correct a number that has changed, rate a place, add a photograph, or claim your business. Everything is read by a person before anyone else sees it. Missions ask for help where the map needs it most and pay points for the work.

WE RUN THE WHOLE STACK OURSELVES

The map, the search, the routing and the place database are all ours. That means an error can be fixed in a day rather than reported to a foreign company and waited on — and Lao data stays in Laos.

Free, with no advertising. No account needed to use it.

LOCA COMPANY LIMITED, Vientiane. Base map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, under the ODbL. Place data created by LOCA COMMUNITY