Seeing Thailand Through VR With the Cultural Map of Thailand
WEB 3.0

Cultural Map of Thailand: Building the Soul of the Country on the Internet

For as long as everyone can remember, Thailand has always been friendly to tourists. But, how many of these visitors really get to know the country beyond street-served pad thai and the occasional trip to Phuket? It’s not hard to see that Thailand is beautiful, but its skin-deep qualities — the bits that you could call boring but crucial to what made it to what it is today — how many people do you reckon know about that?

It most definitely isn’t made for tourists, but this particular group will find tremendous use for the cultural map of Thailand. First of all, did you know that Bangkok proper isn’t really that big? As compared to the area that surrounds it, it’s a tiny plot of land. No one will fault you for thinking that this city alone is enough to explore because it’s a whole new world, but looking at the collection of shrines and cultural sites, there’s too much of Thailand that you need to see.

Cultural Map of Thailand UI
The cultural map of Thailand, for the digital traveller | Screenshot via Website/Cultural Map of Thailand

One Eye to the Future

At the core of this project is an intent of building the digital soul of Thailand and bringing it to the future. With more and more people creating a life that exists on the internet, the Programme Management Unit for Area-Based Development (PMU-A) of the Office of National Higher Education Science Research and Innovation Policy made this program ripe for metaverse integration.

Now, before you roll your eyes, the metaverse, despite its ongoing lack of scratch with the public, is still a platform within a platform that’s available to everyone. The Bangkok Post reported on Feb. 17 that the more than 2,000 sites compiled came from the input of 41 universities from 33 provinces to build the cultural map of Thailand. That amount of input makes visible the framework of the country, something that is kind of amazing to see. And with the metaverse, or whatever form it takes, utilising virtual reality (VR), it’s much easier to get to know the substance of Thailand.

You probably won’t have to get up from your seat to visit these sites, but of course, you just have to because travelling through Thailand is a delight. Still, if you want to get to know the essence of the country, long travel times aren’t your only option. It’s not hard to see a future where you can wear a VR headset to visit shrines, sites, and everything in between that makes Thailand a gem in Southeast Asia.

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