The surrounding countries are significantly poorer?

Thailand: GDP: $701.554b, Per Capita: $10,849

Myanmar: GDP: $111.120b, Per Capita: $1,711

Cambodia: GDP: $36.540b, Per Capita: $2,395

Laos: GDP: $19.158b, Per Capita: $3,004

Vietnam: GDP: $358.889b, Per Capita: $4,001

What's more interesting is the poor coverage of South Korea (which BTW, has pretty good street view equivalent coverage from domestic google map alternatives)

http://map.daum.net/ (hit the little web cam looking icon in the upper right to see where you can street view

It's substantially wealthier (using per capita GDP). I wouldn't be surprised if it just has more and better roads (making it easier and, sort of, more interesting to map).

Thailand is a very US friendly state - commercially, militarily, and diplomatically. Oh, and functional air conditioning, international cuisine, relaxed visa rules, cheap flights and armies of hookers probably help when attracting international business to the region, too. Seriously.

It's because there is a lot of vacation tourism to Thailand (much more than other countries in that region), specially from Europe. People use streetview to, for example, check the street a hotel is on before booking etc.

I can't be certain, but I'm guessing it has to do with its tech influence. In fact, if you look closely, every heavily mapped region has a prevalence of technology or are homes to tech centers.