Maps of Thailand and Isaan ...

On another topic below our dearest Moderator and Orator made a mistake regarding the Thailand 'area' of Isaan ... i.e. he referred to Isaan as being a Thailand 'province'.
An easy mistake to make and JellyBean almost immediately made it right ... i.e. that Isaan was an 'area' not a Province, and a very large area to boot. (Hell, as we all know Frequent is the only member of this board who has NEVER made a mistake.)


Anyway, for all members to be able to quickly figure out which Province is which. herein attached are two excellent maps, the first map is of the entire Thailand and it's Provinces. The second map is of Isaan ~ and it's Provinces ~ only.


Attachment 9036


Provinces in Thailand are not static. New Provinces are often made by chopping up other Provinces, with growing populations usually being the criteria.

For instance: Ubon Ratchathani Province had part of it's northern area taken away and a new Province created, Amnat Charoen.

Same same for Nongkhai Province. It used to be a very long Province which sat happily on the Mekong River. That also got clipped and Bueng Kan Province appeared a few years ago.

Udon Thani Province lost it's western territory and Nong Bua Lamphu Province was born.

And so it goes ...

I would not be surprised to see Nakhon Ratchsima Province (AKA 'Korat') lose some space in the next decade.



Attachment 9037

I wonder if provinces matter to anyone except those for whom it is important. Ask your average Thai money boy where he comes from and the answer will be the name of the nearest large town - Sisaket, Surin etc., not their province. I usually follow their answer up with a statement like "Oh, Isaan" or "Oh, northern Thailand" and inevitably they reply "Yes, have you been?". They may know the name of their province but it doesn't figure in their conversation as much as their region does. That be somewhat different for southerners, who usually just answer with "South" (region) when you ask them where from, rather than, say, Songkhla (province) - although I did have one southern money boy follow up with the explanation "my cock is Moslem" (he was circumcised)

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Originally Posted by Smiles

On another topic below our dearest Moderator and Orator made a mistake regarding the Thailand 'area' of Isaan ... i.e. he referred to Isaan as being a Thailand 'province'.

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Rather than calling Isaan a "province" (which, as you have convincingly explained, it isn't) or an "area" (which merely stresses its geographical coherence), there is surely a better word yet - "region". Unless that word has, in the overall structure of Thai government and administration, a specific meaning that rules it out of consideration, I'd choose it because it goes beyond the anodyne "area" by correctly implying that there are various broad cultural (including linguistic and socio-economic) characteristics that the constituent provinces of Isaan (though diverse in many detailed matters) have in common.

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Originally Posted by Marsilius

Rather than calling Isaan a "province" (which, as you have convincingly explained, it isn't) or an "area" (which merely stresses its geographical coherence), there is surely a better word yet - "region". Unless that word has, in the overall structure of Thai government and administration, a specific meaning that rules it out of consideration, I'd choose it because it goes beyond the anodyne "area" by correctly implying that there are various broad cultural (including linguistic and socio-economic) characteristics that the constituent provinces of Isaan (though diverse in many detailed matters) have in common.

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Like this you mean -
Attachment 9038

Yes - and no (see below!)...

Quite so - although the caption says that these are "geographical" regions of Thailand, implying that they exhibit physical differences such as, I imagine, highland areas vs. lowland areas of the whole country.

My point was that Isaan might be better defined as a "region" by the cultural/socio-economic/linguistic et. al. characteristics that distinguish it from other parts* of Thailand.

*Notice how I've introduced yet another term there?

The people of the North for example don't give a hoot about somtam, the sometimes fiery green papaya salad which is a staple of a typical Isaan meal.
Apart from food, there are similarities between the people in the provinces along the banks of the Mekong River with their cousins in Laos, culture and language, come to mind.

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Originally Posted by dinagam

The people of the North for example don't give a hoot about somtam, the sometimes fiery green papaya salad which is a staple of a typical Isaan meal. Apart from food, there are similarities between the people in the provinces along the banks of the Mekong River with their cousins in Laos, culture and language, come to mind.

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My recollection is reading somewhere that the 19th Century Thai governments invited in settlers from Laos and Cambodia to populate a very sparsely settled North East (now the Isaan region), hence the cultural and linguistic differences

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Originally Posted by frequent

I wonder if provinces matter to anyone except those for whom it is important. Ask your average Thai money boy where he comes from and the answer will be the name of the nearest large town - Sisaket, Surin etc., not their province.

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Although I'm not sure how you could tell that they were referring to the nearest large town, as the examples given have the same name for both the capital town of the province and the name of the province itself. This is frequently the case.

Anyway great maps Smiles, these should be kept as a useful resource.

The Esan map in the OP used five colors, while four would be enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem
Even worse, Nong Khai and Bueng Kan have the same color.

All provinces have the same name as their capital (not necessarily the largest town, e.g. Songkhla / Hat Yai). When asking boys where they come from, I sometimes get the province name, sometimes the region of Thailand.

In rare cases, I get a simplification. A boy from Ang Thong said he is from Ayutthaya, but when I asked for the district, he said he is not from Ayuatthaya but Ang Thong, but thought I wouldn't know where Ang Thong is and his home district borders on Ayutthaya. I have been around to so many places, I often ask for district as well. That weeds out foreign boys as well; I'm not good at recognizing accents, so a boy from Cambodia could pass as coming from Surin, but when I ask for his district, the truth will come out.

The majority of Pattaya boys come from Issan so therefore it should definitely be in our thoughts and prayers.

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Originally Posted by Brad the Impala

Although I'm not sure how you could tell that they were referring to the nearest large town, as the examples given have the same name for both the capital town of the province and the name of the province itself. This is frequently the case.

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Indeed - but that wasn’t the purpose of my post

if we are looking at historical provinces should this not include parts of cambodia and laos ...

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Originally Posted by Smiles

On another topic below our dearest Moderator and Orator made a mistake regarding the Thailand 'area' of Isaan ... i.e. he referred to Isaan as being a Thailand 'province' . . .

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Over the years I have referred to ì-sǎan in my posts many times and have never before referred to it as a province. The only explanation for doing so on this occasion is that I may have lost a couple of my marbles. If any member finds them, would you please be kind enough to PM me and let me know where I can pick them up. Many thanks. :)

Great maps by the way, Smiles.

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Originally Posted by Jellybean

Over the years I have referred to ì-sǎan in my posts many times and have never before referred to it as a province. The only explanation for doing so on this occasion is that I may have lost a couple of my marbles. If any member finds them, would you please be kind enough to PM me and let me know where I can pick them up. Many thanks.

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I’ll see if I can help using my crystal balls - both of them

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Originally Posted by Marsilius

" ... My point was that Isaan might be better defined as a "region"... "

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For some reason I did not think this thread would have even a tiny slice of controversy. This is after all Sawatdee ... I forgot. :eek:
Marsilius I do agree with you, the word 'region' is indeed a better choice than my original 'area'.

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Originally Posted by christianpfc

" ... All provinces have the same name as their capital (not necessarily the largest town ... "

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Correct. A perfect example is in fact Hua Hin in Prachuap Kiri Khan Province. Hua Hin the city is much larger than the capital town of Prachuap Kiri Khan. My guess would be at least five times larger. In comparison Prachuap the town is tiny.

Thats it - I'm disgusted at Smiles use of the word "area" - I've never been so offended and I'll be leaving the board immediately if the Mod's dont immediately ban him - this is outrageous ! ........oh wait, perhaps it's not that bad after all and I'm over reacting, sorry, it's just it seems to be the order of the day around here to spit the dummy out of the pram for the slightly infringement of late ! :-)

PS I have to admit that i didn't know that Issan WASN"T a province as I've heard many bar boys describing it exactly thus when asked where they come from ! Perhaps we should print off copies of the above maps and have them laminated and we can take them round the bars with us when asking that question and reeducate the boys as to the actual area SORRY REGION ! that they come from ! :)

Sa Kaew, Buriram, Surin, and Sisaket constitute an area with a lot of Khmer influences from the adjacent region.
On the other hand, the provinces of Satun, Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Songkla have been peopled by Malays before being annexed by the Thai kingdom in the last few centuries. This region is now fighting for secession.

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Originally Posted by I'm Hardly A Christian

" ... The Esan map in the OP used five colors, while four would be enough. Even worse, Nong Khai and Bueng Kan have the same color..."

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The fact that out of all the provinces in that map there is only two which have the same colour seems to make you itch.
The name of the province ('Bueng Kan') is mighty large and takes over the entire geographical space of the province, so much so that one would have to be a total idiot not to trip over it. Christiano my boy you seem to be getting more anal by the minute. Perhaps you should keep to moderating.

Yes it does. OCD at work. The first thing I noticed when looking at the map: five colors, and yet two adjacent provinces have the same color.

The map was probably created before Bueng Kan was split off from Nong Khai, and they just drew a new border and added a new name, but did not change color.

Going by the number of gays in Bueng Kan, the colour pink is most appropriate for the province.

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Originally Posted by Brad the Impala

. . . Anyway great maps Smiles, these should be kept as a useful resource.

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Good idea, Brad the Impala. I have moved the topic to the Thailand Resources forum where it is likely to remain at the top of the list of topics for some time. Meanwhile, it can still be accessed in the Gay Thailand forum for the next 4 weeks.

Smiles, I hope you do not mind me adding another map to your topic, which I thought would be quite useful for reference purposes.

Over on Gaybutton Thai forum, Trongpai created a topic called, MRT New Stations Open Today. On his post dated August 9th, 2019 he created a link to a website called GregtoDiffer. And on that site was an up-to-date copy of The System Map of Bangkok Rail Transit Network, which I have copied below for the benefit of our members.

Link to Gaybutton: https://gaybuttonthai.com/viewtopic....&t=9902#p95318

Attachment 9060

I’m becoming quite a fan of Trongpai over on Gaybutton. He provided a Wikipedia link to a Sunee Plaza page, which contained an old 2010 map of Sunee Plaza - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunee_Plaza

For those interested in a trip down memory lane, I have copied the map below:

Attachment 9065

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The map was created by GoScoutUK (talk) - I (GoScoutUK (talk)) created this work entirely by myself., CC BY-SA 3.0

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Originally Posted by christianpfc

I have been around to so many places, I often ask for district as well. That weeds out foreign boys as well; I'm not good at recognizing accents, so a boy from Cambodia could pass as coming from Surin, but when I ask for his district, the truth will come out.

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How often do foreign boys try to pass themselves off as Thai ?

The only way I can check is by the ID document & I don't recall a case of one lying about his country of origin.

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Originally Posted by goji

How often do foreign boys try to pass themselves off as Thai ?

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I've never encountered one; quite the reverse

It has happened a few times, often enough to pay attention. I had one from Cambodia who originally told me he is from Mahasarakham, where he used to work for some years. Boys from Myanmar try to pass themselves off as being from Chiang Mai.

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Originally Posted by Jellybean

Over on Gaybutton Thai forum, Trongpai created a topic called, MRT New Stations Open Today. On his post dated August 9th, 2019 he created a link to a website called GregtoDiffer. And on that site was an up-to-date copy of The System Map of Bangkok Rail Transit Network, which I have copied below for the benefit of our members.

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Not up-to-date, rather a projection for the near future.

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Originally Posted by christianpfc

It has happened a few times, often enough to pay attention. I had one from Cambodia who originally told me he is from Mahasarakham, where he used to work for some years. Boys from Myanmar try to pass themselves off as being from Chiang Mai.

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I don't understand why you think it an issue

Because I have been or at least know almost everywhere and use that as a conversation starter.

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Originally Posted by Smiles

Correct. A perfect example is in fact Hua Hin in Prachuap Kiri Khan Province. Hua Hin the city is much larger than the capital town of Prachuap Kiri Khan. My guess would be at least five times larger. In comparison Prachuap the town is tiny.

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The very best known example to about anyone here must be that giant brothel by the sea, aka Pattaya which is in Cholburi chiangwat. Plus that it seems its not even Pattaya proper, as full adresses always state it as BangLamung. Strangely no boy will ever say he comes from Cholburi, making it also another example of very flexible lifestyle.

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Originally Posted by christianpfc

Yes it does. OCD at work. The first thing I noticed when looking at the map: five colors, and yet two adjacent provinces have the same color.

The map was probably created before Bueng Kan was split off from Nong Khai, and they just drew a new border and added a new name, but did not change color.

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At the very same time the split offs of Loei and Ubon were made and there they did make new colors there (hey-was that already in Thaksins times to please the reddies from there by creating more highly paid govmt jobs?). ANY Thai map has some errors, just like in the past any Soviet map. That was to mislead spies, for Thai its general clumsiness with maps in general. Maps are not made for Thai, they cannot ´read´ them anyway-they are made for those nasty faran who always know all things better or for the archives to collect dust.

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Originally Posted by goji

How often do foreign boys try to pass themselves off as Thai ?

The only way I can check is by the ID document & I don't recall a case of one lying about his country of origin.

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Not that often. These are 2 most frequent, or rather If it happens its from there:
real Lao guys who fake /deny this and tell them theyre Isany. Very rarely also Khmer guys pretend to come from Surin (where Khmer is more spoken as Lao=Isany)
Much more notorious and sometimes warranting to vigilance are the hilltribeys, notably the Shan/Karyen who take the issue of nationality not that serious anyway. (thats the way I like it to take all the burocrazyness anyway). Their own widely held view is that they are entitled to have their very own nation. Though all know that a Thai ID is much better as a Burmese, even if its just the pinky. And lending out IDs or swapping them or whatever is also widespread-in the black market you can fairly easily arrange that. An awful lot of Thai IDs get stolen/lost/whatever, that makes them invalid for real officialdom (thats why they are chipped) but still very usefull for not so serious goals.
(in my home country they now even check the ID-among the best secure in this world already- in banks when you come for a little more serious bisnis, like transferring the big sums for a new house. Check for it being stolen/missing and for it to be genuine real with some secret devices.

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Originally Posted by pong

At the very same time the split offs of Loei and Ubon were made and there they did make new colors there .

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There are five contiguous provinces between Loei and Ubon. Please explain...

I meant-as was also mentioned in the posts/rersponse before, the 2 split offs that were created as totally new prov. from those-+ Beung Khan from NgKhai.

Back to another subject:
Yes, its officially also REGIONS here in TH-in fact any province (chiangwat) is also tied into a region. You can even see that from the nrs the provinces have. Normal cars only show the name on the plates, but buses+trcuks show the name (in Tai) and the nr in tiny figures. Busestrucks have plates with only numbers- public buses started with 10-0001 in all provinces, here in BKK they have now reached 16-6xxx, but most other provinces have far fewer.
These provincial nrs are a bit similar to what FRance has for its departements-but there they do it alfabetically and here in TH its geografically. Thus BKK is 01 and there are clusters for central-east-northeast(=Isan)-north and south. There are some gaps at the end of a series for 1 region to allow for new nrs for those splitoff new ones.
There is also a national line system for all interurban buses based on this. It started with lines 1-99 which all fanned out from BKK (48 to Pattaya, 18 to ChMai etc.), then the 1xx series is for lines wholly In central but more as 1 province, 2xx for wholly in north etc.-untill 998, 999 means a very high luxury VIP type of bus and is not a line nr.
Lines IN a province but in more as 1 amphoe get 4 digit nrs. 1631 is in Cholburi and runs from that city along Patters to Sattaheep.
Lines IN 1 amphoe get 5 digit nrs and the first 2 are those of the province-hence all Patters ´baht buses´ have nrs as 23.xxx
These are just the basics, but TiTs thus there are many exceptions and errors, but this is the basics how it should work. This is unique in the world now-only the old DDR had such a system but thats completely forgotten and deleted. But thus you can even about guess where a bus runs to by seeing its big nr on the side. All together totally useless superfluous for most/all of you, but just to show that there is indeed someone somewhere in TH in some govmt office who does think and plans. If they could just also do that for more important things.................
The BMTA citybus here in BKK and also the 100s of red songhthaews are completely out of this system as its done by the BMA and not the govmt BoKoSo. ONce they have tried to renumber it into a kind of logical system that would indicate to where it runs and what type of bus (by numbers and letters) but this was so utter confusing that they stopped it after too many protest But they try again for brandnew lines like from Vict.Monument via new motorway to Bang Phlee or Mochit-SalaYa /new Mahidol Uni.

On a recent trip (Thong Pha Phum in Kanchanburi province) I met three Thai geologists who had a stack of maps These where high-quality 1:50.000 maps and they had comments written in them. Thus I have experimental proof that there are four Thai who can read maps (the three geologists and the person who made the map), and can assume that the dark figure is much higher.

As a counterexample, a friend of mine recently got a globe as a gift. To test him, I asked him to point out Thailand on the the globe. He worked his way all around the globe (arbitrarily jumping from one place to another and reading the country name to me) and after 5 minutes, he found Malaysia, and when I realized he is not aware that Thailand borders somewhere on Malaysia, I gave up and said goodbye and left. You could blame alcohol, he was a bit drunk.

Thais can’t do maps. They cannot draw a map. They can’t read maps, and they don’t understand maps. Just ask your latest off to show you where he comes from on Google Maps or something similar.
Then look at any Thai website that tries to map out an area. Totally incomprehensible.
They can’t give or understand directions. They have no comprehension of where anywhere is!
It’s no wonder that when you try to google an area (like Boyztown or Jomtien) thee is nothing there...apart from Farang diagrams!