Maps of Thailand and Isaan ...

[pong]

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.

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.

[pong]

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.

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.

[dinagam]

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

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

[pong]

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.

[christianpfc]

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.

[gerefan2]

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!