Oswulf

I've decided that I'd like to touch type in Thai, can anyone tell me whether the home position for Thai is the same as for English (i.e. with forefingers on F/Dor Dek and J/Mai Eek and two keys between the forefingers)? This seems to me awkward, with the little finger of the right hand having to do too much work.

Could the home position be F/Dor Dek and K/Sara Aa, with three keys between the forefingers? And if so, would the left hand would cover one of the three keys between, and the right hand, two. And on the bottom row, would the right hand come back in, with the forefinger over Thor Thahaan, rather than moving to Mor Maa?

(The above is all assuming a Kedmanee layout.)

UK and Thailand have a double taxation agreement so I won't be taxed on pernsion income twice

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Technically this is incorrect. The current agreement between the UK and Thailand only covers government pensions. It doesn't cover state or personal persions.

Source: HM Revenue & Customs

Because the Thai government hasn't bothered double-taxing personal pensions to date doesn't mean that they won't in the future. (Remember, it's Thai Rak Thai - not Thai Rak Farang.) And for most people, to have two chunks of tax taken out of their pensions could be ... unfortunate.

I'd suggest Avis. I've used them 3 times now, and been very happy each time. You can book on-line at Avis Thailand.

The only negative is that the quoted prices don't include full insurance. If you want this, you pay the extra when you pick up the car. (To be precise, you only give your credit card details when you pick up the car, so you pay nothing up front. Then they encourage you to take out extra insurance.)

I'd recommend picking the car up at the airport. It avoids the horrendous driving in Bangkok itself.

Can anyone give me a number of a reputable Taxi/mini-bus firm in Ayuttaya. Thanks in advance.

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There are no taxi firms in Ayutthaya; the few taxis I see on the streets are all from Bangkok.

I have seen taxis for hire at Bang Pa-in (a few kilometres away), though.

There's a small collection of Thai fonts at OpenTLE, including JS Wansika, which is an italic font with long flourishes, and PS Pimdeed, which is a "dirty typewriter" font.

linux.thai.net has a few different ones, including Purisa, which is a handwritten style font. Despite the site's name, these fonts work with Microsoft Windows.

Worthy of special mention is David McCreedy's Gallery of Unicode Fonts which has two pages of image samples of Thai fonts as graphics, so you can see what the font looks like before installing it, as well as links to from where you can download the font concerned.

As far as Indonesia is concerned, it's worth remembering the situation before the Asian financial crisis:

Banks offered USD deposit accounts to their customers. The IDR crashed. The banks revealed that they didn't actually hold their customers' money in USD and simply gave customers back the same amount they would have got if they'd had an IDR account. In other words, a lot of people lost a lot of money through the banks' dishonesty/incompetence/whatever.

Thanks to a previous posting (now disappeared - but thanks, anyway) I've managed to track down a script with big flourishes font, JS Wansika. It's available here (opentle.org).

Just the Indian and the sans serif to track down now.

There's an excellent paper on the subject of Thai fonts by Doug Cooper available at http://seasrc.th.net/paper/tellthai.zip However, the file inside the zip file is in PostScript format, which is a real pain for PC users. However, it includes images of a range of fonts, with sound advice on how to interpret them.

There are some here. Don't know how fancy they are though.

http://www.thaiphrasebook.com/books/040.php

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Unfortunately, these are all "standard" fonts.

An example of a "modern" font is JS Thanaporn.

An "Indian-style" font is JS Chanok. (Some people call this a "craft style" font.)

JS Sirium is a "font with long tails".

So, does anyone knows where I can get similar fonts for free? Thanks.

Like most people learning to read Thai, I'm often completely thrown by some of the typefaces used. I've found plenty of free downloadable standard fonts, but have completely drawn a blank with the following types:

(1) the type without loops, where letters are radically simplified (I think of it as "sans serif")

(2) the type based upon Indian-style letters, very angular, and written as if with a broad-nibbed pen (often used for menus in restaurants)

(3) the script type, with big flourishes (often used for restaurant name signs)

Does anyone know where I can download (for free) these types of fonts (for PC)?

All you need to do is click on "Start", then "Help" and search for "install complex script". Then follow the instructions (carefully).

This will let you display Thai and type in Thai. The only thing you won't have is Thai spell checking. For that, the easiest thing to do is buy a Thai Microsoft Office CD.

On reflection, the concept of breaking Thai words into syllables corresponding with the spoken language is simply not possible.

There are plenty of Thai words (several hundred) where individual letters are "double function", such as ผลไม้ (phǒnlamáay - fruit). This is written with two syllables, but pronounced with three.

There are also other words for which the vowel elements of the diphthong wrap around the first syllable, such as เขมือบ (kha mʉ̀ʉap - swallow) which can't so be split.

If you're using Microsoft Windows, the obvious way to do this is to use the built-in Uniscribe capabilities. For API details see:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/develo...e/uniscribe.htm

Thank you, Bambi. That's a terrrific help.

Oswulf

I'm trying to translate a restaurant menu for a friend and have got stuck on three items. Can anyone help, please? The items are:

ปลากระนง (some kind of fish)

ผักบุ้งไฟแดง (Morning glory red light?)

ผัดกระเพราไข่เยี่ยวม้า

Thanks.

So, 824 card holders. Advertising costs 149 million Baht. Advertising cost per subscriber attracted, 180,000 Baht! And they say that advertising pays.

Bizarrely, BBC Prime and the two new movie channels included in the Platinum package are included in the Silver package (but not the Gold). As a Gold subscriber, I feel cheated. Perhaps I should downgrade.

I've been told that TOTonline provides "free" dial-up Internet access. You pay the 3 Baht 'phone connection fee, and that's all (though you're booted off after 2 hours). So, does anyone know how I can get a UserID and password? I can't make any sense of TOTonline's website. http://www.totonline.net/ (it's all in Thai, and there's no obvious "signup" link).

Sorry to appear completely clueless, but the TM.47 receipt - that's the small white card with "Notice" across the top that gives the date by which you must do your 90 day reporting (looks nothing like the TM.47) - right?

I'm attempting to perform my first 90 day reporting (TM.47) by post. The helpful instructions from the Immigration Bureau state that (amongst other things) one must provide a "photocopy of your current visa (last visa) on your passport". Does this mean the blue and white piece of paper that was stuck in my passport by an embassy overseas? Or does it mean the entry stamp when I entered Thailand/the subsequent stamp when my permission to stay was extended?

And are there any pitfalls of reporting by post that I should be aware of?

Just wondered where this Thaiglish expression originates from

This expression isn't only found in Thailand. I've encountered it both in Vietnam and in India. I suspect that it's more of a backpacker abuse of English (attempting to speak in pidgin English for the "benefit" of the local people), which has been picked up by locals and promulgated.

I'm just starting to learn to read Thai, and textbooks tell me that syllables ending in a short vowel sound are dead and have a tone according to the class of the initial consonant - Low/Medium/High consonants resulting in High, Low and Low tones respectively.

Why, then, are words such as ใน ดํา and เอา all pronounced with a mid tone? As is the second syllable of อะไร.