Have lived in various places in LOS for around one year now and have asked for directions several times.  The responses are always happily given and everbody helps. No language problem as I have been travelling with a Thai.  However..........  we have never received a correct answer.

In the words of Prof. Julius Sumner Miller (hope I spelt that OK).   --- "Why is it So??"

Does helpfulness overide truthfulness?

Why has no one ever said "I don't know"?

Is it a national conspiracy, or, are we all lost?

2 metre grass and 1 metre people?

they are not big on hand pointing when giving directions.i like it when they indicate where some place is by a raise of the eyebrows & a wave of the head in said direction.sometimes even a pursing of the lips aimed at a place,rather than hand pointing.

as my thai isnt good enough,i get the feeling that they many are very worried about messing up on speaking english,which can affect the directions.

Thai people are famous for not being able to locate their whereabouts according to geographic measurments. You'll get lots of different answers if you ask 10 people the same question

Just yesterday a friend of mine managed to get lost. He asked directions three times. The first two just nodded yes, smiled and waved him straight ahead. The third one frowned and pointed the way he had just come. She was right. They are just not good at giving directions for some reason. Even when my Thai wife is with me the directions are VERY seldom correct. I bought a GPS.

Why has no one ever said "I don't know"?

I think it's very hard for some people to say those three words. Even my g/f will answer a question with irrelevant information because she doesn't like to say "I don't know". It can be very frustrating.

If you can understand and speak "líeow sáai", "líeow kwăa", "dtrong bpai hâa gìlohmêt" etc, you should be able to coax directions out of people who know where you want to go. But finding those people can be quite hard.