Thais And Maps

[slapout]

My all time favorite was when wife giving directions as per friends, etc, which include markers such as Wat, market, etc, looks at you with those big brown eyes and says "maybe we should have turned back there" (2 to 300 meter past potential turn) Me, as I do bootlegger u turn, Why didn't you tell me before? Wife' you drive too fast and cannot talk that fast.

[PhilHarries]

Thought you are more down to earth, everything you buy can/should be investigated pre the purchase.

BTW you need a map to Ayutthaya?

Agreed I, but unfortunately the map was sealed up in polythene so I couldn't take a look. It was only a hundred Baht or so so I wasn't going to get huffy over it.

Agreed II, but this was back in the early nineties and I wanted to avoid Bangkok and the expressway. Nowadays travel from Pattaya upcountry is a walk in the park by comparison. I went the following week and just gritted my teeth and hit the expressway and breezed it, no map.

[PhilHarries]

not sure about that, in the uk, everything is judged by pubs. "when you get to the rose and crown turn left, keep going till you get to the queen vic"

Yeah, problem is that with the rate at which they're closing down pubs in the UK we'll be bu66ered.

But don't knock the Thais without an inward glance at ourselves. I think one of the best ways to start an argument between a bunch of blokes, certainly in the UK, is to ask them to recommend a good route to drive someplace.

[Cuban]

...but she has no interest.

Why should she try to learn there is no motivation.

I tried hard to teach my wife map reading in Thailand, starting simple with look at the road sign naming towns we drove throught and put your finger on the map - look at the river - see blue line on map etc. No great interest as she spoke Thai and asked if in a strange part of the country, however...

When I took her to Hong Kong and later Singapore, pointing our our hotel and then where the fancy clothes shops were on the simple tourist maps gave her some motivation to understand the landmarks and symbols. I was proud of how well she did, although more practice with maps of different scales would be useful.

Ever asked a Thai for directions?,give it a try,if they don't know (loss of face),they will direct you anywhere,both thai and farang alike.PST.

Indeed - go away from here and take your problem with you.

I asked for directions once in another country, my landmark I was aiming for was a well known shop, at 10pm on a Friday night the person I had stopped to asked simple said, "It's shut." - Oh ! I'll go home then.

[sgunn65]

I have a map in front of me that shows the River Kwae ending at the border of Kanchanburi province. Right on the border!!! Is there a huge hole there??

Before I got a GPS I must have bought a dozen maps, none of which were accurate.

[Soutpeel]

Prior to getting a GPS for the car and having learnt the hard way with Mrs Soutpeels directions ,my stock question to Mrs Soutpeel was as follows:

Are you sure you know where we are going ?.....Yes....How sure 100%, 50% 25% ?.....

If 100% we are ok...If 50% we where going generally in the right direction, but with a strong possiblity of getting lost at least once.....if 25% I knew she didn't have a clue.

The GPS improved things immensely until Mrs Soutpeel starting taking offence to the Thai female voice on the GPS and called it the "GPS b*tch" and saying "she" was wrong with her directions...LOL.

Mrs Soutpeel has a great sense of direction, but only if its related to where the shopping malls and the shops contained therein. Ask her where a particular shop is in just about any mall and Mrs Soutpeel will give you give you directions with an accuracy of 1 meter.. LOL

[markeewan]

Thought you are more down to earth, everything you buy can/should be investigated pre the purchase.

BTW you need a map to Ayutthaya?

Exactly what I was thinking regarding needing a map to go to Ayuattaya. Your comment made me smile.

[markeewan]

Prior to getting a GPS for the car and having learnt the hard way with Mrs Soutpeels directions ,my stock question to Mrs Soutpeel was as follows:

Are you sure you know where we are going ?.....Yes....How sure 100%, 50% 25% ?.....

If 100% we are ok...If 50% we where going generally in the right direction, but with a strong possiblity of getting lost at least once.....if 25% I knew she didn't have a clue.

The GPS improved things immensely until Mrs Soutpeel starting taking offence to the Thai female voice on the GPS and called it the "GPS b*tch" and saying "she" was wrong with her directions...LOL.

Mrs Soutpeel has a great sense of direction, but only if its related to where the shopping malls and the shops contained therein. Ask her where a particular shop is in just about any mall and Mrs Soutpeel will give you give you directions with an accuracy of 1 meter.. LOL

How is she at finding the car in the carpark after the shopping is complete?

[Tod Daniels]

This will top them all.

A thai friend of mine (who is actually uni-educated) was at my house looking at a paper map of the world I had laid out on the table.

She casually remarked how "unlucky" it was for the people in the countries which were located "close to the edge of the map". In the next breath she pointed out how far from the edge thailand was and how it was so much luckier for thais.

That one had me nearly in tears, and I couldn’t stop laughing, even when she got mad and went home.

[Soutpeel]

How is she at finding the car in the carpark after the shopping is complete?

She has that one sussed....if the "Central" chain....."VIP sticker" on the car so parks right outside the door in most cases, also believe she has used the valet parking, where availible, and she has a button on the car remote which sets the alarm off on the car, if she looses it, so would say her sucess rate of finding the car after shoooping is greater than 70%,

However....

one occasion she picked me up at swampy, parked the car and completely forgot were she parked it...resulted in a 2 hour hunt for the car involving a few security guards, a motorbike and THB 500....

[dudemeister]

I try to be prepared for the inevitable;

She (thinks) she knows better than the GPS and the road-maps. (Be ready for quite a few u-turns).

And, dont forget to top-up the tea-money drawer with 100 baht notes.

[KhunG]

I guess my wife, FIL and MIL aren't Thai. I've seen all of them use maps properly, in more than one country in my wife's case.

[PhilHarries]

Thought you are more down to earth, everything you buy can/should be investigated pre the purchase.

BTW you need a map to Ayutthaya?

Exactly what I was thinking regarding needing a map to go to Ayuattaya. Your comment made me smile.

Yeah right, you were obviously born with an inbuilt intimate knowledge of the layouts of every <deleted>' country on Earth. Jeez, life must be so boring for you as you always know exactly where you are and exactly where you are going.

There was a period of life before the internet and GPS when we had to stand on our own two feet and get on with it.

Your comment filled me with the urge to defecate.

[unclejunta]

I beg to differ, i have trained together with thai soldiers on every level and most of them are naturals when it comes to reading maps.....the special warfare chaps especially....we conducted multi nation joint exercise and the locals always comes out tops in 'topo'

[Meridian007]

I guess my wife, FIL and MIL aren't Thai. I've seen all of them use maps properly, in more than one country in my wife's case.

I agree, it's the same with my girlfriend. The only time we had a problem was with a gps, not a map, when we were leaving Paris by car. She depended on the GPS too much and couldn't see that its heuristics in finding us a route were flawed.

I'm a map and gps person myself, I prefer to compare both while navigating.

[MSingh]

education, education, education...

Simple but effective answer right there..

[IanForbes]

I remember meeting a pretty Thai lady in Pattaya who wanted to take me home to see her children in a place she called something that sounded like "Gandjedanapoly". She said it was about a 2 hour bus ride from Bangkok. Knowing that Bangkok was bordering on the ocean to the south and we were in Pattaya (about a 2 hour bus ride to the south east) I drew a big circle on my Thai map (with towns written in Thai) and figured it had to be within that circle. I then pointed to the map and asked where was her town. She looked all over the map with a dazed look in her eyes and I knew she didn't understand the concept.

So, I said I would let her take the lead and we would travel by bus. Of course, being Thai, she chose the cheapest bus that stops every few meters for what turned out to be the next 4 hours. I didn't have a clue WHERE we were going because the bus zig-zagged in all sorts of directions and stopped at every tiny village along the way. Eventually, we arrived at the northern bus terminal of Bangkok. From there we took a taxi to another terminal which I now believe was the old south west terminal, and from there we took another bus that wandered all over the place. After another 3 hours we arrived at a small Thai village just inside the Kanchanaburi province. For the sake of saving about 60 baht we spent an additional 4 hours bus travel. By the time we arrived at her village I knew we would have to spend a few nights. That gave me the first inkling that poor Thais don't have a clue when it comes to reading maps... even if they are written in Thai. Of course the place she called "Gandjedanapoly" turned out to be Kanchanaburi.

Of course, I'd probably get lost in Bangkok if I had to drive my own vehicle around the city. In the hazy smog it's hard to determine in which direction the sun is coming from. And, very few streets go in a straight line.

[F1fanatic]

Some month's ago, we were driving up north Id given my (Thai) wife the map. We were going to Uttaradit. I pointed out the different town's on route. All she had to tell me was the next town on the route. Simple, Left BKK. As I new the first bit know need to ask. After we got to Sing Buri, I said ok what's the next town??? Oh is Lop Buri. then Angthong. Cant be that as we have gone through them already. Yes it is Ive got the map, See!!! I looked over sure she had the map open, and on the right page. But if was up side down.

Its not quite as simple as posters are implying.

Generally women aren't 'spatially aware' according to scientific studies. Its true - we're not.

BUT, I was always good at giving directions (in a car) if I was given a map. Yes, the map would often be up side down, but that's because I needed to see the map pointing in the same direction as the car (if that makes sense).

It would also often be on its side - whatever it took to make sure the road we were following (on the map) was pointing in the same direction as the car.

Ask my ex - it may have looked stupid - but I always got us there!

You have a very good point in how you look at a map. That is how I look at my GPS. It points in the direction I'm traveling.

My daughter is good with maps and has a fantastic memory, but her mother was hopeless. My ex lost her car dozens of times in the big mall parking lots. A couple times she reported the car stolen to the police.

Precisely! It makes perfect sense to me to keep the map in the directions you're traveling, but my ex used to kill himself laughing.

Agree too about 'losing' your car...... I never think to remember where the car is parked until I'm looking for it . (Sorry - off topic I know)

[Crossy]

Last summer we drove from BKK to Chiang Rai, not a difficult drive but I planned the route and made myself a simple driving directions list.

Wifey, the friends we were visiting and her family, were amazed that the first time we called for directions we were actually within 100m of our destination (village had no intelligible street names or we would have found it all by ourselves), apparently even the locals get lost finding the place.

It seems that all the previous posts are 100% correct, but it's not just Thais, most Asian nations (and Italy) have similar issues, not helped by the appalling (compared with OS) maps.

[GungaDin]

Ever asked a Thai for directions?,give it a try,if they don't know (loss of face),they will direct you anywhere,both thai and farang alike.

PST.

Very true.

I'm a map perv from way back.... & a big fan of the UK O/S maps for more than 30 years.

Thai women have a fantastic memory for locations, maps are not necessary for them, even if they have only been there once before.

Give a map to a Thai the wrong way 'round, if he/she does not orientate the map in a few secs, you're dealing with a dud.

Try working this one out and then find it on Google maps with a GPS location.

I can find my way 'round any city, Sydney, London, Paris, Koln without a problem, but (in) Bangkok, I'm hopeless.

[sirineou]

Any generalizations about any, people are at the very least wrong.

[basjke]

try to ask a Thai for directions to a shop that you know is located within 500 meters from where he lives.If you are lucky that he knows about the place,which is very doubtful,you will end up in a very different place if you follow his directions.

[twofortheroad]

try to ask a Thai for directions to a shop that you know is located within 500 meters from where he lives.If you are lucky that he knows about the place,which is very doubtful,you will end up in a very different place if you follow his directions.

I went to the main PEA (electricity) office which is 500 metres from my house to ask for someone to come look at my metre. They asked for a map. You could practically see my house from the window so  I pointed out the window and said "Soi 2", but she still insisted on a map. It's great here.

I wonder how he'll make his way back to the office?

[djayz]

This one comes down to the schools. Only a select few students study geography, and the Thai teachers who teach geography, don't know it either.

Unfortunately I have to agree with you here... I was teaching English at a state / public school for a short time. Useless... the kids here have NO chance from day one... the education is useless, many of the teachers are useless and the school administration doesn't care. It is probably the main reason why most Thais can't read maps and their common knowledge isn't worth talking about either...

[edgarfriendly]

this is the reason for most of these generalisations too.

poor education, compounded with equal minded folks aching to say yea, thais bla bla bla.

ef

i love maps n map reading.

and u dont miss what u dont know.

[robblok]

education, education, education...

Not really i can still remember a Dutch show where people on a Holiday had to point out where they were on a world map. Or to even point their own country on that map. I have never laughed that much so its not just Thais there are enough stupid Dutch.. so i imagine its the same for every country.