Oh, and just realised, Sa Keaw is in Issan.

Ha ha. Are you sure?

Ditto Lamphun, there's a whole mass of Japanese owned clean engineering firms in Lamphun, Chiang Mai itself has relatively little industry although it is an agricultural hub and distribution centre.

Thank you for that. I never knew.

Look at the image I will attach to this forum message. I think it dates from 2005.

Does it surprise you? Can you explain the results.

Why are the top-ranked provinces so high, and why are the lower-ranked provinces so low?

No, it doesn't surprise, and yes it is easily explained. All Thai people are registered in certain provinces as living there. Many/most working age people in certain provinces do not actually live and work in the province they are registered in. Instead they work in a province like Rayong. Their economic contribution is counted in that province, at whatever factory or business they work in, but for the census they are counted in their home province. Hence they are dividing by the wrong number.

The average income in Rayong is not remotely close to $20,000 year. It's just that there are huge numbers of people from other provinces working there in factories, so the economic production of those people is counted there, but when they divide by the number of people, they are diving by only the number of people registered in Rayong and they are not counting the hundreds of thousands from other provinces that live and work there.

Similarly other provinces are having the contribution of their workers counted somewhere else, but they are still counting all those workers as living in that province even though their contribution isn't counted there. Additionally, for many provinces, the majority of economic activity is grey market and unrecorded. No one records all the small shops and restaurants, but a big factory is always recorded.

This is probably true. I think it's why Phuket, Surat Thani (Samui) and Songkhla (expat O&G workers) rank so high. All of these provinces generate higher than average wealth, but the wealth relies a lot on "extra-provincial" labour and the businesses themselves are (in many cases) subject to formal accounting practices.

But I think the disparity between top and bottom is still enormous.

I'm sure more than half of the posters here will place Sierra Leone somewhere in South America.

One of the Spice Islands? The PI?

Hang on, didn't Sierra Leone lose to Barcelona in the FA Cup?

Oh, and just realised, Sa Keaw is in Issan.

Really?

Oh, and just realised, Sa Keaw is in Issan.

Really?

Apparently not, they must have moved it, again.

I like that.

I can assure you, that most foreigners here know more about Thai geography AND history than middle and high school students.

Case in point. Last week, a student grabbed my arm and pulled me towards a map. He asked me where is England. We both look at the map in total awe. He is in awe because he asked a genuinely good question to his teacher.

My awe is that we are both looking at a map of Thailand and its neighbors.

When I told my friends back home that I will leave Thailand to work in Hong Kong, a lot of them were convinced that Hong Kong were in Japan.

I'm sure more than half of the posters here will place Sierra Leone somewhere in South America.

And if I give you a blank map of Europe, can you place Bucarest and Budapest in less than 15 seconds ?

Nope. I cannot. But I sure as hell know where all the continents are and who my freegin´ neighbors around my own country´s borders are!

Look at the image I will attach to this forum message. I think it dates from 2005.

Does it surprise you? Can you explain the results.

Why are the top-ranked provinces so high, and why are the lower-ranked provinces so low?

No, it doesn't surprise, and yes it is easily explained. All Thai people are registered in certain provinces as living there. Many/most working age people in certain provinces do not actually live and work in the province they are registered in. Instead they work in a province like Rayong. Their economic contribution is counted in that province, at whatever factory or business they work in, but for the census they are counted in their home province. Hence they are dividing by the wrong number.

The average income in Rayong is not remotely close to $20,000 year. It's just that there are huge numbers of people from other provinces working there in factories, so the economic production of those people is counted there, but when they divide by the number of people, they are diving by only the number of people registered in Rayong and they are not counting the hundreds of thousands from other provinces that live and work there.

Similarly other provinces are having the contribution of their workers counted somewhere else, but they are still counting all those workers as living in that province even though their contribution isn't counted there. Additionally, for many provinces, the majority of economic activity is grey market and unrecorded. No one records all the small shops and restaurants, but a big factory is always recorded.

It would be interesting to see a similar table where the wealth created was attributed to the region in which the labour responsible for creating it came from. Metropolitan Bangkok for example has a population of around 7 mill. but this is swelled to at least 12 mill. by transient and migratory workers from poorer rural areas. Ditto the tourist areas of Phuket are heavily reliant on resource drawn from all over the country but in particular from Issan. I would imagine that if the table were adjusted for those things (impossible I know) then it would show the poorer areas, Issan in particular, as being really quite wealthy, it's a bit like the PI GDP figures where the largest contributor comes from overseas ex-pats sending money home.