How does car navigation works when you can’t type in Thai like e.g. assuming I'm in Bkk and I want to take a trip to Hat Nang Ram beach in Chonburi.
If you just type "Hat Nang Ram" will your navigation find it?

Also how does it work for addresses in a city where you would more or less interpret / compose the English name writing yourself

and you might not necessary catch it appropriately. Do you get good suggestions?

After many frustrating attempts I now use Google earth to get the map co-ordinates of the places I want to visit, then I feed them into my Tom Tom.

I started using my phone long ago (Google maps) and have no desire to go back to a GPS stand alone. In Thailand you often have to type in the province to get directions, Google maps makes suggestions, I can add places that I have found on my computer to my personal Google bookmarks folder and then navigate there any time.

I used a GPS for many years in Europe but find that they are almost worse than useless in Thailand.

Mine asks, city, street, type in English, no problem. Even works on post code.

Sygic, on the phone.

MOVED to Motoring forum

HERE works very well, too. It is free, there are maps for many countries (in SEA you get Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia) with frequent updates. It is based on the former Nokia Maps and runs on Android, Windows Phone, and soon to come iOS. Go to http://here.com to have a look.

I have Garmin and as I type in english it give me choices for name. It seem to work

I started using my phone long ago (Google maps) and have no desire to go back to a GPS stand alone. In Thailand you often have to type in the province to get directions, Google maps makes suggestions, I can add places that I have found on my computer to my personal Google bookmarks folder and then navigate there any time.

I used a GPS for many years in Europe but find that they are almost worse than useless in Thailand.

+1

Google Maps is the most accurate when giving street directions. Maps on Iphone is terrible! It does not know how to find my condo because the maps don't have my street, but they are on Google maps.

I have no idea why anyone would want to use a stand alone GPS to find anything in Thailand. There is no way the maps are as up to date as Google maps. Google Maps includes live traffic information as well.

Regarding your point about translation issues, Google maps brings up the suggestions based on names close to what you enter. Every navigation unit I have used makes you spell it exactly.

I type in the coordinates from Google maps into the Garmin system and it works perfectly. Just did a 2.5K km trip to Issan and never got lost once. Only one small mistake when it wanted me to take a no entry slip road but it was obvious and easily averted. In towns you are also given a list of sights, hotels and other facilities in the vicinity and you just click on the one you want to go to. I was surprised how simple it all is as usually I am adverse to such gadgetry

As others have said, use co-ordinates from Google Earth to pin point your destination.

Feed them in to your navigation system and you are good to go.

Been using this method in Thailand for the last 2 years with no problems.

Why use two systems? Seems simple enough to just use google maps for locating and mapping.

I have a Garmin Nuvi. It has numerous languages as a standard feature. Select YOUR language & away you go. Have now driven over 20,000k here in LOS & find it invaluable.

Just saying..... Mal.

Thx for the feedback

I went from Tom Tom (unit died) to Sygic after learning here that it's the same program - it was and I loved it ..... for about a year......when it updated it went to a more Google format - they always seem to update/download at the same time now....since the update the format is very difficult to navigate even if Thai script used - plain impossible at times and very frustrating - did not have this with Tom Tom/original Sygic app....honestly am now sorry I bought it and have been thinking about other option/app

I use google maps navigation on my phone. Works fine (generally) when typing in Thai locations in English.