95 Fun Facts About Thailand

The 46-metre gold-covered Buddha at Bangkok's Wat Pho is shown in which pose?

Reclining Buddhas show him at the moment of passing into nirvana; Wat Pho's lies 46 metres long, with mother-of-pearl pictures of his auspicious signs inlaid in the soles of its feet.

Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia never to have been what?

Thailand was never colonised by a European power: its 19th-century kings ceded outlying territory to the neighbouring colonial empires and kept the heartland as an independent buffer state.

Which of these countries meets Thailand only at sea, across the Gulf of Thailand?

Vietnam faces Thailand across the Gulf of Thailand, but Laos and Cambodia lie between the two on land, so their only shared boundary is at sea.

Thais call Bangkok 'Krung Thep', which means what?

City of angels begins a ceremonial name of 168 letters, listed by Guinness as the world's longest place name; foreigners simply kept using Bangkok, the name of the older riverside settlement.

Rama I, who made Bangkok the capital in 1782, founded which dynasty that still reigns in Thailand?

Chakri was the title of the general who took the throne as Rama I when King Taksin fell; he moved the court to Bangkok, and every king since, down to Vajiralongkorn, has come from his house.

Siam's 1932 revolution, led by the People's Party, brought an end to what?

Absolute monarchy ended on 24 June 1932 when a small group of army officers and civil servants seized Bangkok; King Prajadhipok accepted a constitution rather than fight, then abdicated in 1935.

Which Thai New Year festival, held in mid-April, is famous for its nationwide water fights?

Songkran starts on 13 April and runs for three days; the street water fights grew out of gently pouring water over Buddha images and the hands of elders as a New Year blessing.

Muay Thai is nicknamed the 'Art of Eight Limbs' because it uses fists, elbows, knees and what else?

Muay Thai's eight limbs are the two fists, two elbows, two knees and two shins; fighters condition their shins to kick and block, making the shin strike the sport's signature weapon.

Which Thai curry topped CNN's 2011 list of the world's 50 most delicious foods?

Massaman curry was CNN's pick for number one, but when 35,000 readers then voted it slipped to tenth and Indonesia's rendang came first.

Which three aromatics are the signature base of tom yum soup?

Lemongrass, galangal and kaffir lime leaves are bruised and simmered in the broth to give tom yum its citrus-and-ginger aroma; they stay in the bowl but are not eaten.

Thailand's beloved dessert of glutinous rice, fresh fruit and coconut milk is made with which fruit?

Mango sticky rice (khao niao mamuang) pairs ripe mango with glutinous rice soaked in sweetened coconut milk; Thais eat it most in April and May, when the mango season peaks.

Which fruit is banned on much of Bangkok's public transport?

Durian's sulphurous smell can linger for days, so the spiky 'king of fruits' is kept off Bangkok's metro and out of many Southeast Asian hotels.

More than nine in ten Thais follow which branch of Buddhism?

Theravada is the school Thailand shares with Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia; its teachings reached final written form in the Pali language in Sri Lanka, not in India where the Buddha taught.

The traditional Thai greeting, a slight bow with palms pressed together, is called what?

The wai, palms pressed together at chest, chin or brow with a slight bow, is Thailand's everyday greeting and thanks; the higher the hands are held, the more respect is shown.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who reigned for 70 years, was born in which country?

Bhumibol was born in the United States on 5 December 1927, at Cambridge Hospital (now Mount Auburn) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while his father Prince Mahidol studied public health at Harvard.

When King Bhumibol died in 2016, who became the world's longest-reigning living monarch?

Elizabeth II, on the throne since 1952, inherited the record when Bhumibol died on 13 October 2016; she went on to pass his 70 years and 126 days, reigning for 70 years and 214 days.

King Chulalongkorn (Rama V), who modernised Siam, is best remembered for abolishing what?

Slavery was wound down over three decades so that owners and the freed could adjust: an 1874 law freed slaves born since his accession once they turned 21, and a final act ended it in 1905.

'The King and I' retells the story of Anna Leonowens, who taught which Siamese king's children?

Mongkut hired Anna Leonowens in 1862 to teach his wives and children; Thailand banned the Rodgers and Hammerstein film as disrespectful to him, and did the same to the 1999 remake.

Which Thai kingdom, a power for four centuries, was destroyed by a Burmese army in 1767 after a long siege?

Ayutthaya was burned in 1767 and its libraries and royal archives were lost; the general Taksin, who had slipped out of the besieged city, raised an army and drove the invaders out.

Which kingdom, established in 1238, is traditionally called 'the first Thai kingdom'?

Sukhothai arose when Thai chiefs broke free of their overlords in the 13th century; Thais remember it as the cradle of their civilisation, and their alphabet is traditionally traced to its court.

Chiang Mai, whose name means 'new city', was founded in 1296 as the capital of which northern kingdom?

Lan Na's King Mangrai built Chiang Mai in 1296 after floods swamped Wiang Kum Kam, the capital he had built for himself nearby.

Phuket, Thailand's largest island, originally built its wealth on rubber and which mineral?

Tin mining, worked largely by Chinese migrant labour from the 19th century, made Phuket rich long before tourism; European sailors charted the island as Junk Ceylon.

Which Thai cove, seen in the film 'The Beach', was closed from 2018 to 2022?

Maya Bay, on Ko Phi Phi Leh, was drawing up to 6,000 visitors a day and had lost most of its coral; within months of the closure, blacktip reef sharks were back in the shallows.

Thailand's baht began as a unit of weight still used to sell what?

Gold in Thailand is priced by the baht, a weight of about 15 grams; the currency began as that weight of silver, cast as curled 'bullet coins' until flat coins replaced them in 1860.

What name do Thais give the three-wheeled motor taxis that weave through Bangkok traffic?

Tuk-tuk taxis descend from small three-wheeled delivery trucks imported from Japan; after Japan phased the type out in the 1960s, Thai workshops kept building them and gave them their open-sided look.

Before 1917, Thailand's flag showed a white elephant on a field of which colour?

Red was the whole field behind the white elephant; the story goes that King Vajiravudh saw one flying upside down during a flood and ordered a striped flag that could not be hung wrongly, adopted on 28 September 1917.

Which Thai temple on the west bank of the Chao Phraya is named after a Hindu god of the dawn?

Wat Arun's central spire glitters with broken Chinese porcelain that reached Bangkok as ballast in trading ships; its name honours Aruna, charioteer of the Hindu sun god Surya.

Thailand's most sacred image, the Emerald Buddha, is actually carved from what?

Jade or jasper, not emerald, forms the 66-centimetre figure; by tradition it came to light in 1434, when lightning cracked a chedi in the north and stucco flaked from the statue hidden inside.

On the full-moon night of Loy Krathong, what do Thais do?

Float candle-lit baskets, or krathong: set adrift on the full moon of the 12th lunar month, they are meant to carry bad luck away, and many are now made of bread so that fish can eat what is left.

Krating Daeng, the Thai energy drink that inspired Red Bull, is named after which animal?

Chaleo Yoovidhya launched it in 1976 for rural labourers, and its logo shows two red gaurs charging at each other.

Chang and Eng Bunker, the conjoined brothers from Siam, settled in North Carolina and married a pair of what?

Sisters Adelaide and Sarah Yates married the brothers on the same day in 1843; the twins became farmers and American citizens, kept two households and raised more than twenty children between them.

Which president received the first documented Siamese cat to reach America, in 1878?

Rutherford B. Hayes's family was sent the cat, named Siam, from Bangkok through the American consul there; no earlier Siamese cat is recorded on American soil.

The Death Railway, built by forced labour for the Japanese in World War II, linked Thailand with where?

The railway ran 415 km from Ban Pong in Thailand to Thanbyuzayat in Burma, built in 1942-43; an estimated 90,000 Asian labourers and about 12,000 Allied prisoners died on it.

The real bridge on the River Kwai, built by prisoners of war, stands in which Thai town?

Kanchanaburi's bridge actually spanned the Mae Klong; after the 1957 film made it famous, that stretch of river was renamed the Khwae Yai in the 1960s to fit the story.

The Full Moon Party, called the world's largest beach rave, takes place on which Thai island?

Ko Pha-ngan's Full Moon Party began at Haad Rin beach around 1985 as a small travellers' gathering and grew into a monthly rave drawing up to 30,000 people to the sand.

Which Bangkok complex housed Siam's royal court and government from 1782 until 1925?

The Grand Palace rose in 1782 when Rama I moved his capital to the river's east bank for its stronger position; later kings moved out to newer residences, and it now serves for royal ceremonies.

Three times a year, as the seasons turn, Thailand's king performs what duty for the Emerald Buddha?

Changes its golden robes: the statue has three jewelled costumes, for the hot, rainy and cool seasons, the first two made for Rama I, and the king himself swaps them as each season begins.

Thailand has sent athletes to every Summer Olympics since 1952 except which boycotted Games?

Moscow 1980 is the only gap: Thailand joined the American-led boycott, and it has been at every other Summer Games since its debut in Helsinki.

Which town across the river from modern Bangkok did King Taksin make his capital in 1767?

Thonburi was a fortress town on the river's west bank; Taksin ruled from it for fifteen years until he was deposed in 1782, when his successor moved the court to the opposite shore.

Thailand was a founding member of which regional bloc?

ASEAN was born in Thailand: after informal talks at the beach resort of Bang Saen, the foreign ministers of five countries signed its founding declaration in Bangkok on 8 August 1967.

Ban Chiang, a prehistoric village site in northeast Thailand, is famous for red-painted pottery and early tools of which metal?

Bronze from Ban Chiang's graves was first dated to before 3400 BCE, which would have made it the oldest in the world; later digs moved the dates to somewhere between 2000 and 1000 BCE.

What is Thailand's highest peak, rising 2,565 metres in Chiang Mai province?

Doi Inthanon is named after Inthawichayanon, one of the last rulers of Chiang Mai, who worked to protect the northern forests and whose remains were placed on the mountain.

Phuket lies in which sea?

The Andaman Sea is an arm of the Indian Ocean, while Thailand's other shore, on the Gulf of Thailand, opens towards the Pacific, so the country's two coasts face different oceans.

Which noodle dish is wartime leader Phibun credited with promoting?

Pad thai is usually traced to the Second World War, when rice ran short and Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram, the leader who renamed Siam as Thailand, urged people to eat noodles.

Which group's secret wartime work with the Allies helped spare Thailand defeated-nation status?

The Free Thai Movement began when ambassador Seni Pramoj refused to hand Washington the 1942 declaration of war; the Americans never declared war in return, and he recruited Thai students for secret missions home.

Which two countries agreed in 1896 to guarantee the independence of Siam's Chao Phraya valley?

Britain and France struck the deal three years after French gunboats blockaded Bangkok and forced Siam to give up Laos; it left the kingdom's heartland free between their two empires.

In 2019, a record year of nearly 40 million arrivals, which country sent Thailand the most tourists?

China sent about 11 million visitors in 2019, more than a quarter of the total; after the pandemic its numbers fell by two-thirds, and in 2023 Malaysia took over as Thailand's biggest market.

Which general led the junta that ruled Thailand from the 2014 coup until 2019?

Prayut Chan-o-cha, then army chief, seized power on 22 May 2014 and stayed on as prime minister until 2023; his weekly television address, 'Returning Happiness to the People', pushed the evening's soap operas back by about an hour.

In 2018, a boys' football team was rescued from a flooded cave in which Thai province?

Tham Luang cave lies in Chiang Rai province's Mae Sai district; British divers John Volanthen and Rick Stanton found the 13 alive on 2 July 2018, nine days after they entered, on a ledge deep inside the flooded system.

What was the name of the junior football team trapped in Tham Luang cave in 2018?

The Wild Boars (Moo Pa) were 12 boys aged 11 to 16 and their adult assistant coach; all 13 were sedated, fitted with masks and dived out between 8 and 10 July 2018.

Sepak takraw, Thailand's kick-volleyball game, uses a ball traditionally woven from what?

The traditional sepak takraw ball is hand-woven from strips of rattan into a hollow sphere with 12 holes and 20 intersections; synthetic balls have replaced it in international competition, which the Asian Games added in 1990.

In 2019 Thailand officially named which creature its national aquatic animal?

The Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens) was declared the national aquatic animal by the cabinet in February 2019; it gulps air through a labyrinth organ and so survives in stagnant paddy water.

Thailand's national anthem is played in public at 8 am and at what other time daily?

The anthem sounds at 8 am and 6 pm, when the flag is raised and lowered, and people pause in stations, parks and schools until it ends; the twice-daily broadcast accompanies the flag ceremony.

Pattaya went from fishing village to resort when servicemen from which war came on leave?

The Vietnam War put American servicemen at bases across Thailand, the nearest a B-52 airfield at U-Tapao just down the coast; the hotels and bars built for their leave turned the fishing village into a resort city.

Thai green curry owes its colour mainly to which ingredient?

Chilies, fresh green ones pounded into the paste, give the curry its colour; in the Thai name, kaeng khiao wan, 'wan' means sweet but describes the shade of green, not the taste.

Panipak Wongpattanakit won Olympic gold at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 in which sport?

Panipak Wongpattanakit took taekwondo gold in the women's 49 kg class at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, after a bronze on her Olympic debut in Rio, becoming the first Thai athlete to win two Olympic golds.

Queen Sirikit's birthday, 12 August, is marked nationally in Thailand as what?

Mother's Day falls on Queen Sirikit's birthday, just as Father's Day has stayed on King Bhumibol's birthday, 5 December, since his death in 2016.

Bangkok's Chatuchak, with more than 15,000 stalls, is billed as the world's largest what?

Weekend market is its own boast: more than 15,000 stalls on 35 acres draw over 200,000 shoppers each weekend, and it began on Sanam Luang, the royal field in the old city, before moving north.

King Bhumibol was a keen jazz musician, best known for playing which instrument?

Bhumibol played the saxophone, taking it up around 1942 after classical lessons in Switzerland; he jammed with Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton and composed dozens of jazz tunes, including 'Candlelight Blues'.

Ousted Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra bought which English football club in 2007?

Thaksin Shinawatra bought Manchester City in 2007, a year after the coup that removed him from office, and sold it in September 2008 to investors from Abu Dhabi, whose money turned the club into champions.

Who became Thailand's first female prime minister in 2011?

Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin's younger sister, took office in August 2011 after Pheu Thai's election win and governed until the Constitutional Court removed her on 7 May 2014, two weeks before the coup.

Because so many people lived on its canals, 19th-century Bangkok was nicknamed what?

Nineteenth-century visitors called Bangkok the Venice of the East because most residents lived along or on its khlongs; many canals were later filled to make roads, and groundwater pumping has left the city sinking.

At Maeklong's Talat Rom Hup, vendors fold back their awnings daily to let what pass?

A train on the Maeklong line runs straight through the market several times a day, so vendors fold back awnings and slide trays off the rails as it passes; Talat Rom Hup means 'umbrella pulldown market'.

Kitti's hog-nosed bat, found in western Thailand, holds what record?

World's smallest bat, about the size of a bumblebee: Thai zoologist Kitti Thonglongya found it in the 1970s but died before he could describe it, so his British colleague John Hill named the species after him.

Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport, opened in 2006, has a Sanskrit name meaning what?

Suvarnabhumi, Sanskrit for 'land of gold', was the name King Bhumibol gave the airport, replacing the site's working title of Nong Nguhao ('cobra swamp'); it opened on 28 September 2006.

Green papaya salad (som tam), eaten all over Thailand, is thought to be whose creation?

Its Lao name is tam mak hoong; in Thailand it is most at home in the northeast, where most people are ethnically Lao.

Thailand's first Olympic gold, at Atlanta 1996, came in which sport?

Somluck Kamsing won the featherweight boxing title at Atlanta 1996, Thailand's first Olympic gold; the country had competed since Helsinki 1952, and every earlier Thai medal had come in boxing too.

Thailand's 2011 floods caused a year-long global shortage of which computer component?

Hard disk drives ran short because floodwater shut the Thai factories of Western Digital and its suppliers; world output was forecast to fall by up to 30% that quarter, and the shortage lasted through 2012.

Established in 1962, which was Thailand's first national park?

Khao Yai, gazetted on 18 September 1962 after lobbying by conservationist Boonsong Lekagul, was Thailand's first national park; it joined UNESCO's World Heritage list in 2005 as part of the Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai Forest Complex.

Wat Pho in Bangkok is regarded as the birthplace of which practice?

Thai massage was set in stone at Wat Pho: Rama III had medical and massage diagrams inscribed on its walls in the 1830s, making the temple a public school of medicine, and a massage school opened there in 1955.

Thailand's Buddhist Era counts its years from which event?

The Buddha's death starts the count; Thai reckoning puts the era 543 years ahead of the Western one, so the year 2000 was 2543 in Thailand.

Bangkok's Erawan Shrine, built in 1956 to undo a hotel's bad karma, honours which god?

Brahma (Phra Phrom) sits four-faced and gilded in the shrine, put up in 1956 after an astrologer blamed the hotel's building mishaps on an ill-chosen foundation date; worshippers hire dance troupes when prayers are answered.

Khao Phing Kan, Thailand's 'James Bond Island', appeared in which Roger Moore Bond film?

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) made Khao Phing Kan the lair of Scaramanga, played by Christopher Lee; the little-visited island became such a draw that boats have been kept back from its limestone needle since 1998.

Which Thai resort area was among the places worst hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami?

Khao Lak, a low-lying resort strip north of Phuket, lost about 4,000 people, most of Thailand's dead; the waves carried a police patrol boat more than a kilometre inland.

Thais eat most rice dishes with a fork and which other utensil?

A spoon does most of the work at a Thai table: the fork in the left hand only pushes food onto it, and chopsticks are kept for Chinese-style noodle soups.

Khao Sok National Park in southern Thailand is best known for which giant flower?

Rafflesia kerrii is a parasitic plant whose red bloom, half a metre or more across, reeks of rotting meat to draw the flies that pollinate it.

American Jim Thompson, who revived Thailand's silk industry, vanished in 1967 where?

Jim Thompson vanished in March 1967 while on holiday in Malaysia's Cameron Highlands, and no trace of him was ever found; the former OSS officer was declared dead in 1974.

Isan, Thailand's northeastern region, sits on which plateau?

The Khorat Plateau tilts gently towards the east, so its main river, the Mun, drains into the Mekong and not south to the Gulf of Thailand; hills wall it off from the central plain.

The spot where Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet is known by what name?

The Golden Triangle got its name from an American official at a 1971 press conference on opium; the Thai corner, where the Ruak joins the Mekong, now offers opium museums and no poppy fields.

Paradorn Srichaphan became a Thai hero in 2003 as the first Asian man ranked in the world top 10 of which sport?

Tennis had never had a man from Asia in the ATP top 10 until Paradorn reached No. 9 in May 2003, a year after he knocked former champion Andre Agassi out of Wimbledon in straight sets.

Who in 2016 became the first Thai golfer to win on the LPGA Tour?

Ariya Jutanugarn had let a first win slip at 17, losing a two-shot lead on the last hole in Thailand in 2013; three years on she won the Yokohama Tire LPGA Classic, then a major that July, and was world number one by 2017.

Which province's elephant round-up, held each November, took its modern form in the 1960s?

Surin's Elephant Round-up grew out of the Kuy people's old trade of catching and training wild elephants; when that work dried up in the 1960s, the mahouts turned their skills into a November show.

Phuket's Vegetarian Festival, known for ritual piercing, honours which Taoist deities?

The Nine Emperor Gods are welcomed for nine days at the start of the ninth Chinese lunar month; Phuket's Chinese community honours them by giving up meat, which is how the festival got its 'vegetarian' name.

At 314 m, which 'pixelated' Bangkok tower was Thailand's tallest from 2016 to 2018?

King Power MahaNakhon took its name in 2018, when the duty-free group King Power bought the tower's hotel, shops and observation deck from its developer; a riverside tower at ICONSIAM took its height record that same year.

Hua Hin's royal summer palace, Klai Kangwon, has a name that means what?

Far from worries proved a hollow name: King Prajadhipok, who built the seaside palace, was staying there in June 1932 when news arrived of the coup against him in Bangkok.

Thought extinct in the wild by 1992, the Siamese crocodile was rediscovered in 2000 where?

Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains held the survivors: a Fauna & Flora International survey with Cambodian foresters confirmed wild Siamese crocodiles there in 2000, and the species remains critically endangered.

Before its 1997 float, Thailand's baht was pegged mainly to which currency?

The US dollar peg, at about 25 baht, broke on 2 July 1997; within six months the baht had sunk to around 57 to the dollar, and the panic spread across Asia.

Thailand's Phanom Rung, a sanctuary to Shiva, was built by which empire?

The Khmer Empire, builder of Angkor, raised Phanom Rung between the 10th and 13th centuries on the rim of an extinct volcano, when its rule reached deep into what is now Thailand.

Wat Rong Khun, artist Chalermchai Kositpipat's shrine in northern Thailand, is better known by what name?

The White Temple is Chalermchai's own creation and is not due to be finished until about 2070; its murals slip Superman and other film heroes in among the Buddhist imagery.

A 293 kg fish netted in northern Thailand in 2005, then the largest freshwater fish on record, was a giant what?

Catfish held the record until 2022, when a still heavier giant freshwater stingray was caught downstream in the same river, the Mekong; the Mekong giant catfish itself is now critically endangered.

A canal across Thailand's Kra Isthmus would let ships bypass which strait?

The Strait of Malacca route round the Malay Peninsula is what a Kra canal would cut out; a French engineer first surveyed the idea for King Narai of Siam in 1677.

Dancers at the Phi Ta Khon festival in Thailand's Loei province wear huge painted masks to play what?

Ghosts are said to have joined the party when a prince, the Buddha in an earlier life, came home from a long journey, so villagers in Dan Sai parade in masks topped with sticky-rice steamers.

Krung Thep Aphiwat station took over Bangkok's long-distance trains in 2023 from which historic terminus?

Hua Lamphong, opened in 1916 with an Italian-designed arched hall, was due to close and become a museum; instead it has kept its local and commuter trains since long-distance services moved out in January 2023.

Which stone, hailed as the oldest Thai writing, made UNESCO's Memory of the World in 2003?

The Ram Khamhaeng Inscription, a four-sided stone pillar dated 1292 and brought to Bangkok in 1833, is usually cited as the first appearance of Thai script, though some scholars question its authenticity; UNESCO registered it in 2003.

By long custom, many young Thai men spend a few weeks or months living as what?

Monks for a season: young men traditionally ordain for one three-month rains retreat, and male civil servants who did so were given the time as paid leave.