Andys Real Guide to Thailand

Unlike westerners, Thai's do not live by their watches - most don't even wear one. Of the many differences in culture Time is probably the one that most perplexes, and frustrates Farang.

When a Thai arranges to meet you at, say, 5 o'clock, he doesn't mean exactly at that time. In fact he's thinking is that if he gets to you between 5 and 6 then he'll be on time. You can think of it as meaning "When the hour is 5", which is actually the literal translation of an hour (without minutes) in Thai.

Signs, timetables, etc, almost always use the 24 hour system in Arabic numerals, so that shouldn't be a problem. Sometimes you'll see something like "24:30" - clearly this ought to be written as "00:30", however the meaning is mercifully unambiguous.

Conversationally a 12 hour system is used with words that approximate to morning, afternoon, evening, but have notably different meanings. In Thai the terms morning, afternoon, and evening start at fixed hours, (06:00, 13:00, and 18:00 respectively) and are used with a number which is the offset from that base. Thus it can be seen that the Thai terms are not largely superflous as in English.

Extending the example above, if your Thai says he'll meet you at "5 evening time". Make sure he means 5pm (17:00) and not 11pm (23:00). The Thai "evening" starts at 6pm, so if he says "Ha tomb" ( Ha=five, tomb=evening) he means 11pm, and not 5.

Before I learnt to tell the time in Thai I used to twiddle the time on my watch to make sure we both understood the time agreed upon. Clearly analogue watches are considerably easier in this respect than digital ones....

Telling the time in Thai

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