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Thailand is divided into changwat, provinces, and nearly every one of them is named after its own capital town. That is the single most useful fact about this map: a town name on a road sign is usually also a province name, and knowing where the province is turns a sign you cannot pronounce into a location. This page is the whole list, grouped the way the game groups it.
A changwat is run by a governor appointed from Bangkok, and it is divided into districts (amphoe) below that. The province and its capital share a name, and the capital district is called Mueang plus the province name: Mueang Chiang Mai is the town of Chiang Mai inside the province of Chiang Mai. Signs use both, so a name that appears with Mueang in front of it is a town rather than the province around it.
Bangkok is the odd one out. It is not a changwat but a special administrative area with an elected governor, the only place in the country that elects one, and it sits in the list anyway because on a map it behaves like a province.
The names look harder than they are. Most of them are compounds of a few recurring words: buri for a town or fortified city (Lop Buri, Sing Buri, Buri Ram), nakhon for a large city (Nakhon Sawan, Nakhon Phanom, Nakhon Pathom), thani for a place (Udon Thani, Surat Thani, Pathum Thani), samut for sea (Samut Prakan, Samut Sakhon, Samut Songkhram) and nong or bueng for a lake or marsh (Nong Khai, Bueng Kan). Learning the words is faster than learning seventy seven separate strings.
The pairs to be careful with are the ones that differ by a syllable. Nong Khai is on the Mekong, Nong Bua Lam Phu is inland below it. Chai Nat is in the central plain, Chaiyaphum is in Isan. Phichit and Phitsanulok are neighbours in the north of the central plain and are constantly swapped. The three Samut provinces all sit within an hour of Bangkok on the Gulf, and only their order along the coast separates them.
The four groups are the game's own division of the map, and the eastern group is essentially Isan plus the seaboard southeast of Bangkok. Any group can be switched on and off on its own in the start dialog, which is how a map of seventy seven names becomes four evenings rather than one impossible one.
The capital, the only place in Thailand that elects its own governor, and not technically a province at all. On the map it is the small dense area at the head of the Gulf where the Chao Phraya reaches the sea, hemmed in by the central plain provinces on three sides.
The only province that is entirely an island, on the Andaman coast, and one of the smallest by area. It is the name in the peninsula most people already know, which makes it a good anchor: everything else on the west coast is counted north or south from here.
The largest province in the country by area, at the southwestern corner of the Isan plateau, and the road and rail gateway between Bangkok and the northeast. Also known as Khorat, which is the name you are more likely to see on a bus.
The newest province, created in 2011 out of the top of Nong Khai on the Mekong bend. Newly created provinces are the ones missing from older maps and older quizzes, so if you learned this map years ago, this is the click you will not expect.
76 provinces plus Bangkok, which is a special administrative area rather than a province, so 77 units in total on a map. The newest of them is Bueng Kan, split from Nong Khai in 2011.
Nearly always. A province and its principal town share a name, and the town itself is the Mueang district of that province: Mueang Chiang Mai is the town, Chiang Mai is the province around it. That is why reading a town name off a road sign is usually enough to place the province.
They are the recurring building blocks of Thai place names. Buri means town or fortified city, nakhon means a great city, and thani also means a town or place. Samut means sea, nong and bueng mean a lake or marsh, and chiang means a walled city in the northern dialect. Knowing a dozen of these makes the whole list easier to hold.
The most common division is four: the north with its mountains and Chiang Mai, the northeast or Isan on the Khorat plateau inside the bend of the Mekong, the central plain around Bangkok and the Chao Phraya, and the south along the peninsula towards Malaysia. Some official schemes use six regions instead, splitting off the east and the west.
Nong Khai and Nong Bua Lam Phu, Chai Nat and Chaiyaphum, and Phichit and Phitsanulok, which differ by a syllable but sit in different parts of the country. The three Samut provinces around Bangkok are another set: they are neighbours, so only their order along the Gulf coast tells them apart.
More administrative maps in the region: Vietnam Provinces, Philippines Provinces, India States and Japan Prefectures.
