Thai address locator?

[mran66 101]

Is there any convenient way  or tool to find a location of a formal Thai address (other than go riding around the Moo xx and try to find the house xy/yx)?

 

Wonder how all the delivery companies and mailmen manage to find the place they deliver, do they have some tool for that or just local knowledge?

[allane 1,238]

Ask at the Post Office. They have maps.  

[timendres 6,777]

Google maps is a start, but certainly not 100%

It gets my townhouse correct.

[blackcab 5,748]

As far as I know, there isn't.

 

The key issue is that building numbers are not sequential like a lot of other countries. As you progress along a road, the building numbers do not progress also. Buildings are not numbered 2,4,6,8,10 etc or 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 in an orderly row.

 

Instead building numbers are issued in the order that the building was built. So building 1 could be half way down the road, while building 2 could be a kilometre away on the same road.

 

Added to this, when you apply for your building number, you can also ask to get an auspicious number if nobody has taken it yet. This is why you might see building number 555 on a small road that cannot possibly accommodate 554 other buildings.

 

As has been mentioned, the only people that know all the locations are Thai Post, although the electric and water meter readers will know the location if it is on their round.

 

Delivery companies get the driver to press a button on their smartphone the first time they deliver. For a delivery company such as Kerry, that GPS database has great value to them and any of their competition.

[KhunBENQ 15,658]

1 hour ago, blackcab said:

As far as I know, there isn't.

True for many reasons.

As you mentioned no sequential house nr.

In villages no rd. names, only moo ban nr. (ban lek ti).

We live in 340 moo 1, house of the sister on same plot is 8 moo 1.

 

And then: as long as there is no 100% consistent transcription rules for the original Thai names the job gets close to impossible if you try it in "English".

 

Google helps you for addresses that have been registered/published with location.

Rare for private addresses.

Edited January 22 by KhunBENQ

[mran66 101]

3 hours ago, blackcab said:

As far as I know, there isn't.

 

The key issue is that building numbers are not sequential like a lot of other countries. As you progress along a road, the building numbers do not progress also. Buildings are not numbered 2,4,6,8,10 etc or 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 in an orderly row.

 

Instead building numbers are issued in the order that the building was built. So building 1 could be half way down the road, while building 2 could be a kilometre away on the same road.

 

Added to this, when you apply for your building number, you can also ask to get an auspicious number if nobody has taken it yet. This is why you might see building number 555 on a small road that cannot possibly accommodate 554 other buildings.

 

As has been mentioned, the only people that know all the locations are Thai Post, although the electric and water meter readers will know the location if it is on their round.

 

Delivery companies get the driver to press a button on their smartphone the first time they deliver. For a delivery company such as Kerry, that GPS database has great value to them and any of their competition.

 

...and to make it even worse, it seems that same non-logic applies not only to house numbers within a mooban, but also to Moo numbers within a sub-district. Until today I kind of thought that the Moo numbers would be single areas. However today, when trying to locate a house in Moo 11 of Nongprue Pattaya, I learned that there are houses with that Moo address in (at least) two separate neighborhoods, several km and few other Moo areas between them (one I knew as Moo 11 area, the other I thought is some lower number Moo). Not sure if the Moo areas are as randomly located as the house numbers within a mooban, however the system is really nuts for any practical use.

 

Was trying to figure out what the history behind this kind of system is, just can't get it. Maybe it comes from some ancient land ownership structure and land registry numbers of that system from era where concept of address was not yet invented. The moo numbers were set based on whoever owned that particular piece of land 100's years ago so that if someone owned in two different locations, they both were given same Moo number. Nobody ever thought or bothered to  think that one day those would be used for purpose of identifying and finding a location.

 

Anyway, who knows, TIT.

 

On the other side, this is one of the best examples of so call 'Thai logic'  (i.e no logic) that even Thais say farang can not understand.

Edited January 22 by mran66

[allane 1,238]

Let's say you own a large plot of land; let's call it Lot 99. If you sell a small piece off of one corner tat becomes Lot 99/1.  If you later sell a piece of of the diagonally opposite corner, that piece becomes Lot 99/2.

I can't say with authority that the Thai system comes from Japan, but it is quite similar. Newly subdivided parcels are numbered in the order in which they are created. In some cases, this might mean  that the numbering makes sense when looking at a map, but does not make sense when driving down the roads, which may have been built later

[mran66 101]

3 hours ago, allane said:

Let's say you own a large plot of land; let's call it Lot 99. If you sell a small piece off of one corner tat becomes Lot 99/1.  If you later sell a piece of of the diagonally opposite corner, that piece becomes Lot 99/2.

I can't say with authority that the Thai system comes from Japan, but it is quite similar. Newly subdivided parcels are numbered in the order in which they are created. In some cases, this might mean  that the numbering makes sense when looking at a map, but does not make sense when driving down the roads, which may have been built later

 

The system is perfectly okay for land registry use, but to use it for mail address or general location identification is Just downright stupid. 

 

Not familiar with Japanese addressing, they also use land registry data for mail and location addressing? 

[blackcab 5,748]

On 1/22/2021 at 5:39 PM, mran66 said:

...and to make it even worse

 

We've all heard of the province called Roi Et, which as we all know means 101.

 

How do you get to number 101 when there are only 76 other provinces? Has anyone found a province called 99? What about 100?

[CharlieH 29,746]

7 minutes ago, blackcab said:

 

We've all heard of the province called Roi Et, which as we all know means 101.

 

How do you get to number 101 when there are only 76 other provinces? Has anyone found a province called 99? What about 100?

Wild guess, it was named prior to the formation of the provinces as we know them and at that time there were more ? Seems like a possibly theory ?

[foreverlomsak 837]

On 1/22/2021 at 5:39 PM, mran66 said:

On the other side, this is one of the best examples of so call 'Thai logic'  (i.e no logic) that even Thais say farang can not understand.

Travelling along my Soi, Moo 15, from the main road on the left you have house no 182, then mine 35, and behind mine (further from the Soi), is 63/1. How the Post Office knows who is where defeats me. Moo 15 is the primary road through the village but Moo 3 is is a side road off Moo 15.

[foreverlomsak 837]

1 hour ago, mran66 said:

Newly subdivided parcels are numbered in the order in which they are created.

That does not work where I am 63/1 is the second house off the Moo, house 63 is 4 properties further along the road and 2 in from the Moo. 63 is the mothers house and 63/1 is the first sons house.

[VocalNeal 7,413]

Eventually we will all be using What 3 Words or derivatives of. Whereby each house or dwelling has a unique identifier. Simple just three words as a unique identifier of each 3m square of the planet.

But it will take time. 

The post office knows where you are as will Kerry if you get some on-line shopping delivered. Pizza Hut/Company probably already knows where you live. 

[lopburi3 10,094]

Here in Bangkok there are two systems - the normal house number/land plot number and the new consecutive house numbers (which almost no-one uses but often both will be displayed).  So you may have house number 6/37 also having number 43.  

As for delivery they almost all have to call to get directions even here in Bangkok where simple Google would show.  

[Pro1Expat 125]

On 1/22/2021 at 6:24 AM, mran66 said:

Is there any convenient way  or tool to find a location of a formal Thai address (other than go riding around the Moo xx and try to find the house xy/yx)?

 

Wonder how all the delivery companies and mailmen manage to find the place they deliver, do they have some tool for that or just local knowledge?

If the house you are to find have ordered from you they can add a small Google map showing their residence.