Lonely Planet Thai Phrasebook

I spent a good amount of time looking through various bookstores before I left for Thailand the first time, trying to decide among the various phrasebooks that are available. This one is perfectly sized, logically arranged (for the most part), and has a very good selection of phrases (for the most part). The first time I went to Thailand, I was with a few other native English speakers. Among us, we had several different phrasebooks. I spent a little more time while there looking through the other phrasebooks (after experiencing Thailand for a few days) to see if maybe the others actually were better, because I wasn't getting anywhere with this one. Well, the others aren't better. They consistently were missing key words or phrases that I needed. In general, this one will have what you need. Basically, I think this is the best Thai phrasebook available right now, and you should definitely get it if you're going there. It's very useful in many situations, and certainly worth a good rating. I'm going to focus on what I see as the negatives, but keep in mind that no matter how many negative things I say about it, these are all only worth taking one star off of my rating. The biggest problem is strange choices on what to include and what not to include. Naturally, they can't include everything, but there are omissions in all sections of this book that seem strange to me. One example is in the section with phrases regarding occupations - it's designed so you can ask people about their occupation, and you can tell them yours. The problem is, they only give you a few things to choose from, and they're not broad - the options are civil servant, farmer, journalist, and teacher. Or, you can say you work in the fields of health, sales and marketing, or administration. Now, granted, you will find more options in the dictionary in the back, but that's a really rather bizarre selection, I think. I'm really not sure why they couldn't have included "student" in that list, for example - I'm guessing a significantly large percentage of people using this phrasebook as their only reference are going to be students. On the same page, they also give you how to say "What are you studying?" and "I'm studying..." (with only humanities, science, and Thai as the options...) but that, to me, doesn't seem like the right answer to the question "What is your occupation?" What I'm trying to describe is a systemic problem in this book, which is worse in other Thai phrasebooks. They give you the tantalizing beginnings of phrases, which you can theoretically use to substitute in the right word... but they don't make it easy to find that word. Another quick example: they give you "I'm from..." with the options Australia, Canada, and Singapore. Yep, that sure covers a really wide range of places that a lot of people who visit Thailand are from. England and the US should have been on that list instead of Canada and Singapore (not to slight those countries...) - instead, those fro

I bought this book as a present for a friend who frequently travel to Thailand. She absolutely loves this book, and says she has been trying to get something like this book for years

This is a great little reference book if interested in learning Thai. Using some kind of on line or person audio assistance is necessary since Thai is tonal.

The best part about this book is the pronunciation guide. Thai can be tricky with all the tones, this book made it very simple to understand. If anything the sex and drug sections can just be for entertainment. I tried out these phrases just for fun, never seriously used them. Good for a laugh. Several Thai people have asked me to send them a copy.

Just got back from Thailand. This book is fun and easy to use. Best of all it has english, thai, and pronunciation all on the same page. This enables you to let the Thai people read what you just mispronounced. I left my copy with a Thai friend and am ordering me another copy.