All major hotels and most guesthouses offer international dialing services, but will add a surcharge of 30–40 percent. Business centers in small towns offer fax and phone services which are accompanied by high surcharges.

Bangkok’s Central Post Office on Charoen Krung New Road and some major post offices around the country have a CAT center that can arrange collect and credit card calls. In Bangkok these are open from 7am to midnight, with reduced hours in the provinces. To dial directly from a hotel room, either contact the desk, or dial 001 (for an international line) followed by the country code and telephone number. Alternatively, dial the international operator at 100. Full rates are charged from 7am to 9pm, with a 30 percent discount between midnight and 5am, and a 20 percent discount at other times.

Blue and yellow international pay phones can be found on the street, in shopping malls, and in airports. These take some credit cards, and Lenso phonecards, which are sold in the post office and by agents displaying the Lenso logo.

Local calls can be made from any public pay phone other than the blue-and-yellow international pay phones.

Domestic calls can be made from blue-and-silver coin phones or green card-phones. Coin-operated phones accept one-, five-, and ten-baht  coins. Hotel phones may accept only five-baht  coins. Calls within the same area code cost one baht  a minute. It is possible to make local calls from some red coin phones, but these are being phased out and will not accept ten-baht  coins.

Cards for green and orange card-phones can be bought at most post offices, bookstores, and hotels and come in several denominations: 25 baht , 50 baht , 100 baht , and 240 baht .

The long-distance domestic service also covers Malaysia and Laos, as well as regional Thai calls.

Cell phones are extremely cheap in Thailand. There are several companies operating, including AIS, True, and DTAC. SIM cards can be bought from mobile-phone shops, but you must present a form of identification, such as a valid passport. Customers can choose to pay by monthly payments or buy the popular scratch cards with a dial-in code to top up their credits. Cards range from 50 to 500 baht  in value.

Thailand has five television channels; programs are mostly in Thai, though in Bangkok some are broadcast with an English simulcast on FM radio. Some towns may receive only one national channel and a local station. Satellite and cable networks are fast expanding all over Asia, and most international English-language networks such as the BBC and CNN are readily available. Many hotels provide satellite and cable television as well as an in-house video channel. Check the Bangkok Post  and the Nation  for details.

There are more than 400 radio stations nationwide. In Bangkok, there are 41 FM and 35 AM stations. The vast majority of these are in Thai, but English-language stations manned by local DJs are listed in the Outlook  section of the Bangkok Post . The national public radio station, Radio Thailand, broadcasts English-language programs on 107 and 105 FM 24 hours a day, and listings for short-wave frequencies receiving the BBC, VOA, Radio Australia, Radio Canada, RFI (French), and Deutsche Welle are found in the Focus  section of the Nation .

The two main English-language newspapers, arguably the best in Asia, are the Bangkok Post  and the Nation . Both of these publications provide reliable local, regional, and international coverage. Their daily broadsheet inserts, Outlook (Post)  and Focus (Nation) , include features on lifestyle, travel, and human interest as well as listings for food, films, concerts, and exhibitions in Bangkok. Both are widely sold in news kiosks and shops throughout Bangkok.

The Asia Times , which was launched in 1996, is a Thailand-based regional business paper. The Singapore edition of the International Herald Tribune  and the Asian Wall Street Journal  are sold in hotels and English-language bookstores such as Asia Books and Bookazine, which also stock a good selection of international magazines such as Esquire, Cosmopolitan , and Vanity Fair . News weeklies The Economist, Time , and Newsweek  are widely available, as are their Hong Kong-based Asian counterparts, Far Eastern Economic Review  (FEER) and AsiaWeek .

Among the local English-language monthly publications are the useful listings guide Big Chilli , the business and lifestyle magazine Manager , and society rag Thailand Tatler . In addition to these, helpful free guides that are available in restaurants, bars, and bookstores include This Week Thailand, Bangkok Guide , and the pocket-sized Bangkok Dining and Entertainment .

Letters and postcards usually take at least one week to reach Europe and North America from Thailand. Stamps are available at all post offices and can also be bought at many hotels.

Packages and valuable items should be sent by registered mail or via International Express Mail (EMS). Parcels must be wrapped in officially approved packaging. This will be done for you at a special counter at most post offices. Having lined up to have your parcel packed, you might find that you must then line up again for the parcel to be weighed, and again to buy the stamps.

General delivery facilities are available at all main post offices in the country. Letters will normally be held for up to three months. To claim mail from general delivery, you must show your passport and sometimes pay a small fee. Letters should be addressed to you (with your last name written in capitals and underlined), poste restante, GPO, address, town, Thailand. Thus for Bangkok’s main GPO, correspondents should send mail care of GPO, Charoen Krung Road, Bangkok.

Larger post offices are usually open 8am–8pm Monday to Friday and 8am–1pm at weekends. Smaller post offices in cities, and those in most provincial towns, are generally open 8:30am–4:30pm Monday to Friday and 9am–noon on Saturdays.

Internet access is available all over Thailand. Charges range from 20 baht  an hour in a local internet café to 250 baht  an hour in a five-star hotel. Wireless connection hotspots are also becoming increasingly common.

Major hotels often provide fax and telex facilities for guests. However, as with phone calls, they add a heavy markup for the use of such services.

Fax, telex, and telegraph services are also available at the Overseas Telegraph and Telephone offices. These can be found in many towns and are often open 24 hours a day. Some TAT offices and independent agencies may also offer fax facilities.

The main international courier companies, such as DHL , FedEx  and UPS , operate in Thailand, so it is easy to have goods air freighted home. However, for very heavy or large items, such as furniture, shipping will be a more affordable option. Many shops will arrange this for you and provide the necessary paperwork.

Thai addresses are complicated. What may look like a street number may in fact be a block number. For instance, 349/2–3 Sukhumvit Road, indicates block number 349 with the premises occupying numbers 2–3 of that block. Most main roads have numerous numbered sois  (lanes) leading off them. Sometimes these are written before the road name, sometimes after. Thus, 123 Sukhumvit Soi 14, Khlong Toey, Bangkok indicates house number 123 on Soi 14 off Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok’s Khlong Toey district. Some major sois  have a name as well as a number.

An added complication is moo  numbers. These refer to a specific, small geographical area, which is often a village. However, moo  numbers may still be encountered in cities, reflecting the expansion of the cities as they encompassed outlying settlements within their boundaries.

Addresses outside large cities are usually the number and street name, village, village group, district, and province.

Thailand’s 500,000 sq km (193,000 sq miles) are home to 62 million people. The country is split into four main regions: Pak Nua (the North), Pak Isan (the Northeast), Pak Klang (Bangkok, the Central Plains and the Gulf of Thailand), and Pak Tai (the South).

The regions are subdivided into 76 provinces (jangwats) , each administered by a governor. Provincial capitals are known as amphor muangs . Each province consists of a number of amphors , or districts (722 in total), which are headed by a district officer. These are, in turn, divided into subdistricts (king amphors) , and then into village groups (tambons) . There are a total of 7,109 of these village groups in the country, each of which is administered by a kamnan . At the most basic level are the 64,450 individual villages (moo bans) . Every village is represented by its own elected headman or phuyaiban .

These administrative boundaries are useful to understand when working out addresses or traveling to locations that are off the beaten track.