Facts about Thailand

At 198,000 square miles, (513,000 square kilometers) Thailand is the world's forty-ninth-largest country.

Under the constitution, the king had little direct power, but he symbolized the nation and was the chosen protector of Buddhism in Thailand.

Most Chinese in Thailand speak dialects of Min Nan Chinese.

Thailand appears to have fully recovered from the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.

The standard greeting in Thailand is a prayer-like gesture called the "wai."

Literature in Thailand is heavily influenced by Indian culture.

Thailand has the highest percent of arable land, 27.25 percent, of any nation in the greater Mekong sub-region.

Theravada Buddhism is the official religion of Thailand and is the religion of 95 percent of its people.

After that, Hitler was claiming territories ceded to Poland under the Versailles Treaty.

Struggles for territory in the 1940s resulted in Thailand allying with Japan in the Second World War.

A new Scottish Parliament and government was established in Edinburgh in 1999, re-establishing the city as the capital and political center of Scotland.

Despite pressure, Thailand is the only Southeast Asian country never to have been colonized by a European power.

Thailand has a well-developed infrastructure, a free-enterprise economy, and pro-investment policies.

The most popular sport in Thailand is football (soccer) but the professional football leagues, Thai League and Pro League in Thailand, are still new.

Different indigenous cultures have existed in Thailand since the Ban Chiang culture, which dates back to 2100 B.C.E..

Thailand is home to several distinct geographic regions, partly corresponding to the provincial groups.

After the end of the Vietnam War, many Vietnamese refugees settled in Thailand, mainly in the northeastern regions.

Thailand's population of close to 70 million people is relatively homogeneous.

Thailand is the world’s number one exporter of rice, exporting 6.5 million tons of milled rice annually.

When the financial crisis hit Thailand, the Thai baht was soon worth 56 baht to the United States dollar compared to about 25 baht to the dollar before 1997.

The "heat" portion of the term is a folk association between locally-experienced warmth and the distant lightning flashes.

The Asian tsunami of late December 2004 took 8,500 lives in Thailand and caused massive destruction of property in the southern provinces of Krabi, Phangnga, and Phuket.

Polished white rice is eaten in central and southern Thailand, while glutinous or sticky rice is eaten in the north and northeast.

Muay Thai (Thai boxing), Thailand's native martial art, is probably the most popular spectator sport.

Over 5,000 varieties of rice from Thailand are preserved in the rice gene bank of the International Rice Research Institute, based in the Philippines.

Thailand is an active member of the regional Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

After Japan's defeat in 1945, Thailand was forced to return the territory it had recently gained to the British and the French.

The Siamese coup d'йtat of 1932 transformed the Government of Thailand from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy.

Thailand is divided into 76 provinces, and two specially governed districts: the capital Bangkok, and Pattaya.

The center of the country features the predominantly flat Chao Phraya river valley, which runs into the Gulf of Thailand.

The climate of Thailand is tropical and characterized by monsoons.

European powers began travelling to Thailand in the sixteenth century.

The music of Thailand includes classical and folk music traditions as well as "string" or pop music.

Thailand was a representative democratic constitutional monarchy until the military coup on September 19, 2006.

Thailand was one of East Asia's best performers in 2002-2004.

Thailand had a long succession of able rulers in the 1800s and was able to take advantage of the rivalry between the French and the British.

From 1992 to September 2006, Thailand was a functioning democracy with constitutional changes of government.

Thonburi was the capital of Thailand for a brief period under King Taksin the Great, until a coup d'etat in 1782.

Thai (including Lao, who make up about 30 percent of the Thai population) account for 75 percent of Thailand’s population.

The human history of Thailand has been dated from 2100 B.C.E..

Thailand has been an overwhelmingly Buddhist nation since the fourteenth century C.E..

Muay Thai (Thai boxing), Thailand's native martial art, is probably the most popular spectator sport.