Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...

has adopted ISO 8601 under national standard: TIS 1111:2535 in 1992. However, in practice, there are some variations.

Date

Thailand uses the

Thai solar calendar The Thai solar calendar ( th, ปฏิทินสุริยคติ, , "solar calendar") was adopted by King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) in 1888 CE as the Siamese version of the Gregorian calendar, replacing the Thai lunar calendar as the lega ...

as the official calendar, in which the calendar's epochal date (

Year zero A year zero does not exist in the Anno Domini (AD) calendar year system commonly used to number years in the Gregorian calendar (nor in its predecessor, the Julian calendar); in this system, the year is followed directly by year . However, the ...

) was the year in which the

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in L ...

attained '' parinibbāna''. This places the current year at 543 years ahead of the

Gregorian calendar The Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It was introduced in October 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian calendar. The principal change was to space leap years dif ...

. The year 2023 CE is indicated as 2566 BE in Thailand. Despite adopting ISO 8601, Thai official date is still written in D/M/YYYY formats, such as 30 January 2566 BE (2023 CE) or 30/1/2566.

Anno Domini The terms (AD) and before Christ (BC) are used to label or number years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The term is Medieval Latin and means 'in the year of the Lord', but is often presented using "our Lord" instead of "the Lord", ...

or Common Era may be used in unofficial context, and is written in the same format (D/M/YYYY). In full date format, the year is marked with "พ.ศ." (Buddhist era) or "ค.ศ." (lit. Christian era) to avoid confusion. As each calendar is 543 years apart, there is very little confusion in the contemporary context.

Time

There are two systems of telling time in Thailand. Official time follows a 24-hour clock. The 24-hour clock is commonly used in military, aviation, navigation, meteorology, astronomy, computing, logistical, emergency services, and hospital settings, where the ambiguities of the

12-hour clock The 12-hour clock is a time convention in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods: a.m. (from Latin , translating to "before midday") and p.m. (from Latin , translating to "after midday"). For different opinions on represen ...

cannot be tolerated. In the second, everyday usage, the day is divided into four six-hour periods. Additional words are used to identify the period specified (similar to a.m. or p.m. for a 12-hour system). The distinguishing words are: *00:00-00:59 = เที่ยงคืน ''thiang khuen'' *01:00-05:59 = ตี ''ti'' *06:00-11:59 = โมงเช้า ''mong chao'' *12:00-12:59 = เที่ยง ''tiang'' *13:00-15:59 = บ่ายโมง ''bai mong'' *16:00-18:59 = โมงเย็น ''mong yen'' *19:00-23:59 = ทุ่ม ''thum'' Thailand is in the UTC+07:00

time zone A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between countries and their subdivisions instead of strictly following longitude, because it ...

, which is also known as Indochina Time (ICT) and military time zone Golf.

References

Time in Thailand

{{thailand-stub

Date

Time

See also

References