Trang airport road sign in comical ‘language’ removed

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2023

Local officials removed a road sign for Trang Airport that was wrongly spelled with a comical phonetic transliteration a day after it became a viral post on Facebook.

On Tuesday, a Facebook user posted the photo of a road sign pointing to Trang Airport, and which was put up in front of Wat Nang Pralard in Moo 5 village of Tambon Khok Saba in Trang’s Na Yong district.

Rather than the usual English, the sign used the sound of the Thai words for Trang Airport “ThaAgrad SayaiThang”.

The Facebook user said even that phonetic transcription was incorrectly spelled and should have been written as “Tha Argard Sayarn Trang”.

On Wednesday, The Nation went to the scene, only to find that the sign had been removed.

Villager Jureeporn told The Nation that she had looked at the road sign for many years without noticing any irregularity.

She said officials had removed the sign before noon on Wednesday, and that she had thought it had been taken away because it was old and needed to be changed.

An official of the Trang Provincial Administrative Organisation (PAO) said the road was built in 1992 and was transferred to the Trang PAO in 2008.

The official said the PAO had not checked up on the road sign and learned of its incorrect language from the Facebook post, leading to it being removed, to be re-installed later.