How should I pronounce Ko(h) Samui and Chao Phraya? Are there any websites that include audio with the proper pronunciations?

Drop the h for Koh whatever you use for Chao Phraya the Thais will not laugh - very polite people!
But something like Chow Praya [dropping h again ] will be close.

Don't know about web sites but Lonely Planet have handy little pocket size language books.

Should have been 'Koh and whatever' and Samui just as it looks in english will do.

The main thing is that 'ph' is NEVER pronounced 'f'. Most transliteration systems use 'ph' for a soft 'p' sound, and plain 'p' for a hard one. I sometimes think someone must have had a bad sense of humor when they decided to spell the other island's name 'Phuket' since the more 'correct' transliteration would be Bhuket, and the actual pronunciation is 'boo-ket'.

Check out Catherine Wentworth's Women Learn Thai web site for some useful resources and honest reviews of the books, etc. available:
http://womenlearnthai.com/

Another good website http://www.thai-language.com/

There are several western alphabetical interpretations of Thai letters - the basic problem is the west doesn't actually have the sounds in the first place.
"KH" is usually used to denote a "K" sound - Khao ("cow" sound in English)
"K" on its own tends to represent more of a "G" sound - island is spelt with "gaw - gai" symbol so should be pronounced "GO".

"CH" ends up somewhere between "CH" and "SH"

BTW - the "O" in "GO" is short flat as in "orange"

As Hanuman rightly says, you'll get all sorts of advice here & elsewhere that may not produce the desired result - the best we can do here is tell you how words sound to us - based on the alphabet we learned and the sounds we're used to. Best to hear from a native speaker, if you can.

Of course, Thais have accents too. I passed a couple of stock boys in Emporium yesterday who were chatting away, and I couldn't catch a single word they were saying (granted, they could have been Burmese or Khmer).

Not sure what happened at the end--but I appreciate the information and will check out the websites. It is good to hear the Thai people are forgiving when it comes to their language. I leave in less than a month! I am so excited!

Firsttime - Forgot to mention that IMHO one of th ebest books available for learning the basics is Teach Yourself Thai by David Gray. It also comes with a couple of audio CDs and focuses upon the basics of conversation. It was the course book on my first year of Thai evening classes. I still have the audio on my iPod and always use it to revise on the flight into Thailand.

MichaelBKK, thanks for the mention.

Note: I've compiled a page of free resources for learning Thai...

http://womenlearnthai.com/index.php/...learning-thai/

There is enough there to keep anyone busy for a long, long time.