Thai chess piece

Piece of an incomplete Thai chess set. Thai chess ('makruk') is a very popular game, similar to chess in Europe, also played with sixteen to sixteen pieces. There are strong similarities in both the rules and the appearance of the pieces; minor differences include the naming of the queen (Thai: 'met', meaning seed), the rook ('ruea', meaning ship) or the pawn (Thai: 'bia', meaning kauri snail). The latter comes from the fact that traditionally these tiny shells were used as pawns in the game.