THIS. Is so ลำบาก[^1]. I tend to use my iPhone/iPad to type certain kinds of stuff because of the dedicated "123" modifier.
[^1]: Completely off topic, but I love when there are words that capture a feeling in one language for which there isn't a suitable analogue in another. For non-Thai speakers, this word means burdensome, but depending on context covers the whole span of "inconvenient" to "distressing". In general, though, I find English has more individual words that express an entire concept vs. Thai which has to use compound words to explain its meaning.
Since you are being offtopic, I'm joining you. As someone that isn't Thai, living in Europe but does like the country/people and is trying to learn some Thai, it is always great fun to randomly see Thai words somewhere so I can try to see if I can pronounce the word already. Sadly enough, I wasn't able to haha
I've learned from Thai speakers that there are multiple words that mean multiple things depending on the context. Where as English (and Dutch) do have this sometimes, but less often than Thai words. I am pretty sure (but correct me if I'm wrong) that both Chinese, Japanese and Korean have this too.
Dutch also has some interesting words that cannot be directly translated to English. In Dutch we don't have 'siblings', we have 'broers en zussen' where 'broers' are your brothers and 'sisters' are your sisters. There is no word that we use for both of them. Same with the word 'gezin', it means the family you are living with.
Another one is 'giftig' which has 2 english words too. Poisonous and venomous, but in Dutch it is the same thing.
I actually didn't know this word either, so it was good vocab. Thai's abugida is pretty complicated, but once you memorize the rules, there's not too many spelling exceptions, and a lot of words are pronounced about as as you'd expect.
If you're looking for something more phonetic possible as a stepping stone, Lao, despite having less content to consume, is much, much easier to learn where the abugidas look about the same if you squint; you could look at Lao as simplified Thai (with a 6th tone). Lao had a spelling reform recently that dropped all the duplicate letters for Pali/Sanskrit words, there's no implied vowel (and they change form less), there's no การันต์ (◌์), and the final consonants are normalized to the sound it makes. Lao and Thai are asymmetrically intelligible where Lao people understand Thai but not the other way around. That said, the Northeastern Thai dialect, อีสาน, is almost identical with small dialectal differences. Grammatically they are the same so anything you learn in one will almost certainly transfer to the other with just a different vocabulary set for common words (to do, to work, I, you, man, woman, etc.).
It's so great to see people learning Thai! For both you and parent, if you haven't found this already, this website does a good job of giving accurate English definitions for Thai words, along with sample sentences from Thai sources: http://thai-language.com/id/133751 (this is the entry for 'ลำบาก') There's also a mobile app, which is even easier to use than the site.
That site really IS pretty good. I've always appreciated studying a dialectal difference before traveling to different regions in Thailand -- in my experience the locals will treat you better if you can not only speak Bangkok Thai, but put in the effort to learn some of their vocabulary. Getting non-tourist treatment is exactly what I'm looking for when trying to learn about a new area.
[^1]: Completely off topic, but I love when there are words that capture a feeling in one language for which there isn't a suitable analogue in another. For non-Thai speakers, this word means burdensome, but depending on context covers the whole span of "inconvenient" to "distressing". In general, though, I find English has more individual words that express an entire concept vs. Thai which has to use compound words to explain its meaning.