Thursday Linkage

Terry Fredrickson, English language teacher and editor of the learning section of Bangkok Post, had prepared a lesson around the creation of Bueng Kan province. As he is only compiling lessons out of news reports and had no background knowledge on the administrative system in Thailand, he promptly fell into the traps due to the sloppy reporting I ranted about earlier. I only stumbled upon this lesson as he tweeted the move of the Learning Post into the main Bangkok Post website and I had a quick look at it. He placed all my suggestions into an appendix of the lesson, and even though I would have preferred it to be worked into the lesson itself this is obviously much better than keeping a wrong report uncorrected on the website for years.

Bueng Kan municipality,
Photo by Isaanlife

Isaanlife has made a visit to Bueng Kan area, and inspired by my map of the administrative offices has focused on taking photos of exactly these buildings. As mentioned in his blog, he has made a map mashup with my placemarks and his photos. The photos are also visible alone in a Picasa album. Most notable he tried to find the site of where the province hall is to be built, and it seems this is close to the Rajabaht University campus next to the TAO Non Sombun office - which does not show yet in Google Earth as the satellite imagery of the area dates back to 2003.

Another interesting read are Cod's ramblings on colonization, mentioning both the fact Siam/Thailand was never colonized and how proud the Thais are of this, but also the less-known internal colonization done by the central government to the outlying areas of Pattani or in the Issaan.

And finally to return some link-love, Angloinfo has a page where they collected addresses of local government offices in Phuket and adjoining Phang Nga and Krabi provinces. Probably useful for the expats living in the area, and since they listed my blog as the resource for more detailed information on the administrative system I get occasional visitors from that site.