Changwat abbreviations

Thais love to abbreviate the long technical terms, something I already wrote about before. But now I stumbled on two-letter abbreviations for the provinces (link already 404 by now) as well. The abbreviations are usually the consonant of the first and second or third syllable, e.g. ก.จ. (Ko.Cho.) is short for กาญจนบุรี (Kanchanaburi). Additionally, the word Changwat (จังหวัด) for province is shortened to จว. For reference, below is the complete table, including the TIS 1099 code, sorted same as the source table.

Abbr.	Name	English name	Code
กทม.	กรุงเทพมหานคร	Krung Thep Maha Nakhon	10
จว.ก.จ.	กาญจนบุรี	Kanchanaburi	71
จว.จ.บ.	จันทบุรี	Chanthaburi	22
จว.ฉ.ช.	ฉะเชิงเทรา	Chachoengsao	24
จว.ช.บ.	ชลบุรี	Chonburi	20
จว.ต.ร.	ตราด	Trat	23
จว.น.ย.	นครนายก	Nakhon Nayok	26
จว.น.ฐ.	นครปฐม	Nakhon Pathom	73
จว.น.บ.	นนทบุรี	Nonthaburi	12
จว.ป.ท.	ปทุมธานี	Pathum Thani	13
จว.ป.ข.	ประจวบคีรีขันธ์	Prachuap Khiri Khan	77
จว.ป.จ.	ปราจีนบุรี	Prachinburi	25
จว.อ.ย.	พระนครศรีอยุธยา	Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya	14
จว.ร.ย.	เพชรบุรี	Phetchaburi	76
จว.พ.บ.	ระยอง	Rayong	21
จว.ร.บ.	ราชบุรี	Ratchaburi	70
จว.ล.บ.	ลพบุรี	Lopburi	16
จว.ส.ป.	สมุทรปราการ	Samut Prakan	11
จว.ส.ส.	สมุทรสงคราม	Samut Songkhram	75
จว.ส.ค.	สมุทรสาคร	Samut Sakhon	74
จว.ส.ก.	สระแก้ว	Sa Kaeo	27
จว.ส.บ.	สระบุรี	Saraburi	19
จว.ส.ห.	สิงห์บุรี	Singburi	17
จว.ส.พ.	สุพรรณบุรี	Suphanburi	72
จว.อ.ท.	อ่างทอง	Ang Thong	15
จว.ก.ส.	กาฬสินธุ์	Kalasin	46
จว.ข.ก.	ขอนแก่น	Khon Kaen	40
จว.ช.ย.	ชัยภูมิ	Chaiyaphum	36
จว.น.ม.	นครราชสีมา	Nakhon Ratchasima	30
จว.บ.ร.	บุรีรัมย์	Buriram	31
จว.ม.ค.	มุกดาหาร	Mukdahan	49
จว.ม.ห.	มหาสารคาม	Maha Sarakham	44
จว.ย.ส.	ยโสธร	Yasothon	35
จว.ร.อ.	ร้อยเอ็ด	Roi Et	45
จว.ล.ย.	เลย	Loei	42
จว.ศ.ก.	ศรีสะเกษ	Sisaket	33
จว.ส.น.	สกลนคร	Sakon Nakhon	47
จว.ส.ร.	สุรินทร์	Surin	32
จว.น.ค.	หนองคาย	Nong Khai	43
จว.น.พ.	นครพนม	Nakhon Phanom	48
จว.น.ภ.	หนองบัวลำภู	Nong Bua Lamphu	39
จว.อ.จ.	อำนาจเจริญ	Amnat Charoen	37
จว.อ.ด.	อุดรธานี	Udon Thani	41
จว.อ.บ.	อุบลราชธานี	Ubon Ratchathani	34
จว.ก.พ.	กำแพงเพชร	Kamphaeng Phet	62
จว.ช.ร.	เชียงราย	Chiang Rai	57
จว.ช.ม.	เชียงใหม่	Chiang Mai	50
จว.ต.ก.	ตาก	Tak	63
จว.น.ว.	นครสวรรค์	Nakhon Sawan	60
จว.น.น.	น่าน	Nan	55
จว.พ.ย.	พะเยา	Phayao	56
จว.พ.จ.	พิจิตร	Phichit	66
จว.พ.ล.	พิษณุโลก	Phitsanulok	65
จว.พ.ช.	เพชรบูรณ์	Phetchabun	67
จว.พ.ร.	แพร่	Phrae	54
จว.ม.ส.	แม่ฮ่องสอน	Mae Hong Son	58
จว.ล.ป.	ลำปาง	Lampang	52
จว.ล.พ.	ลำพูน	Lamphun	51
จว.ส.ท.	สุโขทัย	Sukhothai	64
จว.อ.ต.	อุตรดิตถ์	Uttaradit	53
จว.อ.น.	อุทัยธานี	Uthai Thani	61
จว.ก.บ.	กระบี่	Krabi	81
จว.ช.พ.	ชุมพร	Chumphon	86
จว.ต.ง.	ตรัง	Trang	92
จว.น.ศ.	นครศรีธรรมราช	Nakhon Si Thammarat	80
จว.น.ธ.	นราธิวาส	Narathiwat	96
จว.ป.น.	ปัตตานี	Pattani	94
จว.พ.ง.	พังงา	Phang Nga	82
จว.พ.ท.	พัทลุง	Phatthalung	93
จว.ภ.ก.	ภูเก็ต	Phuket	83
จว.ย.ล.	ยะลา	Yala	95
จว.ร.น.	ระนอง	Ranong	85
จว.ส.ข.	สงขลา	Songkhla	90
จว.ส.ต.	สตูล	Satun	91
จว.ส.ฎ.	สุราษฎร์ธานี	Surat Thani	84

1st round of District council elections in Bangkok

Districts having elections in 1st round

As the term of the district councils of 14 districts of Bangkok ended today, within 60 days the new elections must be held. Just few days ago the timeline for this first round was announced.

• April 29: End of term
• May 3-7: Application of candidates
• June 6: Election day, voting between 8 am and 3 pm

The 14 districts which will vote then are: Bang Kapi, Lat Phrao, Bueng Khum, Wang Thong Lang, Saphan Sung, Kan Na Yao, Bang Khen, Chatuchak, Lak Si, Don Mueang, Sai Mai, Min Buri, Khlong Sam Wa and Lat Krabang, as one can see in the map all in the northeast of Bangkok.

The other 36 district councils will end their term on July 22, the timeline for these elections apparently isn't set yet. But estimating from this first round an election date end of August or beginning of September is to be expected.

Historical district name confusion in Ubon Ratchathani

When I was adding references to the Wikipedia article on the district Khueang Nai, I noticed that it was historically named Trakan Phuet Phon, I took a look at the article on that district to check why the two had the same name. One historical name of it then made me check in detail - I just recently learned that Prachin is the Pali word for west, but Trakan Phuet Phon is in the east of Ubon Ratchathani. So looking at all the name changes of the two districts showed the problem.

• 1913 - Prachun Ubon (ปจิมอุบล) renamed to Trakan Phuet Phon (ตระการพืชผล) [Gazette]
• 1917 - Trakan Phuet Phon (ตระการพืชผล) renamed to Khueang Nai (เขื่องใน) and Phana Nikhom (พนานิคม) to Khulu (ขุหลุ) [Gazette]
• 1939 - Khulu (ขุหลุ) to Phana Nikhom (พนานิคม) [Gazette]
• 1940 - Phana Nikhom (พนานิคม) to Trakan Phuet Phon (ตระการพืชผล) [Gazette]

So in fact I misidentified the 1913 renamed to be about the present day Trakan Phuet Phon, instead of belonging to Khueang Nai as it should. To my shame this wrong information stayed unchallenged in the article for two years.

Province governor transfers in respone to red shirts

As the red shirts are continuing right where the PAD left in 2008 - destroying the country's international reputation and making sure no tourists or investments will come anymore, and descending it deeper and deeper into state of anarchy, now the effects of the red shirt mob rule has reached the topic of this blog as well. Today, the Ministry of Interior (MOI) transferred the head of the Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA) because he was unable to stop the red shirts from seizing about 30 provincial halls (Sala Klang). I haven't been able yet to find a list of the provinces affected, but guess it will be mostly the northern and northeastern provinces, same as those where the constitution failed in the referendum.

In total, 6 officials were transferred according to an online article by DailyNews.

1. Phimit Charoenphanit (นายพินิจ เจริญพาณิช), retired Inspector-General.
2. Wongsak Sawatphani (นายวงศ์ศักดิ์ สวัสดิ์พาณิชย์), director of DOPA transferred to Inspector-General position in MOI.
3. Monkhon Surasatcha (นายมงคล สุระสัจจะ), director of Community Development Department became new director of DOPA.
4. Wichian Chavalit (นายวิเชียร ชวลิต), province governor of Surin to become director of Community Development Department
5. Rapi Phongbupkit (นายระพี ผ่องบุพกิจ), province governor of Sisaket to become province governor of Surin
6. Kongekwilat Ruchiwatthanaphon (นายกองเอกวิลาศ รุจิวัฒนพงศ์), deputy director in DOPA to become province governor of Sisaket

I don't know whether the other transfers are directly related with any red shirt actions, or it is simply pending promotions done faster to fill the vacancy in the upper management layer.

Note: Please refrain from writing comments to this post not directly related to these transfers, I don't want this blog become yet another battle ground of red vs. yellow vs. any other color.

Chumchon geocodes

Municipalities are subdivided into communities (chumchon), a subdivision I know hardly anything about. But since it roughly corresponds to the villages (muban), I had anticipated that they should have numerical codes similar to the villages.

Now I just tried to google for the Thai word "รหัสชุมชน" (Chumchon code), and to my surprise I found quite a lot of hits. Among the first was a forum entry at the website of Ang Thong town municipality (เทศบาลเมืองอ่างทอง),

ชุมชนศาลเจ้าพ่อกวนอูเป็นชุมชนใหม่เกิดขึ้นตามประกาศเทศบาลเมืองอ่างทอง เรื่อง การกำหนดพื้นที่ชุมชน ณ วันที่ 19 พฤษภาคม 2552
มีจำนวนครัวเรือน 255 ครัวเรือน
ประชากร 513 คน
รหัสชุมชน 15990014
[...]

It says, that on May 19 2009 the new community "San Chao Pho Kwan U" was established, having 255 households and 513 citizen, and the geocode 15990014. Exactly the kind of code I was expecting, since Ang Thong municipality has the code 1599, and to get to the same hierarchical level as the villages two zeros are added between the chumchon number and the municipality code. The forum entry then continues with a short description of the boundary.

Now continuing with this code, as well as with the code for Chumchon 13, I then found two Excel sheets, both from the SML program, the fund to support the Muban and chumchon originally started by the populist Thaksin government.

The first named Angthong.xls dates from August 2008, and contains only the codes 1 to 13 for Ang Thong town. The second, named chumchon.xls is from August 2009 and lists 4421 chumchon from all over the country. For Ang Thong it has 22 chumchon, including the one mentioned above. Thus it seems Ang Thong created 9 new chumchon in 2009, however only one is mentioned in the forum. Sadly, this chumchon.xls is definitely not a complete list, those few municipalities where I added chumchon to the XML files before are all not covered there. I have no idea how many chumchon it has altogether, none of the annual statistics I know of lists them. Only the news report I linked above for the SML program says there are 3414 in 2008.

Vote Buying and Village Outrage

While everyone is staring on the deteriorating situation in Bangkok, I rediscovered a paper titled "Vote Buying and Village Outrage in an Election in Northern Thailand" by anthropologist Katherine Bowie at scribd - though I guess it shouldn't be there copyright-wise. The paper was originally published in the "Journal of Asian Studies" in May 2008 (doi: 10.1017/S0021911808000673).

In Short, the Kamnan is the
Hanuman of the Village

Similar to the book by Daniel Arghiros I mentioned here before, the author has observed the local elections for a subdistrict headman in 1995 as well as later for the Tambon administrative organization president and council in 2006 in a Tambon in Chiang Mai, which was given a fictitious name to protect the persons involved. But even more interesting than the actual events at both elections are the long sections giving the background on local administration, including several nice illustrations from anonymous government handbooks. Definitely more fun to read this paper than to follow the latest developments on Twitter...

Mae Sot city upgrade

The upgrade of Mae Sot from town to city municipality status has been officially announced in the Royal Gazette yesterday, after it was approved in the board meeting on January 11th. In fact, there were two announcements:

• ประกาศกระทรวงมหาดไทย เรื่อง เปลี่ยนแปลงเขตเทศบาลเมืองแม่สอด อำเภอแม่สอด จังหวัดตาก - Announcement by the Ministry of Interior to change area of town municipality Mae Sot
• ประกาศกระทรวงมหาดไทย เรื่อง เปลี่ยนแปลงฐานะเทศบาลเมืองแม่สอด อำเภอแม่สอด จังหวัดตาก เป็นเทศบาลนครแม่สอด - Announcement by the Ministry of Interior to change status of town municipality Mae Sot to city municipality

The change of area was necessary because there were contradictory boundary definitions which place some area to belong to both Mae Sot town and TAO Mae Pa, see the board meeting of May 21 2009.

What is still missing is the announcement of the new constituencies, which have to be defined before the new municipal board can be elected. However these usually show up in the Royal Gazette well after the election date. I still don't know what date the municipal elections will take place, neither has the Election Commission of Tak province any current news on their website, nor has the website of municipality been reactivated yet. I only know that it was originally planned for March 14, but due to the necessary constituency redefinition a date in end of April was targeted instead, so the date must have been set by now.

Since I think I may need it again once the special administrative area of Mae Sot becomes reality, I have drawn a map out of the coordinates in the two announcements showing the outline of the city.

View Mae Sot in a larger map
If one checks the map and boundary definition in the announcements in detail, one will notice that the MGRS coordinates in the map are bogus - easting and northing exchanged, whereas in the text they are correct. Took me quite some minutes until I realized that my coordinate conversion algorithm isn't the one to blame.

Constituencies for the local government councils

The councils of the local government units each have quite different ways of being elected, different numbers of councilors and constituencies. I will only list the current system this time, though I already learned that for the PAO the current system was just adopted in 2003.

The Tambon Administrative Organizations (TAO) have a council, in which every Muban covered by the TAO sends two councilmen. Therefore the constituencies are identical with the Muban, and the number of councilors varies widely. The exception are TAO which have only one or two Muban - in these cases there will be 6 councilors, and each Muban has 3 (or 6) representatives.

For the municipalities (thesaban), the number of councilors depends on the municipal level. Subdistrict municipalities (thesaban tambon) as the lowest level have 12 councilors, elected in two constituencies with 6 representatives each. For towns (thesaban mueang), there are three constituencies with 6 councilors each, and for cities (thesaban nakhon) four constituencies. Since 2003, the boundaries of the constituencies are published in the Royal Gazette, see for example the one on the four constituencies of the city Surat Thani from 2007, issued at the upgrade of that municipality.

The councils of the Provincial Administrative Organizations (PAO) differ in size depending on the size of the province. However, unlike the other local government units, in this case each constituency elects one councilor. At least in all cases I checked so far, every district (Amphoe) has at least one constituency. For example, Surat Thani province has 30 constituencies, of which 13 cover a whole district, 3 districts have two constituencies, two district have three constituencies and finally the Mueang district has five.

The special administrative area of Pattaya, an municipality outside the thesaban system, has a council of 24 members with four constituencies, same as a city municipality. The other special administrative area is Bangkok, where both a council for the whole city as well as a council in each of the districts is elected. I'll cover these in more detail later, as we will see he local elections in Bangkok later this year.

Sawai Boonma on local administrations

Last week, in the opinion section of Bangkok Post was an article by economist Sawai Boonma titled On the fast track to becoming a failed state. A quite pessimistic of the current political situation in Thailand, the part on the local administration is worth repeating.

Most provinces, municipalities and local administrative districts are now largely controlled by politico-business oligarchies. Each oligarch uses a system of patronage to maintain its base.
Sometimes they fight but they also collude, especially at the national level. [..]
As a result, Thailand is now practically divided into fiefdoms controlled by shady people with money.

Province administration outside central town

Normally, the province hall (Sala Klang, ศาลากลางจังหวัด) is located right in the middle of the town with the same name. Often, there's even a full government center, including other offices like the Provincial Administrative Organization (PAO) and the provincial court (San Changwat, ศาลจังหวัด), sometimes even the district office of the Mueang district and the municipality, for example the one in Nonthaburi I have documented here already. But like every rule, there are the exceptions, when the original province hall became too small and not enough space was available to build the replacement in town anymore.

The first one I noticed was Kamphaeng Phet. Originally, the province hall was located close to the entrance of the historical park. Now, the old building is used by the district office instead, and the new province hall is located about 7 kilometer north of it in Nong Pling subdistrict, still in the Mueang district but outside the municipality. Judging from the satellite picture, the provincial court has moved to the new location as well, whereas the PAO is still at the old location, though I don't know which building it is exactly.

In Lampang, the old province hall area seems to be deserted completely, at least none of the office I know about is located in there now. The province hall is in Phra Bat subdistrict, 6 kilometer southeast of the old location. The PAO is even further away, in Sala subdistrict of Ko Khae district. The provincial court is located next to the province hall, while next to the old province hall the district court is found. The district office finally is still in a rather small building near the old administration center. For this case I have made a small map, as there are quite a lot of buildings concerned.

View Lampang government offices in a larger map

The final case I am aware of is the PAO of Phisanulok, which is at the road Phitsanulok to Nakhon Thai in Samo Khae subdistrict. However I wasn't able to find the building in the satellite image yet, so it may have moved just recently and so the building might just be too recent.

Thai MGRS grid

Ever since I was first infected with the idea of a Thai Geograph website - the blog One Tambon One Photo is the training ground for it - I had been slowly been implementing code for geographic coordinate transformation, mostly to be able to parse the coordinates in the boundary definition announcements. Now I had the necessary algorithms, understood the MGRS coordinate system used by geograph and how they define their squares, hecards and myriads, I now created some code to create these squares for Thailand as well.

View Larger Map
As you can see in the map, there are exactly 100 MGRS squares each covering 10,000 km² spread over Thailand, except those squares at the UTM zone boundary at 102° East. Someone better at graphic art can now use that KML file and the country boundaries to create a nice appealing emblem for Thai Geograph.

Actually, I did this coding not for this purpose, but to easier parse the coordinates in the Royal Gazette announcements - those few I tried sometimes had a wrong letter code, sometimes the letters were omitted as being clear from the rough location, or even had obvious wrong codes. With this and smaller scale grids I can easier notice where the subdistrict or village boundary marker is supposed to be, when the direct coordinate conversion fails.

By the way, my readers in Germany might be interested in the Geograph Germany, which just now reached 1% coverage - but still more than 300,000 square kilometer without a photo.

TAO election results

It seems most of my readers are currently either celebrating Songkhran, or using the holiday week for traveling, or more interested in the political gridlock after the dreadful events last Saturday - but since there are much better political blogs I don't want to touch this complicate topic here. So I just post a small update on the post last Thursday on the TAO by-elections last Sunday.

The website of Nong Bo announces the winners already, and not overly surprising both yellow-carded candidates could win again. However only the names of the winners are given, not the numbers of votes of each of the candidate.

• Ms. Itsari Tanprathumwong (นางสาวอิสรีย์ ตันประทุมวงษ์) is elected as TAO president
• Mr. Samai Butchot (นายสมัย บุตรโชติ) is elected as chairman for village 6.

For Hua Pho I cannot give any results, the news section on their website is still only test entries, and the latest at the Suphanburi Election Committee is the list of scheduled local elections in 2009.

TAO rename not approved by the name change committee

In the meeting of the municipal board 42/2008 on June 4, one of the decisions made was to upgrade the TAO Samnak Khun Nen (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลสำนักขุนเณร), Dong Charoen district, Phichit province, to a subdistrict municipality. As there is already one municipality with the same name - the former sanitary district covering the central parts of the subdistrict - the TAO had to be renamed with the upgrade. The municipal board chose the name Luang Pho Khian (เทศบาลตำบลหลวงพ่อเขียน), probably the name of a famous monk of the area. However, when it later had the announcement on the constituencies of the municipality, it was then named Wang Bong (เทศบาลตำบลวังบงค์).

The change from Luang Pho Khian to Wang Bong was however not mentioned in any of the other transcripts. But now I have found the decisions of the committee on name changes, the 2008 list shows that in meeting 3/2008 on June 4, this name change was denied, and in meeting 4/2008 on June 30 the name Wang Bong was approved instead.

Geocodes for Galyani Vadhana district

Three months after the district Galyani Vadhana was officially created, the list of codes for the administrative entities was updated accordingly. Though a code for the district was already assigned around 1997 when the district then-named Wat Chan (กิ่งอำเภอวัดจันทร์) was in process of being created, but then abandoned due to the Asian financial crisis. Since Galyani Vadhana district covers exactly the same area as this abandoned minor district, it was only sensible to use the old number 5026 - but for whatever reason DOPA chose 5025 instead, which was in the past assigned to a planned district Wiang Kham (กิ่งอำเภอเวียงคำ). The order of the three subdistricts (Tambon) wasn't possible to know before either, but since it followed the same order as they were mentioned in most new reports I had guessed these numbers correctly.

Code	Name		Old code
502501	บ้านจันทร์	Ban Chan	500306
502502	แม่แดด	Mae Daet	500309
502503	แจ่มหลวง	Chaem Luang	500310

The geocode table from DOPA does not include the villages (Muban), however since I don't think there was any renumbering of the villages within the subdistricts, the codes for them should be easy to guess. So for reference here is the full list of administrative villages in the district.

Subdistrict	Muban	Name		Code
Ban Chan	1	บ้านห้วยฮ่อม	Ban Huai Hom	50250101
	2	บ้านสันม่วง	Ban San Muang	50250102
	3	บ้านวัดจันทร์	Ban Wat Chan	50250103
	4	บ้านหนองเจ็ดหน่วย	Ban Nong Chet Nuai	50250104
	5	บ้านแจ่มน้อย	Ban Chaem Noi	50250105
	6	บ้านหนองแดง	Ban Nong Daeng	50250106
	7	บ้านเด่น	Ban Den	50250107
Mae Daet	1	บ้านแม่ผาปู	Ban Mae Pha Pu	50250201
	2	บ้านแม่ตะละ1	Ban Mae Tala	50250202
	3	บ้านแม่ตะละใต้	Ban Mae Tala Tai	50250203
	4	บ้านแม่แดดน้อย	Ban Mae Daed Noi	50250204
	5	บ้านห้วยปู	Ban Huai Pu	50250205
	6	บ้านดงสามหมื่น	Ban Dong Sam Muen	50250206
	7	บ้านแม่ตะละม้ง	Ban Mae Tala Mang	50250207
Chaem Luang	1	บ้านขุนแม่รวม	Ban Khun Mae Ruam	50250301
	2	บ้านกิ่วโป่ง	Ban Kio Pong	50250302
	3	บ้านแม่ละอุป2	Ban Mae La-up	50250303
	4	บ้านห้วยยา	Ban Huai Ya	50250304
	5	บ้านห้วยเขียดแห้ง	Ban Huai Khiat Haeng	50250305
	6	บ้านแจ่มหลวง	Ban Chaem Luang	50250306
	7	บ้านเสาแดง	Ban Sao Daeng	50250307

¹ In some sources listed as บ้านแม่ตะละเหนือ (Ban Mae Tala Nuea)
² Spelled แม่ละอูบ at DOPA, แม่ละอุป at TAO

The interesting question is why they did not choose 5026 as the code for the district. When in 2006 the district Wiang Kao (อำเภอเวียงเก่า) in Khon Kaen received the code 4029, since the codes 4026 to 4028 were assigned to planned districts abandoned in 1997, same as for Chiang Mai the numbers 5025 to 5028. I tried to send an email to DOPA in the vain hope of getting an explanation, but as usual - no reply.

TAO by-elections in Suphanburi

Whereas in Bangkok both government and the UDD demonstrators work hard on further destroying the image of Thailand to the outside world, in provincial Thailand the local election process continues as normal. In an article at the online news site ryt9 - who quite useful have RSS feeds for each news tag, including one for TAO news - I noticed one article last month on by-election for two subdistrict administrative organizations in Suphanburi, which will take place this Sunday.

The article published on March 6 is based on the announcement by the provincial election committee of Suphanburi, announcing the dates for application of candidates as well as for the by-elections, which are necessary because the previous election winner were disqualified due to voting fraud - sadly no details on what were the actual wrongdoings, or whether it were yellow or red cards.

In TAO Nong Bo (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลหนองบ่อ), Song Phi Nong district, both the president of the TAO as well as the chairman for village 6 have to elected. On the website of the TAO I found more details - president Ms. Itsari Tanprathumwong (นางสาวอิสรีย์ ตันประทุมวงษ์) is both the office-holder and candidate in the by-election, thus she only received a yellow card. The same happened to the chairman of village 6, who is also running again.

For TAO Huai Pho (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลหัวโพธิ์) only the president has to re-elected, however there I cannot find any detail on the last winner or the candidates for the by-election.

Pending municipal upgrade announcements in Royal Gazette

I already wondered for quite some time why so many of the status changes of municipalities haven't been officially announced in the Royal Gazette, even though the actual administrative act by the Ministry of Interior did already take effect for several years by now. Processing some older board meeting transcripts from 2007, I cam across 5/2007 from February 5 2007. This transcript contained both a draft notification (ร่างประกาศกระทรวงมหาดไทย) on the upgrade of Ban Dung to a town (เทศบาลเมืองบ้านดุง), it also contains the drafts of the Royal Gazette announcements for the upgrades of Tha Chang to a town (เทศบาลเมืองท่าช้าง) and of Khlong Chik to subdistrict municipality (เทศบาลตำบลคลองจิก). Whereas Khlong Chik was announced in the Gazette already in July 2007 just half year after the board meeting, the only mention of Tha Chang in the Gazette were the constituencies announced in May 2007.

The only thing which is added to the announcement - apart form the signature of course - is an appendix with the description of the boundary of the municipality including a map. So the only reason I can think of would be problems with the preparation of this appendix, maybe there are still some inaccuracies in the boundary description which need to be cleared before an authoritative map is officially announced.

Another Thai website spreading malware

Warning screen for amphoe.com last year

Since at least last Thursday, ThaiTambon.com has joined the club of high-profile Thai websites which have been hacked by using well-known security holes and have been converted into malware-spreading sites. Anyone using Firefox will now get a big red warning screen that accessing the site is not recommended, also any Google hits now have a warning line under the link, and won't lead to the infected site directly anymore.

For ThaiTambon it is really a loss, though the main focus of the site is the promotion of the OTOP (One Tambon One Product) products, it also contains information on all of the 7255 subdistricts, however of varying quality. Sometimes just the neighboring subdistricts, sometimes a full history and a list of all the villages. Though it thus can hardly be used as the sole source, it is a often a valuable tool for researching some local histories, so it'd be a loss if the webmaster won't fix the problem soon.

Other websites in this hall of shame, all being in this club for several weeks or months already, are the Thai senate, the upper house of the parliament, as well as the Royal Institute, the caretaker of Thai language. But failing to use the latest version of the content management system isn't the largest problem of the webmaster at Thaitambon, even more any attempt to contact them is doomed because they failed to keep their mailserver running. And I am sure this email is supposed to work, as on the archived version of the site in 2008 showed it.
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

webmaster@thaitambon.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
The recipient server did not accept our requests to connect.
[mail.thaitambon.com. (5): Connection refused]

Update As of April 8 the warning in Google has disappeared, so apparently the webmaster has cleaned the site now.

Outdated maps for Laos administrative divisions

I often complain about contradicting maps of the administrative entity boundaries, especially those at subdistrict level are often shows in widely varying ways. However, some month ago on the German Wikipedia we discovered an even more striking problem in the province maps of neighboring Laos.

Originally the article on the province Oudomxay (ອຸດົມໄຊ) claimed that it borders the Thai province Nan, however someone working in the area corrected it to be only Bokeo (ບໍ່ແກ້ວ) which borders Thailand. However since this change was unsourced and contradicted the maps available at Wikipedia then, hdamm tried to find confirm the claim and even went to the local bookstore and checked paper maps, but none confirmed this. When I tried my luck, I found both versions of maps in various websites, yet none seemed really authoritative. Finally, the book Atlas of Laos confirmed it, luckily the scan at Google books includes a district map. And after some further searching I finally even found the full answer - in the Bokeo article at the Encyclopedia of modern Asia it reads

The makeup of the province changed in 1992 when the districts of Paktha and Pha Oudom were moved to the jurisdiction of Bokeo province.

In the map above the two districts changed are highlighted in red. The map does not show the Nam Nhou special area (ເຂດພິເສດນ້ຳຍູ້), a new district of Bokeo created someday around 2006-07 - again very hard to find anything on this change. If anyone wonders - the numbers are the geocodes for the districts as used by the Department of Statistics of Laos.

What did the whole thing give me? I am now happy that it has the Royal Gazette online database to learn about such administrative changes in Thailand, so I don't have to rely on secondary sources with all their potential mistakes, or discover changes years after they happened. I was also able to find the whole 6 volume Encyclopedia of modern Asia for an incredible price of 25$ instead of 760$ at the non-profit second-hand bookseller BetterWorldBooks. Only problem - my bookshelf is more than full already...

Phuket town or Phuket city?

The newspaper Phuket Gazette had an interesting opinion article last Tuesday titled In defense of Phuket Town on the naming of the municipality in English. Since the municipality was upgraded to the highest municipal status (thesaban nakhon, เทศบาลนคร) in 2004 [Gazette], the technically correct way to name the municipality would be Phuket city. Though I haven't yet found any document by the Royal Institute with recommended translations for the municipality types, it is quite standard to refer to the highest municipal level by the English word "city" - the only one where the translation is not obvious is the thesaban tambon. Yet according to Phuket Gazette, still the predominant naming of the municipality among the English-speaking residents is Phuket town. I guess most of them actually have no idea that there things like the different levels of municipalities, or even at the differences between province, district and municipality, so it will be mostly the nitpickers who have changed their wording after the upgrade. Another problem is the lack of clear definition of town versus city, unlike in German where it has different terms for city levels as well, defined by the International Statistics Conference in 1887.

• Landstadt (rural town), less than 5,000 citizen
• Kleinstadt (minor town), 5,000 to 20,000 citizen
• Mittelstadt (middle town), 20,000 to 100,000 citizen
• Großstadt (major town), more than 100,000 citizen

However, only Kleinstadt and Großstadt ever made it into the normal spoken German, I read the term Landstadt for the first time today, and also Mittelstadt I only noticed on the German Wikipedia.

Though the definitions differ, in the articles on the Thai districts on the German Wikipedia the above names were used for the municipal levels, only using simply "Stadt" instead of "Mittelstadt". And the word "Kleinstadt" sounds much better than "subdistrict municipality", which seems to be the standard translation for thesaban tambon (เทศบาลตำบล). And there's the even more interesting question - do the citizen of a subdistrict municipality which covers a whole rural subdistrict actually feel they live in anything like a town? Wouldn't a name like "township" or "commune" be more fitting for those subdistrict municipalities which were originally sanitary districts and only cover the more densely populated central areas of a subdistrict, whereas all the TAO now upgraded usually cover a whole subdistrict including vast areas covered by fields, forest or other sparsely unpopulated land.