Thursday linkage

Buadhai has done a short visit to Surin, and photographed the city pillar shrine there. An interesting side-note is that

Most city pillars in Thailand are not that old and were built in provincial capitals to symbolize central power. This one was erected in 1974.

And quite fitting was his visit to Phimai on the return way, a nice comparison of the modern Khmer-style city pillar shrine, and the original (although reconstructed) Khmer buildings of Phimai.

City Pillar of Phana, Amnat Charoen

City pillar of Phana
photo courtesy of Lawrence

At the small municipality of Phana in Amnat Charoen province, there are big plans for the city pillar (Lak Mueang, หลักเมือง). The blogger Lawrence who lives in this remote town in the northeast of Thailand reports on the history of the pillar and the way more ancient four corner stones, which are already nearly hidden due to the higher street level. The pillar itself is only ten years old, as it was erected when the almost forgotten corner stones were unearthed. These corner stones however are already 300 years old.

The municipality now plans to build a real shrine for the city pillar, judging from the drawing would be of similar size as the city pillar shrines in the provincial capitals. The shrine will however be build near the current site, and the spirits of the pillar were already notified about the change as well.

One could of course wonder why a small municipality, which is not even the seat of the district office, should have such a big city pillar shrine, or why it actually has a city pillar at all - there are still some provinces which have no city pillar in their capital. But historically, Phana was more significant in the past than it is today. In 1879, it became a Mueang under Ubon Ratchathani, at that time named Phana Nikhom (พนานิคม). With the thesaphiban reforms, this Mueang became a district within the province, and since the district office went to Ban Khulu (according to amphoe.com this was in 1914) it was renamed accordingly in 1917 [Gazette]. That district is today Trakan Phuet Phon of Ubon Ratchathani. The present district of Phana was created in 1951 by splitting of the area around the historical origin from Trakan Phuet Phon [Gazette]. The current district office is however a bit outside the historical center in Phra Lao subdistrict.

I wasn't aware of Phana's historical grandeur, and only with to the comments of Lawrence was hinted that I should have checked my own sources which already have all the answers. Especially the list of Mueang in Isan I still haven't found the time and patience to work through...

Photo albums of administrative offices

Khanom District Office, Nakhon Si Thammarat

For some time I already had started with uploading my photos of the various administrative offices on various web 2.0 sites, but never made it a systematically and complete yet, and never could decide which one to use - Picasa, Panoramio or Flickr, or also Wikimedia Commons. But as with the start of Google+ (thanks to Rikker I am online there already) Picasa effectively dropped their quota and made all images of less than 2048 pixel free - so I can now use that image storage without ever worry about running out of space. I have already uploaded some new photos to the albums below, but still have to go through my archive to complete the albums.

Province Halls	ศาลากลาง	Album
District Office	ที่ว่าการอำเภอ	Album
Province Court	ศาลจังหวัด	Album
Municipal and TAO offices	สำนักงานเทศบาล/สำนักงานอบต	Album
PAO offices	สำนักงานอบจ	Album
City Pillar Shrines	หลักเมือง	Album

The photos are all cc-by-sa, the same license as photos on Wikipedia. So anyone can reuse them, only have to give credit to me as the photographer. And also can upload them to Wikipedia, as I somehow never find the time and mood to fill the more and more bureaucratic forms for a simple upload of a self-created photo.

Lak Mueang of Phuket

Lak Mueang Thaland Tha Ruea
Photo by Ian Reide

In case you follow the comments on this blog as well, you already read that my reader Ian is currently in Phuket exploring, including topics related to my blog. And since he is also fascinated by the city pillar shrines (Lak Mueang, หลักเมือง), he found out why there is no major shrine in the provincial capital like in (most) other provinces.

In Google Maps a city pillar shrine for Phuket can be found way outside the provincial capital, close to the Heroines monument and the Thalang national museum. As it is not as big as those in other provinces, and a bit off the main road, I haven't spotted it myself during the few days I have been on Phuket so far. But I had marked it in my Google Map of the city pillar shrines.

When Ian was now exploring Phuket, he found out that there is not just this one city pillar shrine, but a total of four spread over the island. Actually, those he talked with claimed there are five, but the fifth was nowhere to find. I haven't been able find anything in the net either, for example Kanchanapisek lists only four as well. Quite notably the current photos show those of Choeng Thale very much restored, on Kanchanapisek most have no shrine around them and look quite weathered - the one in Si Sunthon however had a better look in past.

The four city pillars are the following, all located within Thalang district:

Thalang Tha Ruea	Si Sunthon subdistrict	หลักเมืองถลางท่าเรือ	Waymarking, Kanchanapisek
Thalang Mueang Mai	Thep Krasattri subdistrict	หลักเมืองถลางเมืองใหม่	Waymarking, Kanchanapisek
Thalang Pa Sak	Choeng Thale subdistrict	หลักเมืองถลางป่าสัก	Waymarking, Kanchanapisek
Thalang Lephang	Choeng Thale subdistrict	หลักเมืองถลางเลพัง	Waymarking, Kanchanapisek

View Lak Mueang in a larger map

City pillar shrine for Chonburi

Some weeks ago Richard Barrow made an mobile blogging tour to some attractions in Chonburi province. Reporting live on Twitter on his trip, once he reached the Phra Phutthasihing Pavilion close to the government offices I wondered whether the city pillar shrine isn't located close to that place as well, as it is in many provinces.

At first, Google found an article at waymarking.com, where it was claimed that this shrine is also the city pillar shrine. The author of that placemark wrote

In other shrines I have seen there have been pillars or other secular material of some sort in the shrine, identifying the province. Not so here. Also, I have not been able to find a written source that identifies the shrine as the Lak Mueang of Chonburi. Piecing together verbal accounts from city officials, it seems that this building is both the City Pillar Shrine and a Buddhist shrine, a dual purpose.

Since Richard wasn't able to find any pillar-like structure there nor any other hint of it being the city pillar shrine, I tried to find other source. Finally the Pattaya Mail issue from April 25 2008 gave a better hint - the article titled Women’s prison to make way for city shrine states that a city pillar shrine is planned to be built at the site currently occupied by the women's prison, which is to be relocated to a more spacious site. As this was from 2008, one should expect some development there by now. However, Richard tweeted

There is a prison opposite but the guard tower seems manned.

So it seems Chonburi in fact has no city pillar shrine yet, unlike what I was expecting. When I was researching for the Wikipedia article on the city pillars, I found one source which states that in 1992 it was decreed that all province should have such a shrine. It is rather surprising that a quite wealthy province like Chonburi did not built one yet.

Administrative offices in Nonthaburi

For the province Nonthaburi many of the offices are placed together in a single compound, the Nonthaburi government center. Not only comfortable for anyone having to do business with any of the these authorities, but also for me to be able to photograph all the offices with just a little bit of walking.

The last part of the provincial slogan - งามน่ายลศูนย์ราชการ - claims that the central administrative building is "beautiful, worth looking at". However to me the province hall looks just like all the others, yet when researching for the article on Nonthaburi province some years ago I came across a site which claimed that the province hall was awarded by the Ministry of Interior as the most beautiful province hall once.

In front of the province hall is a statue of King Chulalongkorn, together with two Yellow Flame trees (Peltophorum pterocarpum, which is both the provincial symbol flower and tree. When I visited there, it also had lots of billboards around there, the candidate lists and other announcements around the election for the provincial administrative organization (องค์การบริหารส่วนจังหวัดนนทบุรี). This local government entity sharing responsibility for the whole province with the province hall has its office next to the district office, but since I did not look for it nor with my limited Thai noticed it on the map at the entrance I missed to photograph that one.

Directly at the entrance of the compound is the city pillar shrine, though beautiful its architecture is quite standard style of these buildings. The first office building at the entrance is the municipality office (สำนักงานเทศบาลนครนนทบุรี), followed by the district office of Mueang Nonthaburi (ที่ว่าการอำเภอเมืองนนทบุรี).

The final important building I also missed to photograph is the provincial court, with the family and juvenile court directly next to it. The two courts actually use a different entrance from the main road and therefore were also omitted on the map at the entrance to the main compound. For the other buildings in the compound see in the map below, where I marked all the buildings I coulhttp://mt0.google.com/vt/lyrs=m@116&hl=en&x=0&y=1&z=2&s=Gd identify.

View Larger Map
The government center was opened in 1992, but from what I read already at the old location all these offices were in a single compound. Just a few months ago, this old building had been converted into the Museum of Nonthaburi (พิพิธภัณฑ์จังหวัดนนทบุรี), which from that review sounds like a very interesting place to visit. It is now definitely on my list of places to go next time I am in Bangkok.

Administrative offices of Phetchaburi

This year I happened to stop over in Phetchaburi two times, and used the time to collect photos of the administrative offices. Which was rather easy as they are all located close to each other on Ratchawithi road, and easy to find as on Phetkasem from bangkok it's just driving straight on instead of taking the turn to the south next to Khao Wang.

When driving that way, the first place to see is the city pillar shrine (Lak Mueang), a small shrine located in a nice park with the wooden pillar covered by gold in the center. And as it has a pond within the park, one can of course by food to feed the fish inside. And also as usual with such attractions, it has several souvenir carts as well as small eateries at the parking lot.

The actual offices are located 500 meter further down the street. Starting on the northern side, it has the district office (ที่ว่าการอำเภอ) of Mueang Phetchaburi district first. As there are a few additional buildings between the office and the street I could not get the standard view of the whole office this time - and now I look at the building in Google Earth again I think I have been on the backside only and thus missed the better view on the other side - so I have to return there to check next time.

A few buildings further down the street comes the municipality office (สำนักงานเทศบาล) of the town (thesaban mueang) Phetchaburi (เทศบาลเมืองเพชรบุรี).

Now turning south to the other side of the road it has the province hall (ศาลากลางจังหวัด), the central administration for the whole province. I am not sure what were the two smaller buildings in between - maybe the PAO office is among them-, but then on the other end of the block opposite the district office it has the provincial court (ศาลจังหวัด).

View Phetchaburi administration in a larger map

Administrative offices of Samut Songkhram province

Like in several other provinces, in Samut Songkhram the main offices of the administration are located within one compound. When we went to the floating market in Amphawa we had to pass that compound, so I could shortly stop there and walk around to take photos of all the buildings.

The main building is of course the province hall (Sala Klang, ศาลากลาง), which also has the main parking lot in front. Since we went there on the weekend the parking lot was completely deserted, and I was the only person strolling around there.As usual, a statue is placed in front, if I am not totally mistaken it's king Chulalongkorn, similar with the statue on the Royal Plaza in Bangkok.

East of the parking lot is the city pillar shrine (San Lak Mueang, ศาลหลักเมือง), a small building with the wooden pillar inside.As usual, this pillar is covered with gold and has colorful clothes stripes around it in order to honor it. The shrine itself however looked like it needed a little renovation already, as the color started to fall off. Especially that small tree starting to grow in the roof shouldn't be there, but for the photo it adds some nice green color.

Continuing along the road to the north next comes the provincial court (San Changwat, ศาลจังหวัด). The photo I made isn't that good as there were too many bush and trees blocking the view, and I did not want to walk inside on the grass to find only to find a better spot for the photograph. The next building however was easy to photograph again, the district office of Mueang Samut Songkhram district (ที่ว่าการอำเภอเมืองสมุทรสงคราม). For a change this office did not have the photo of HM the King, but of princess Sirindhorn placed in the frame in front.

Returning to the parking I lot I chose not to walk the same way back, but instead walk inside the compound to the backside of the province hall. This turned out to be a very good decision, since to my surprise I then found the building of the Provincial Administrative Organization (PAO) as well.I hardly ever find this office marked on any maps, usually only the above mentioned province hall and district office are shown.

I only could not take any photo of the municipal office, which is located on the other side of the street - simply because they put a thick sun-shading net over the parking lot in front of the building, so it was impossible to take a photo showing the facade of the building.

And as usual, I have created a Google Map with all the offices marked.



View Samut Songkhram administration in a larger map

City pillar shrine in Suphanburi

Today just a small pointer to the Tourism Thailand blog of Eugene Tang (I envy him for being able to travel Thailand and write about it on behalf of the TAT), who just recently posted on the city pillar shrine (Lak Mueang) of Suphanburi (ศาลหลักเมืองสุพรรณบุรี), with lots of beautiful photos and also some on the history of the temple.

Suphanburi is on my travel itinerary for the forthcoming trip to Thailand, so I will visit that shrine then as well. The photo in this post is therefore not mine, but the one HDamm uploaded to Wikipedia from his visit there in 2006. I will probably report on my trip there in my own travel blog, hopefully my photos will be of similar quality as those by Eugene Tang.

Another English blogpost of this site with many photos can be found in panalwayscute's blog.

Administrative offices in Prachuap Khiri Khan

As the town Prachuap Khiri Khan itself is rather small, compared to the size of the province, the important administrative offices are all close to each other. I went there just once, taking the dinner break there on the road trip from Surat Thani back to Bangkok. As it was just a stopover and everyone already tired and wanting to be back home, I only had short time to take some photos.

When entering the town, the provincial hall (Sala Klang) is hardly to be missed, a large building with a typical blue roof directly in the extension of the road. However the most important place I wanted to see was the city pillar shrine (Lak Mueang), which is located close by as well. The building style of the shrine is different from that in other provinces, as it is built in Khmer style modeled after the several Khmer temple ruins found especially in the northeast of Thailand. I don't know why this style was chosen as Prachuap Khiri Khan has no Khmer ruins. Just speculating - when the province Prachuap Khiri Khan was created, the now Cambodian province Koh Kong located opposite the Gulf of Thailand was named Prachanta Khiri Khet, a kind of a sister province. Maybe someone who can read the sign to the right can shed a light on this.

The only other office I could take a photo was the provincial court (San Changwat), located directly opposite the road of the province hall. While I tried to walk little bit more to search, I sadly could not remember the exact location of the other two important ones - the district office of the Mueang Prachuap Khiri Khan district and the municipality office of the town Prachuap Khiri Khan, so both have no photo yet. The PAO of Prachuap Khiri Khan seems to have a separate office, as I guess the one on the top banner is the office building. But I have no idea where it is located, I even cannot find a street address on that website.


View Larger Map

City pillar shrines outside provincial towns

When I wrote about the city pillar shrines the first time, I shortly mentioned the three cases I knew where it had a city pillar shrine not located in a provincial capital. By some random googleing I found the blog of Sing, and while introducing his hometown Kantharalak he also posted photos of the city pillar shrine there. This now makes it the fourth of these shrines not in the provincial capital.

• Phra Pradaeng, Samut Prakan. The city pillar shrine is quite old already, and continued to exist after the province was abolished in 1932.
• Trang's city pillar shrine (see photo) is still located at the original location of the town, which was moved first to the coast and later further inland at the beginning of the 20th century.
• Mae Sai, Chiang Rai. Might date back to the time when Mae Sai was a Mueang (though not one reporting directly to Bangkok) and not yet incorporated into Chiang Rai province as a district.
• Kantharalak, Sisaket. Might be similarily old, according to amphoe.com Kantharalak goes back to Mueang Uthumphon Phisai.

Below is a Google Map with the location of those shrines I either visited already, or could proof the location. On a scrapbook at Wikipedia I already collected more, including information on the history of each building though that is hard to find without reading Thai. Though that page is not an article, it can be edited by anyone like almost every page on Wikipedia, so if you can share information you're welcome to put it right there. I have also created a photo album with all my city pillar shrine photos.

View Larger Map

Administrative offices in Surat Thani city

In Surat Thani, the administrative offices for the province, municipality and district are located at different places throughout the city, quite in contrast to to Saraburi where they are all located within one block.

The province hall (Sala Klang Changwat) and the provincial court (San Changwat) are located next to each other in two large buildings. Between the two buildings is a stone with the geographical location - 9° 7′ 54.32484″ North, 99° 19′ 53.90800″ East in WGS84 - but strangely this is the coordinate of a location 110 m south of the location of that stone both in Google Earth as well as according to my GPS tracker. In front of them is a large open space covered with grass, used for parades or other ceremonies. At the western side of the field is a statue of King Chulalongkorn (Rama V). The whole complex was build in the 1980s, after the old province hall was destroyed by a bomb planted by communist insurgents on March 19 1982. 5 people died.

The old province hall was located directly at the Tapi river, the place which is now occupied by the city pillar shrine. It was build in 1995 on the open space, which was used as a small sports fields after the old province hall was torn down.

The municipal office is located not far from the old bus terminal of the city. It also has a sports field in front, and one can often see locals doing exercise there in the evening. As one of the tasks of the municipality is the fire protection, the fire station is located directly next to the municipal office.

The last of the administrative offices within the city is the district office of the Mueang district. It is located not far from the city pillar shrine. The most irrelevant news about this office - within the last year it received a new painting, now it has a yellowish color, last year it was still white.

Another place is the official residence of the provincial governor, a villa located directly next to the Tapi river near the city pillar. There are of course many more offices from the central administration, for example the land registration office directly next to the district office, or the juvenile and family court next to the city pillar, but I left out these from both the above list as well as this map below.

View Larger Map

City pillar shrine of Saraburi

The last station of our family trip last year was Saraburi, where we stopped for lunch in a restaurant. As my brother in law lives and works in Saraburi I asked him whether he can get me to the city pillar as well, but he had to admit that he don't know the location. I hadn't seen it marked on any map either, just remembered that the province hall was not far from the train station. So when we drove through the city center around the area where I had the province hall in my mental map, I noticed something which look like the city pillar shrine, so after lunch I asked to stop there quickly. And I spotted correctly, it was the city pillar shrine, right next to the province hall, so I could take photos of both.



It's just sad I did not have a good city map with me then, because both the district office of the Mueang district as well as the municipal office of the town are located very close to the province hall. But with the family waiting in car for their crazy farang to take photos of boring places, I did not walked around more than necessary, so I missed these two buildings. For the next time I have now made a small Google map with the location of all four places. Just sad the still there are now hires satellite data for this area.







View Larger Map



The city pillar shrine was apparently built quite recently, according to the only English resource I found on the web so far it was built in 1977, and renovated and altered in 2001. The reason why the province did not have an older city pillar might be because it was just moved to its present location in 1896. Originally the province center was in modern-day Sao Hai district, and was moved when the railway was built to a place with railway station. Sao Hai itself has a special pillar by itself. The name Sao Hai (เสาไห้) means "crying pillar", which according to the local legend is a pillar from the province which was selected to become the city pillar of Bangkok. It was a nearly perfect pillar, but it arrived too late and the official pillar was already chose, and it only became a secondary pillar. This made the pillar sad, it returned home and sunk in the Pa Sak river. The local people heard the crying and built a shrine for it, the Chao Mae Takhian Tong Shrine which is now in the temple Wat Sung, close to the district office of Sao Hai. That shrine is definitely on my list of places I need to visit.

Mae Sai district office

The northernmost district office of Thailand is the one of Mae Sai district in Chiang Rai province. It is located about 1 kilometer from the boundary control point to Burma (Myanmar) on Thai highway 1. Nearly directly across the street is the municipal office, I already used the photo of that one earlier.



I noticed the office when we entered Mae Sai. My Thai family just wanted to do shopping in the markets, while I then went to see the temple Wat Phra That Doi Wao and also climbed up the staircase to the viewpoint. When leaving the town, we then stopped shortly so I could do these photos. And luckily there was more to see than just a standard district office building.



Next to the district office is a statue of a historic king or prince. Sadly I haven't written down the words on the statue foundation, so I can only guess how is honored there. One history of Mae Sai mentions a Phraya Khom Dam (พระยาขอมดำ), leader of Mueang Yom in the 11th century. As I actually cannot read that history yet, the assumption that it is him on that monument is just an "educated guess", as that name is mentioned so often and is the name with the highest title in that history. This figure is also featured in the seal of the municipality Mae Sai. If someone can translate that history for me - it'd make a great addition to the Wikipedia article on Mae Sai...



Something which caught me by surprise was the fact that there is also a City Pillar shrine (Lak Mueang) next by. Luckily they placed a small sign there which I noticed when jumping out of the car and walked to the district office. I knew before that there is at least one city pillar in a town which is not a provincial capital, Phra Pradaeng province was abolished in 1932, but of course the pillar stayed. However Mae Sai wasn't a province before, if I'm not totally wrong it wasn't even a Mueang before the province Chiang Rai was formally created in 1910. It'd be interesting to know how comes this town got a city pillar, and when.

City pillars

When I first came to visit the town Surat Thani, which sadly has only very few beautiful old temples, one building along the drive through the center looked rather striking to me. However I did not pass it again that year, so I had to search the internet at home to find what was that building and finally learned that it is the City Pillar Shrine (หลักเมือง, Lak Mueang), considered to house a guardian spirit for the town.

Nowadays every provincial capital has one building like that, many built rather recently. For example the one in Surat Thani was built around 1995 at the former location of the provincial hall, which had to torn down after it was seriously damaged in 1982 by a bomb planted by communist insurgents. In some other provinces these shrines are quite old, for example the Chinese style shrine in Songkhla. Trang is also a special case, where the shrine is located far outside the modern city, which was moved in the beginning of the 20th century to a less flood-prone location. Not only the modern-day provinces have a city pillar - Phra Pradaeng has one as it was a province till 1932, and also Mae Sai, though it never was a province.

As these shrines form the mythological center of each province I started to collect photos of these shrines, every time I visit a new town I try to get a chance to see and photograph the city pillar shrine. On a scrapbook at Wikipedia I collect notes, which might grow into articles on each of these shrines one day.