Cancelled new provinces - Hua Hin

In August 2006 the Thai government suddenly came out with the idea of creating a new province around the popular sea bath Hua Hin, to be created for HM King Bhumiphol's 80th birthday one year later. Also the name of this new province was to be decided by the king himself. Thanks to the online archive of The Nation, the original newspaper article from that time is still available.

This new province was set to contain (from the north to the south, see the map above) the district Cha-Am from Phetchaburi province, and the three northern districts of Prachuap Khiri Khan province - Hua Hin, Pran Buri and Sam Roi Yot. Especially Hua Hin, but to a lesser degree also Cha-Am (see photo) have huge income from the tourist centers there, so cutting these out of their previous provinces would remove a lot of the income from them. Also, a province with such a lot of income would be popular post for cronies. Other criticism I have heard was this proposal was an attempt of gerrymandering, or to calm down the King's anger on Thaksin's style of government. The related thread in the 2bangkok forum is full of such criticism. One of the few pro's for a new province - the large size of Prachuap Khiri Khan - was alleviated by the fact a branch province hall in the north of the province already exists.

But as this proposal was made shortly before the coup which ousted Thaksin from office - he just returned from the 17 months of exile now - the new government controlled by the military apparently shelved the proposal, as I haven't heard anything about it anymore since then. But it's of course also possible I just missed the announcement of the scrapping of this plan. Besides - the 80th birthday of the King is over already, so now it would be too late for this birthday gift anyway.

While the creation of a whole province in honor of the King would have been something new, districts were created in his name before. In 1996, five districts were created on December 5, the birthday of the king, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his ascension to the throne. All five districts were named Chaloem Phra Kiat (เฉลิมพระเกียรติ), an honorific way of addressing a member of the royal family.

Census 2010 preparations

Thailand will conduct the next national census - including both housing and population - in 2010. The ten year rhythm was adopted in 1970, following the United Nations recommendation to hold the national census in each year ending with zero. This forthcoming census will be the 11th census, earlier ones where done in 1909, 1919, 1927, 1937, 1947, and then since 1960 every 10 years. Also since 1960, the National Statistics Office (NSO, สำนักงานสถิติแห่งชาติ) is responsible to take out the census. Some more background on the forthcoming census compared to the previous ones can be found in a paper by Jirawan Boonperm presented at an ASEAN meeting in 2006.

The results of the 2000 census are available on the NSO website, partially as PDF documents, partially as Excel sheets. Note that even the NSO admits that these data have their problems, especially the population number in Bangkok is in real higher than counted - but in fact the population number by the Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA) is even half a million lower than the 6.3 million counted in the 2000 census.

Municipalities created in fiscal year 2547/2548

After I got hinted to a list of municipality creation in last year, Google helped me to find the same for 2005, hidden deep inside thailocaladmin.go.th.

Unlike last year, in 2005 there were much less entries in this list, only 5 thesaban tambon upgraded to thesaban mueang, and 13 TAO upgraded to thesaban tambon. While the upgrades have all been announced in the Royal Gazette already, there were apparently three announcements for the creations, which I already listed earlier as still pending announcement. All there were signed in June 2005, but one from August was published in September. I start to doubt these are really not yet published, and more think they might be simply wrongly indexed in the Gazette database - which would be odd as unlike the historic announcement no-one needs to type the title anymore, everything can be done with copy-and-paste.

Mueang of Sukhothai kingdom

The controversial Ramkhamhaeng stele is the oldest proof of the administrative subdivision of a Tai kingdom, as well as the oldest written text in Thai script. Some scholars doubt the authenticity of this stele however, claiming it was written much later due to linguistic oddities, while others strongly doubt it could be made up in the 19th century as it refers to places rediscovered in the 20th century and long forgotten when the later King Mongkut discovered the stele in 1833. A whole collection of papers on this topic was published by the Siam Society in 1991, however I have only one of the texts within that collection - David K. Wyatt's Studies in Thai History contains the one titled Contextual Arguments for the Authenticity of the Ramkhamhaeng Inscription.

Praising King Ramkhamhaeng (ca. 1239–1317) achievements for his kingdom, it also lists cities (Mueang) and minor kingdoms under the overlordship of Sukhothai in the last part of the fourth side. However this does not mean that these areas were part of a nation-state like the modern-day Thailand, all of these were rather independent kingdoms on their own who just had swear an oath of allegiance to the overlord, pay tribute and help in case of a military conflict.

• East: Sara Luang, Song Khwae, Lam, Bachai, Sakha, Wiang Chan, Wiang Kham
• South: Khonti, Phra Bang, Phraek, Suphanaphum, Ratchaburi, Phetchaburi, Si Thammarat
• West: Chod, … (unreadable) , Hongsawati
• North: Phrae, Man, N… (unreadable), Phlua, Chawa
  

Some of the names are directly identified as they still have the same name today, like Wiang Chan (Vientiane) or (Nakhon) Si Thammarat. Others changed their name, so Song Khwae is the old name of Phitsanulok, or are now better known in a different name, like Hongsawati which is the Mon name of Pegu (Bagan). I think I once saw the above list with all names matched to their modern-day name, but sadly cannot find it anymore.

The whole inscription in both Thai and English together with a little more on the controversy around it can be found in this blog posting, while here there are photos of the original piece.

Interesting new blog

Nopphadon has started a blog named Development Strategy, and as he has written his thesis about Research on the Creation of the Community Development Strategy by Participant Community Planning he is quite familiar with the local administration system in Thailand. His most recent posting was a partial translation of the Tambon Council and Tambon Administration Authority Act - just sad that this act is one of the very few which already have an English translation available on the web. But I am really looking forward to what he will put on his blog next.

My Thailand library

As I was always an avid reader, I started to buy lots of books of Thailand when my interest into this country was started. I quickly finished with the standard books, like David K. Wyatt's Thailand - A short history, so now I often buy some strange topic books when browsing through the bookstores of Bangkok. Especially White Lotus Press has some very odd (but nevertheless interesting) titles in their catalog, like the reprints of historical books.

To give other Wikipedians the chance to use my library, and maybe even get to find a look into book I wasn't able to find, I started to list my most important books on Thai topics on a special page within Wikipedia. I now noticed the website librarything.com where one can do this with a much larger audience. It's limited to 200 books in the free version, which should be well enough to hold all my Thai books for the near future. But maybe I'll upgrade to the full account once they add collections to allow to categorize books beyond the simple tags. Anyway, you can see all those books I added there, or even subscribe to RSS feed to get updates whenever I add a new one. I think I have added all notable already. Of course I will write a review here when I find something new (or antiquarian) fitting to the topic of this blog, not just on this library thing.

Quite a lot of my books there are none of the other member's library, so librarything is not yet the place for me to find interesting new/old books for Thai topics. A really huge bibliography of Thai topics is the Leeds Thai politics bibliography, compile by Dr. Michael Nelson.

Muak Lek district office

Here's another photo of a district office, this time the one of Muak Lek (มวกเหล็ก), in the east of Saraburi Province at the boundary to Nakhon Ratchasima. It is the same building I have chosen for the title bar of the blog, since it's both in the standard building style of district offices, and I simply like the photo - normally it always has cars parking in front of such buildings. According to a WinWord document from the website of Saraburi province, this office was opened on May 7 1970. There is nothing special about this building, except maybe the flower pots apparently sponsored by Siam City Cement company. Several cement plants are located in the district, including of course one from Siam Cement.



It was quite a coincidence that I could take that photo. We were on the way from one Vin de Ray (แวงเดอร์เรย์) winery to the Rabiang Ruea (ระเบียงเรือ) resort near Khao Yai National Park, and took one wrong turn which got us into the town Muak Lek itself. I got the chance to jump out of car for a quick photo, and then had to guide how to get back to Mittraphap highway - with a little luck I succeeded to do so even without having a map at hand.