Origin of the name "Sala Klang"

Issue 5 of the @Amphoe magazin is available online now, and probably being available in print very soon. In their section "Things you may not know about Administration" (Page 21), they quote from the book "Thesaphiban" by Prince Damrong, father of the administrative system still in use today.

However, the governor’s home differed from other people's homes in being in a highly secure area centered on the governor's home known as a chuan. As such, government business would be conducted in a large pavilion on nearby grounds outside the bulwarks surrounding the governor's residence. This pavilion became known as the sala klang ("central pavilion").

Several of these former governor homes have been preserved, and at least two of them can be visited - the National Museum in Songkhla is in the former residence of the province governor, also the Ratchaburi National Museum is in the former provincial administrative building dating back to 1922, and the former residence of the Monthon administrator is located right next to it. And there are probably many more preserved, those two are just the ones I visited.

Population statistics 2015

Last week, the Department of Provincial Administration officially published the population numbers as of December 31st 2015. The reason why I said officially - the numbers were actually already available before January 18th, when I downloaded them and added them into my XML structure. I even added them in several WikiData items already. Sadly, the actual population data is only linkable at province and district level, the one for the whole country needs a POST call and thus cannot be linked, so can only be reached from the DOPA website itself.

As usual, this population number only includes the registered Thai residents, and since often Thais are still registered at other places than their actual residence, these numbers are to be taken with care. The census data however is supposed to list the actual residence, and also includes foreigners. Anyway, according to this statistics

• Thailand has a population of 65,729,098, of which 32,280,886 are male and 33,448,212 female.
• Compared to 2014, the population has increased by 604,382 or 0.9%.
• Bangkok remains the most populous province with 5,696,409 citizen, followed by Nakhon Ratchasima with 2,628,818 and Ubon Ratchathani with 1,857,429 (Chiang Mai is only the 5th).
• The least populated provinces are Ranong with 187,536 and Samut Songkhram with 194,376 citizen.

Only other thing which I noticed during the download - the subdistrict municipality Klet Kaeo (เทศบาลตำบลเกล็ดแก้ว) in Chonburi province now has received its own geocode 2060, which is not yet listed in the CCAATT list.

New administrative village in Phichit

Last week, the creation of a new administrative village (Muban) in Phichit province was announced in the Royal Gazette. Signed by the province governor on December 30 and published February 4th, it became effective the day after publication. Unless there were announcements which didn't make it to the Royal Gazette, this was the first new Muban since January 2014.

Mu 2 of Nong Sano subdistrict (ตำบลหนองโสน), Sam Ngam district was split, the northern part making up the new Mu 20. As both Mu 2 and Mu 20 cover the central settlement of Nong Sano, both are named Ban Nong Sano (บ้านหนองโสน). The announcement includes the boundary definition of both the newly created as well as the modified Muban, which I have tried to translate into a little map. The boundary is defined by some fixed points and a natural boundary between them, however not in all cases I could find such a natural boundary, so I just draw a straight line instead. Sadly the website of the TAO Nong Sano is no longer online, and the interesting pages aren't archived in archive.org, so I cannot check if there are any detailed information on the original size of the Muban - but with those boundaries I draw Google Maps calculated that Mu 20 covers an area of 4.8 km², and Mu 2 now covers 3.9 km².

Muban rename in Sukhothai

Another administrative village has changed its name as decided in the 3rd meeting of board to consider name changes in this year. Last week, the rename of Ban Wang Mai Charoen Suk (บ้านวังใหม่เจริญสุข), village 11 of Mueang Kao subdistrict, Mueang Sukhothai district, was announced in the Royal Gazette. The new name is Ban Saen To (บ้านแสนตอ). Translating the village names literally, this means that "New palace growing happiness" becomes "Hundred thousand stumps".

The administrative village was created in 2003 by splitting of parts of Mo 4, Ban Wang Takhro (บ้านวังตะคร้อ) [Gazette], and is located in the north of Mueang Kao subdistrict, aroung five kilometer northwest of Sukhothai historical park. Thanks to the Gazette announcement on the creation of this village with the exact boundary definition, I could find the sign at the beginning of the village in Streetview. And even the office of the village headman has a location page on Google plus already, but no sign around that house to confirm its location being correct.

Muban rename in Chiang Rai

Yesterday the rename of an administrative village in Chiang Rai was announced in the Royal Gazette. Mu 10 of Si Kham subdistrict, Mae Chan district changes its name from Ban Mae Kham Phatthana (บ้านแม่คำพัฒนา) to Ban Si Kham (บ้านศรีค้ำ). This change was approced by the board to consider name changes in their 3rd meeting this year on September 24, and the announcement was signed by the province governor of Chiang Rai on October 15. As it does not mention any specific date on which it became effective, I guess it became effective same day as it was signed.

As I cannot find any Gazette announcement on the creation of this Muban, it was probably created before 2002 - but after 1984 as it wasn't part of the subdistrict when that was created [Gazette]. By the name of the Muban I believe it was split off from Mu 3 (Ban Mae Kham Lak Chet), and since it is now renamed to the same name as the subdistrict I guess it is located in the most populated part of the subdistrict along Phahayothin highway.

What's wrong with law.moi.go.th?

One of the Thai government websites which gave me lots of early information on planned administrative changes - especially the municipal upgrades - is the site of the Office of Legal Affairs of the Ministry of Interior (สำนักกฎหมาย สำนักงานปลัดกระทรวงมหาดไทย), found at law.moi.go.th. However, for more than a year already, I get nothing but connection timeouts when I try to open that site. Even services like "Down For Everyone Or Just Me" show it offline. Yet, strangely, Google still is able to access it, so the Google cache is an awkward backdoor to access the site. Even stranger - a month ago I noticed that with the free proxy from hide.me the site was accessible, so luckily I used the chance to download all the new board meeting transcript files then. Because - it seems the webmaster now blocked access by that proxy, it shows a 403 error.

I really wonder what is going on there. Has the Ministry of Interior placed this website behind the planned Great Firewall of Thailand already wrongly set to filter in the wrong direction? Or did just a stupid network administrator screw up the routing tables which effective blocked the site from foreign access? Needless to say that its impossible to notify anyone by email about this problem, the email address on the website is not working, and also all other standard email like webmaster don't work.

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

     law2555@hotmail.co.th

The error that the other server returned was:
550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable

The connectivity problem seems to be not just this one website, also many of the province websites hosted within the MOI don't work either, e.g. Ubon Ratchathani gives timeouts for me but shows online at "Down for everyone".

Would be curious how much the accessibility of law.moi.go.th has been limited, so I invite you to leave a short comment stating whether you can access the site and from where you did.

Pa Sak TAO upgraded to municipality

Today, the upgrade of the subdistrict administrative organization Pa Sak (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลป่าสัก) in Lamphun province to a subdistrict municipality (เทศบาลตำบลป่าสัก) was announced in the Royal Gazette. The change became official on November 6, exactly 4 years after the last local election - even though all local elections are still halted and mayor can continue to stay even after their normal term in office ends, in this case the Ministry of Interior timed the update with the end of the electoral term, same as they did in past when it still made sense to avoid too frequent local elections.

The upgrade was discussed in the Board to consider draft laws in their meeting on September 7, thus it was rather quick to be announced in the Gazette given that there are still hundreds of upgrades still not yet published there, waiting for more than eight years already. Maybe this time it was so fast because it was the first and so far only one planned for the fiscal year 2016, and even just the third for the common year 2015.

Though there is no Wikipedia article yet about this local government unit, I have created and filled an item in Wikidata to record the information - and since it is a reference for some of the statements in that item, even this Royal Gazette announcement now has its own Wikidata item.