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Krabi
is a southern province on Thailand's Andaman
seaboard with perhaps the country's oldest
history of continued settlement. After
dating stone tools, ancient colored
pictures, beads, pottery and skeletal
remains found in the province's many cliffs
and caves, it is thought that Krabi has been
home to homo sapiens since the period 25,000
- 35,000 B.C. In recorded times it was
called the 'Ban Thai Samor', and was one of
twelve towns that used, before people were
widely literate, the monkey for their
standard. At that time, c. 1200 A.D., Krabi
was tributary to the Kingdom of Ligor, a
city on the Kra Peninsula's east coast
better known today as Nakhon Si Thammarat.
At the start of the Rattanakosin period,
about 200 years ago, when the capital was
finally settled at Bangkok, an elephant
kraal was established in Krabi by order of
Chao Phraya Nakorn (Noi), the governor of
Nakhon Si Thammarat, which was by then a
part of the Thai Kingdom. He sent his
vizier, the Phra Palad, to oversee this
task, which was to ensure a regular supply
of elephants for the larger town. So
followers many emigrated in the steps of the
Phra Palad that soon Krabi had a large
community in three different boroughs :
Pakasai, Khlong Pon, and Pak Lao. In 1872,
King Chulalongkorn graciously elevated these
to town status, called Krabi, a word that
preserves in its meaning the monkey
symbolism of the old standard. The town's
first governor was Luang Thep Sena, though
it continued a while as a dependency of
Nakhon Si Thammarat. This was changed in
1875, when Krabi was raised to a
fourth-level town in the old system of Thai
government. Administrators then reported
directly to the central government in
Bangkok, and Krabi's history as a unique
entity separated from the other provinces,
had begun.During the present reign, the
corps of civil servants, the merchants, and
the population generally of Krabi and nearby
provinces have together organized
construction of a royal residence at Laem
Hang Nak Cape for presentation to His
Majesty the King. This lies thirty
kilometers to the west of Krabi Town on the
Andaman coast. |
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