THAISiDE|PRAJUMSOOK.COM

Last Sunday was Valentines Day; I had a very nice offer to attend a party that would have had very pretty promotional girls and silly games taking place. A local company were going to have fun with condoms and then head to the local park to hand them out to the locals. Apparently many young Thai girls lose their virginity on Valentines Day and also many get pregnant.

Judging by these photos that I took early this morning, not everyone was nursing hangovers after welcoming in the New Year at midnight last night. Like thousands of other local people from Paknam, I was up early at 6 a.m.

One of the most ambitious plans for a tourist attraction in Samut Prakan Province is the 139 meter high tower that will give fine views of the Gulf of Thailand. The plan for the tower has been around for a while and for the past few years it seems it had been put on hold.

Samut Prakan was built as a frontier town to protect the approach to Bangkok upriver. Fortresses were built on both sides of the river from the estuary all the way up to Phra Pradaeng.

Today marks the anniversary of the death of King Rama VI on November 25, 1925. As this King is regarded as the “Father of Thai Scouting”, schools all over the country took part in a special ceremony to celebrate his life and to remember the day he died. Mr.

As the fireworks and firecrackers are going on non-stop for the third day running, and the city is celebrating with the biggest and most colourful parade of the loy krathong festivities, I am at home listening from a safe distance. I feel full, saturated with images and experiences, enough to last another year. Yesterday I decided to drive all the way to Lamphun (28 kms) to check out the parade and the activities in this little town

After nine days and nights of eating a vegan diet and keeping the 10 precepts, the Vegetarian Festival in Thailand is finally over. The festival ended with a large parade through the town of Paknam early on the morning of 27th October. At about 7 a.m., at the city hall, a gigantic “krathong” was hoisted over the river wall and down onto a makeshift raft.

The Samut Prakan Temple Fair is still going strong. I went there early this evening to walk around and to take some pictures. One of the sideshows that I visited was this Wall of Death

The annual Temple Fair in Samut Prakan kicked off early this morning with the parade through town. The fair at Phra Samut Chedi has been going on now for 182 years which I believe makes it the longest running temple fair in Thailand. Certainly one of the oldest. In the olden days, people would come down from Bangkok by boat

How come no charges of lese-majeste have been filed against these two? Here are another 20 amazing Thailand facts as compiled over on the ThailandQA.com Forums. You can see the other facts already posted by clicking here. Most of them were compiled by myself, but for the ones not, the name is in brackets.