Monday, August 29, 2011

Chumchon with a different name

Some time ago I systematically searched for websites for all of the local government units, and since then occasionally revisit some in order to check the URL is still valid, a new mayor gets listed, or some data I did not spot in the first round worth adding into my XML. One of these revisited websitesd was the one of Khun Yuam subdistrict municipality (เทศบาลตำบลขุนยวม) in Mae Hong Son province. The interesting part is on the page where the municipality gives information on its subdivision, the boroughs (ชุมชน, Chumchon). While they only list the names without any numbering - so I cannot guess the geocodes to add them into the XML - the sentence introducing them says
เทศบาลตำบลขุนยวมแบ่งการบริหารงานออกเป็น 8 ชุมชน หรือ 8 ป๊อก คำว่า "ป๊อก" หมายถึง ชุมชน โดยมีการบริหารงานกันเองในชุมชน Khun Yuam subdistrict municipality is divided administratively into 8 boroughs or "pok". The name "pok" means boroughs which have an personal administration in the borough.
Rather interesting is also the location of the administrative offices in that subdistrict. Whereas the municipality office is located in the middle of the municipality, a bit strage is the fact the the TAO Khun Yuam has its office just 300 meter away, well within the municipal area (see Panoramio for some photos of it). And, unlike many of the municipalities near the district office, in this case the district office is located outside the municipality - in many cases district office and municipality office are directly next to each other and form the center of the municipality. So I am doing a nice little map again to show the approximate borders of the municipality. Sadly the map in the 1956 announcement to create the sanitary district is more like a sketch map than correctly scaled, so I can only guess that the district office back then was located very close to where it now has the municipality office.

View Khun Yuam in a larger map

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