Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ossuary. The Wat Liab generating plant had been put out of action in the April 1945 air
raids that destroyed the temple, and to keep the trams running two Mitsubishi submar-
ines that the Siamese had purchased in the late 1930s were moored in the river and their
engines connected to the tram sub-station at Bangkok dock to run the generators. This
was not very effective, but the Wat Liab plant was working again within a few months, and
continued working until well after Siam Electricity's half-century concession expired, after
which both plants were taken under the wing of the new Metropolitan Electricity Author-
ity (mea), a state enterprise under the Ministry of Interior. A few years later, in 1961, the
generating side of the business was transferred to a new organisation that later became
the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, leaving the mea in charge of distribu-
tion. The Wat Liab plant was closed down in 1965 when power generation was moved to
the outskirts of the city, and the present mea offices and a carpark were built on the site.
Suan Kularb School, designed for a new generation of administrators and leaders.
There are some districts of Bangkok so poetically named that one goes there full of an-
ticipation, only to find something completely different. Suan Kularb, or the Rose Garden,
is one. Although adjacent to the city's largest flower market, it has nothing to do with
roses. What will be found is a handsome colonial style building occupying an entire block:
the orange-ochre frontage with its regularly spaced green shutters seems to go on forever.
This is Suan Kularb School, and it was the first educational institute in Siam to offer a
modern curriculum.
Rama
V
, who realised that if his country was going to survive in the modern world it
had to have a modern educational system, founded the school in 1882. Up to that time,
schooling had been by monks in the temples. But Suan Kularb changed all that, training
the new generation of civil servants, professionals and merchants who were to take Siam
through an era of extraordinary growth and prosperity. The original school was not on
this spot, however. It was located in the grounds of the Grand Palace, just a short dis-
tance away, on a plot of land in the compound named Suan Kularb. So the school took this
name, and retained it when the move was made to these premises, built on land belonging
