Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Prathum, the present site, measuring 457 metres (500 yds) wide and 822 metres (900 yds)
in length, at a rent of 200 baht per year. A club was formed, appearing at various times
as the Gymkhana Club, Bangkok Gymkhana Club, and the Race Course Society. In 1901
Rama
V
granted a royal charter that established the Royal Bangkok Sports Club. The Club
now holds twenty-six race meetings per year, while the only other racetrack in Bangkok,
the Royal Turf Club, established at Dusit in 1961, holds another twenty-six race meetings.
The Royal Bangkok Polo Club evolved out of the Sports Club in 1919, and in 1924, when
it was known as the Bangkok Riding Club, leased land from the Crown Property Bureau
just of Wireless Road, where it remains to this day, occupying a huge area of land tucked
amongst country lanes unknown to most people, and accessed via Soi Polo.
The entrance to the Royal Bangkok Sports Club is on Henri Dunant Road and conse-
quently much of the length of the road is lined on its east side by a long, low wall with
overhanging trees. Much of the opposite side of the road also has a pleasant green ap-
pearance with an assortment of low-key buildings, and it is only when you slip into one
of the little
sois
that will take you into Chulalongkorn University do you realise just how
huge and diverse this campus really is: an enormous learning institute, right in the heart
of Bangkok, yet almost invisible were it not for the throngs of students entering and leav-
ing.
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand's first institution of higher learning, was officially
founded in 1917. Its history dates back a little further, however. During the second half of
the nineteenth century, Siam was struggling to remain independent of the designs of the
colonial powers, primarily Britain and France. King Chulalongkorn, Rama
V
, maintained
a policy of strengthening the nation's institutions and thus its sovereignty, and this hinged
upon improving the educational system so as to produce capable personnel for running
the public and private sectors. In 1871 he founded a school at the Royal Pages Barracks
within the Grand Palace, which was later greatly enlarged and given the name Suan Ku-
larb. Other schools followed. In 1899 Prince Damrong, a younger brother of the king,
submitted a proposal to found a civil service training school, and this produced a steady
stream of graduates for the government each year. Because the curriculum was founded
upon court service, Siam still being an absolute monarchy meant that the students had to
spend time as royal pages; so the institute took its name from the origins of the education-
al system and became known as the Royal Pages School.
King Chulalongkorn passed away in 1910, the threat of colonisation largely a thing of
the past. But his son, Rama
VI
, understood that the original intention had been to establish
a multi-discipline institute of higher learning, open to all, and designed to meet the de-
