Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
image, Phra Chunlanak, is from Sukhothai although it was installed as recently as 1949,
a century after the temple was built. The image is in the “Subduing Mara” position, con-
quering evil, the right hand over the knee, the fingers touching the ground, the left hand
remaining palm up in the lap. There are other Buddha images in the crowded temple com-
pound, which also includes a school.
Wander down the quiet little lane that runs beside Wat Anongkharam, heading to-
wards the river, and in this neglected corner of Klong San once lived the most famous of
the temple school's former pupils. The late Princess Srinagarindra, the Princess Mother,
who was born in 1900 and passed away in 1995, was the mother of two kings: Rama
XIII
,
who became king in 1935 at the age of nine, and died in mysterious circumstances in
1946, and King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Rama
IX
. Yet she was born a commoner, the child
of a Chinese father and a Siamese mother, and she grew up on this very street, attend-
ing what was then the all-girls school at Wat Anongkharam, founded by an enlightened
abbot who believed in the need for girls to have an education, not a generally accepted
practice at that time. Her father was a goldsmith and the family lived in a modest rented
house. In those days when Siamese were not required to have family names, the young girl
was simply known as Sangwan. She went on to study nursing at Siriraj Hospital, further
along the riverbank, and after graduating she was one of only two girls in that year to win
a scholarship to study nursing in America. It was in the United States that she met Prince
Mahidol, the sixty-ninth son of Rama
V
, who was studying medicine at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. The couple later returned to Siam, where the prince worked to
form a public health system, but he died young, passing away at Sra Pathum Palace in
1929. In 1993, shortly before his mother's death, King Bhumibol made known his wish to
renovate the area around the Princess Mother's childhood home to provide a public park.
Her family home no longer existed but there were some similar buildings nearby, which
the owners gladly donated. The Princess Mother Memorial Park is a lovely, leafy area of
some one-and-a-half acres, sheltered by tall trees and with fragments of walls and crum-
bling arches embedded amongst the greenery. There are two house-sized exhibition halls,
which display photographs and mementos from the Princess Mother's life, and there is a
reconstruction of her childhood home. This plot of land had once held the mansion home
of another member of the Bunnag family, Pae Bunnag, who had been director general of
the Royal Cargo Department during the reign of Rama
V
. Part of his kitchens still exist,
now forming the Pae Bunnag Art Centre at the back of the park. To one side of the park,
seated on a bench, is a life-size bronze statue of the Princess Mother, gazing across the
greenery.
