Chanthaburi

The town grew where the Chanthaburi River meets the coastal plain, at a meeting point between the Siamese heartland, the Khmer lands to the east and the sea. Its best-known moment came in 1767. Phraya Taksin, an Ayutthayan aristocrat and provincial governor, led some five hundred followers out of the besieged capital in January, and after its governor rebuffed him he took Chanthaburi in a night attack on 15 June, two months after Ayutthaya fell to the Burmese. He used the town and its shipwrights as the base from which he sailed back to the Chao Phraya and drove the occupiers out later that year. A shrine in the town commemorates him, and Noen Wong Fort was built later to guard the same river approach.

In the 19th century Vietnamese Catholics fleeing persecution in Cochin China settled on the east bank, the first of three waves, and their church grew into the cathedral that stands today. The hills inland were found to hold rubies and sapphires, and a gem rush drew Burmese, Shan and Chinese miners and traders; the stones were cut and sold from shophouses in the streets that still hold the trade.

Chanthaburi then became a bargaining chip in Siam's contest with France. After the Paknam crisis of 1893, French troops occupied the town from 1893 until 1905, when it was returned as Siam gave up the western part of Cambodia, leaving buildings at the river mouth at Laem Sing. Local mining faded in the 20th century as the deposits thinned, but the cutting and dealing skills remained, and the town turned increasingly to fruit: durian and mangosteen orchards now shape its economy more than gems do.

Chanthaburi is unusually mixed for a small Thai town. Central Thai is the everyday language, but the province also has Chinese-Thai merchant families, the descendants of Vietnamese Catholic settlers, Khmer-speaking communities towards the border and the Chong, an indigenous people of the hills whose Austroasiatic language is now spoken by very few. The cathedral congregation gives the town a Christian calendar alongside the Buddhist one, and December decorations around the church draw visitors from across the east.

Gem cutting is the craft the town is proudest of. Skills passed through families turned Chanthaburi into a centre for heat treatment and faceting of coloured stones, and the weekend market on and around Si Chan Road is a working trade floor rather than a display for tourists, conducted in low voices over folded paper packets. Basket weaving from reed, and mat making, are older local crafts still sold in the market.

The farming year sets the rhythm of local celebration. Fruit fairs in May and June mark the durian and mangosteen harvest with parades and contests, and temple fairs, Songkran in April and Loi Krathong in November are kept much as they are elsewhere in Thailand. The pilgrimage up Khao Khitchakut around Magha Puja in February or March brings large numbers of Thai visitors to the province, most of them climbing through the night.

About 27,600 people lived in the town itself at the last published count, with several times that number in the district and around half a million in the province. It is an administrative and market centre: provincial offices, a hospital, schools and a Rajabhat university campus sit among shophouses whose ground floors are workshops, pharmacies and noodle kitchens.

Two trades dominate. Orchards of durian, mangosteen, rambutan and longan in the hills make the province one of the wealthiest farming areas in Thailand, with much of the crop exported to China, and the season brings lorries, pickers and buyers into town. Gem dealing runs on a weekly rhythm, quiet on weekdays and crowded at weekends, when dealers arrive from Bangkok and abroad. Rubber, fishing on the coast and government work fill out the economy.

Daily life is early and domestic: markets before dawn, work through the heat, and evenings on the riverside or at the night market. Migrant workers from Cambodia and Myanmar do much of the orchard and fishing labour. Current concerns include heavy monsoon flooding, the dependence of fruit growers on Chinese demand, the effect of border tension with Cambodia on cross-border trade and labour, and the slow drift of young people to Bangkok and the industrial seaboard.

Chanthaburi's signature dish is mu chamuang, pork simmered with the sour young leaves of the chamuang tree, which grows in the province and gives the curry its tartness; it is eaten across the eastern provinces but is Chanthaburi's own; it is served in restaurants and sold in jars and packets as a souvenir. The other local emblem is sen chan, the fine dried rice noodle named after the town, which spread across the country as the noodle for pad thai but is eaten here more often fried with crab or in a clear soup.

Fruit defines the rest. From about April to June the roadsides are stacked with durian of the Monthong, Chanee and Kradum varieties, with mangosteen, rambutan, longan and salak alongside; the fruit is also dried, fried into chips or boiled into sweet paste. Seafood arrives daily from the coast at Laem Sing and Chao Lao, and grilled squid, crab and sea bass appear on most restaurant menus.

The old riverside lane has small kitchens and coffee shops serving khanom jeen, rice with curries and local sweets, while the municipal market sells the everyday food of the town: noodle soups, grilled pork, curries ladled over rice and coconut-based desserts. Sweet preserves of tamarind and fruit, and khao lam, sticky rice roasted in bamboo, are sold along the highways to travellers heading back towards Bangkok.