Phetchaburi

Phetchaburi is one of the oldest continuously settled towns in central Thailand. Khmer builders raised the laterite shrines of Wat Kamphaeng Laeng in the 13th century, in the reign of Jayavarman VII, when the area lay at the western edge of the Angkorian world, and Mon Dvaravati settlements preceded them in the river valley. Under Ayutthaya the town was a provincial centre on the route south and west, close enough to the Burmese frontier to matter in war and rich enough from rice, salt and sugar palm to build well; its craftsmen in stucco, woodcarving and mural painting worked in a tradition that survived the fall of the capital in 1767.

The Chakri kings made it a royal town. King Mongkut had Phra Nakhon Khiri built on the hill west of the centre, finished in 1860, with the palace on one peak, a great chedi on another and a royal temple on the third — a complex that mixed Thai, Chinese and European forms as deliberately as his foreign policy did. King Chulalongkorn added the art nouveau palace of Phra Ram Ratchaniwet, designed by the German architect Karl Döhring and finished in 1916, after his death, in the reign of his son.

The railway south reached the town early in the 20th century, and the highway followed, but Phetchaburi never industrialised on the scale of towns nearer Bangkok. It kept its temples, its sugar palms and its craftsmen, and in 2021 UNESCO named it a Creative City of Gastronomy. Much of its recent history is that of the coast beside it: salt, shrimp farming and the growth of Cha-am and Hua Hin as resorts.

The town is known within Thailand for two things: craftsmanship and sweets. Its schools of stucco work, woodcarving and mural painting supplied temples across the central plain, and restorers trained in Phetchaburi still work on royal and monastic buildings elsewhere. The murals in the ordination hall of Wat Yai Suwannaram, painted in the Ayutthaya period, are among the works that made the town's reputation, and local artisans continue to make temple ornament, lacquer and carved doors.

Sugar shapes daily culture as much as craft. The sugar palm grows across the province, and the boiling of its sap into cake sugar is a family trade passed down through generations; the sweets made from it are bought by visitors from Bangkok as a matter of course. The UNESCO gastronomy designation recognised this tradition rather than any restaurant scene.

Religious life is prominent in a town with so many monasteries. Monks walk the morning alms round through the old streets, temple fairs punctuate the year, and the Phra Nakhon Khiri Fair in February lights the palace hill and fills the town with performances and stalls. The province also has Thai Song Dam communities, descended from Tai Dam people resettled from Laos in the 18th and 19th centuries, who keep their own dress, dialect and ceremonies in villages outside the town.

About 26,000 people live in the town municipality, with a few hundred thousand more across the province. Phetchaburi is a provincial capital of offices, schools, a hospital and a university campus, and the working town is smaller and quieter than its long history suggests.

The provincial economy runs on farming, food and the coast. Rice, sugar palm, bananas and vegetables come off the plain; salt pans and shrimp farms line the gulf shore at Ban Laem; fishing boats work from the small ports; and cattle dairy farming around Cha-am supplies Bangkok. Sweet making, curry paste and food processing employ many households, and tourism is mostly Thai and concentrated at weekends, with foreign visitors passing through on the way south.

Life follows an early, market-centred rhythm: sweets and curries cooked before dawn, business done in the cool of the morning, a long pause in the afternoon heat and the streets busy again at dusk. Young people leave for Bangkok, Cha-am and Hua Hin for work, and some commute daily by train. Current concerns include flooding of the river in heavy monsoon years, drought affecting the palms and rice fields, coastal erosion, and long-running disputes over land and livelihoods at the edges of Kaeng Krachan National Park.

Phetchaburi is a sweet town. Khanom mo kaeng, a dense baked custard of duck egg, coconut milk and palm sugar topped with fried shallots, is its best-known product, sold in tin trays at shops along the highway and around Khao Wang. Alongside it come thong yip, thong yot and foi thong, the golden egg-yolk sweets of Ayutthaya court cooking, and coconut puddings, candied fruit and sticky rice with mango in season.

The reason is nam tan puek, the cake sugar boiled from the sap of the sugar palm that grows across the province. It is darker and more fragrant than cane sugar, and it goes into savoury cooking as well: curries here are sweeter than in most of Thailand, and the local version of khao chae — chilled scented rice with salty, sweet side dishes eaten in the hot months — is a Phetchaburi speciality.

Everyday food is central Thai. The market sells khanom jeen, fermented rice noodles with fish curry, curries ladled over rice, grilled pork and river fish, and the town's curry pastes are pounded and sold by weight. On the coast at Hat Chao Samran and Ban Laem, seafood takes over: crab, squid, prawns and sea bass grilled or steamed, with sea salt from the pans behind the beach used in the kitchens and sold along the road.