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 Krabi
is a southern province on Thailand's Andaman
seaboard with perhaps the country's oldest
history of continued settlement.
After dating stone tools, ancient
colored pictures, beads, pottery and skeletal
remains found in the province's many cliffs
and caves, archaeologists believe that
Krabi has been home to homo sapiens since
the period 25,000 - 35,000 B.C. In recorded
times it was called the 'Ban Thai Samor',
and was one of twelve towns that used
the monkey for their standard.
At that time, c. 1200 A.D., Krabi
was a tributary to the Kingdom of Ligor,
a city on the Kra Peninsula's east coast
better known today as Nakhon Si Thammarat.
 At
the start of the Rattanakosin period,
about 200 years ago, when the capital
was finally settled at Bangkok, an elephant
kraal was established in Krabi by order
of Chao Phraya Nakorn (Noi), the governor
of Nakhon Si Thammarat, which was by then
a part of the Thai Kingdom. He sent his
vizier, the Phra Palad, to oversee this
task, which was to ensure a regular supply
of elephants for the larger town. So many
people followed the Phra Palad that soon
Krabi had a large community in three different
boroughs: Pakasai, Khlong Pon, and Pak
Lao.
In 1872, King Chulalongkorn brought
these three boroughs together and bestowed
upon them town status. The town was called
Krabi, a word that preserves in its
meaning the monkey symbolism of the old
standard. The town's first governor was
Luang Thep Sena, although it continued
to be a dependency of Nakhon Si Thammarat
for a while. This was changed in 1875,
when Krabi was raised to a fourth-level town
in the old system of Thai government.
Administrators then reported directly
to the central government in Bangkok,
and Krabi's history as a unique entity,
separated from the other provinces, began.
During the present reign, civil
servants, merchants, and the general population
of Krabi, and other nearby provinces,
came together to organize the construction
of a royal residence at Laem Hang Nak
Cape for presentation to His Majesty the
King. This lies thirty km to the west
of Krabi Town on the Andaman coast
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