Phang Nga City Museum, a learning resource for the province, the starting point for educational tourism in each area. Wherever you go, in any province, you must know that province or gain some knowledge, not much, but a little bit. A good starting point is the provincial museum. For Phang Nga, there is a museum that provides information on social history very well, which is the Phang Nga City Museum, located next to Khao Chang.
The museum building is very old. It was built in 1930 and was previously used as the provincial hall. It is called the Old Provincial Hall. It is a single-story building, 60 meters long, with a hip roof. It is a brick and mortar building with a wooden floor. It is currently used as a museum and the provincial cultural office. The Fine Arts Department has declared it a national historical site.
Phang Nga is a province with its own unique characteristics, such as the saying that it is a city of eight rains and four sunshine. The exhibition inside the museum explains that it is a province with a tropical monsoon climate, which can be divided into only two seasons: hot and rainy. January-April is the hot season and the rainy season, for 8 months. We traveled to Phang Nga during the month of love. It rained from Phang Nga to Phuket.
In addition, Phang Nga is also a rich source of minerals, the most important of which is tin. As you know, Phang Nga is a province with a long-standing tin industry. But in addition to tin, there is also gold, zircon, other minerals, and uranium.
Although tin has been almost completely mined, tin slag, which was obtained from tin smelting in the past, contains tantalite, which is used to make weapons of war such as guided missiles or even spacecraft. This is because tantalite is very resistant to heat, combustion, and friction with air.
The Phang Nga Museum also provides information about the Khlong Marui Fault, which is a crack in the earth is crust, an active fault type that can cause movement (underwater earthquakes that cause tsunamis) that must move at least once every 10,000 years. The Khlong Marui Fault is approximately 148 kilometers long from Phang Nga to Phuket, passing through both land and underwater areas.
Important Question: When did humans inhabit Phang Nga? In prehistoric times (before there were written scripts), there were many human habitations, usually in caves in the mountains, such as Khao Chang, Khao Khian, Tham Phra, etc. Humans have been settled here for a long time. It is assumed that they lived in small groups of 10-20 people, used stone tools, wore animal skins, fished and hunted, and often painted the cave walls with hematite, which is a red or brown.
Phang Nga is on the historical trans-peninsular route (the Maritime Silk Road). Some say that one of the four most important routes is Takua Pa. Journey from Tung Tuek Community (an ancient international trading community) at Koh Khao island through Takua Pa District (Takola, Takola), where ancient artifacts, Persian pottery, beads from the Middle East and India have been found. Statues of Narayana have also been found at Khao Phra No and Khao Phra Narai.
During the reign of King Rama VII, King Prajadhipok bestowed the royal sword of Phang Nga Province during his visit to Phuket shire. This was the last royal sword before the change of government in 1932.
As for the name of Phang Nga province, it may have been distorted from Kra Phu Nga or Phu Nga (Phu means mountain, Nga means elephant), as seen in the elephant mountain in the province. The museum also tells about ethnic groups, food, clothing, games, traditions, and architecture.
