Central · Thailand
Sing Buri · สิงห์บุรี
Bang Rachan's heroic-villager legend, quiet Chao Phraya riverside.
- Region
- Central
- Population
- 207,000
- Area
- 822 km²
- Stories filed
- 0
About Sing Buri
History
Sing Buri — "Lion City," from the Sanskrit Singha Puri — is remembered across Thailand for the siege of Bang Rachan, when seventeen village farmers led a force that held off repeated Burmese advances for five months in 1766–67 while the Ayutthayan kingdom crumbled around it. The defenders were eventually overrun, Ayutthaya fell months later, and Bang Rachan entered national legend as the most celebrated act of provincial defiance in Thai history. Bronze statues of the seventeen heroes now stand in a memorial park on the original site; schoolchildren are brought here from across the country.
Landscape & geography
The province hugs a long meander of the Chao Phraya on the flat central plain, bordered by oxbow islands and broad catfish-farming ponds. Thailand's fourth-smallest province by area, Sing Buri has no mountains and no industry beyond rice, fish, and orchards. Its northern border with Chai Nat is marked by low limestone outcrops that break the otherwise uninterrupted plain.
Why visit
The Bang Rachan Memorial Park, with its reconstructed bamboo stockade and bronze hero statues, is a genuinely moving national monument and an easy stop from the highway. Wat Phra Non Chaksi's reclining Buddha — 46 metres long and estimated to date from the eighth century — reclines in a simple open-sided pavilion, impressive for its sheer antiquity and quietude. The annual Princess Trophy boat races on the Chao Phraya in November are worth timing a visit around. Fresh catfish noodles at a riverside stall make the perfect lunch.
Stories from Sing Buri
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