Last modified: 2000-01-21 by santiago dotor
Keywords: thailand | siam | muang thai | prathet thai | buddhism | elephant | chakra | crown: thai | trairanga | thong chat thai | pattani | dhammakaya pagod | pagod | stripes: 5 | singha beer |
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![[Thailand]](../images/th.gif)
2:3 | stripes 1:1:2:1:1
by Joan-Francés Blanc
Flag adopted 28th September 1917, coat-of-arms adopted 1910
The current Thai National Flag or "Thong Chat Thai": It was King Vajiravudh -Rama VI- who, amongst other things, refashioned the flag of Siam in 1917, replacing the white elephant on a red field standard with the contemporary tri-color [or Trairong]. Although not an "official" interpretation of the Thai flag, the prevailing view is as follows: the central blue stripe represents the monarchy, the two white stripes are the Therevada Buddhist religion, and the outer red stripes represent the land or the nation.
Riley B. VanDyke, 22 June 1998
In Thailand (...) the Thai National Flag was used everywhere and every school day started with a flag raising and the singing of Thong Chat (The Flag) either assembled in the school courtyard or in the classrooms.
Phil Abbey, 17 September 1998
The flag of Thailand did not change during World War Two in spite of its being allied to Japan, and was the same as the present one.
Norman Martin and Jaume Ollé, 10 August 1999
![[Flag on State Buildings (Thailand)]](../images/th-stbdg.gif)
by Jaume Ollé
There is a website, apparently set up by a brewing company, with scores of Thai flags. More than 70 flags are depicted and described on this site. The images are rather small and poor, so it is difficult to see the details of the emblems. Dates are given in the Buddhist calendar.
Jan Oskar Engene, 13 August 1997
The URL of the Singha Beer website containing many Thai flags became obsolete some time ago, and I have been unsuccessful trying to locate a new one. I even e-mailed, and later wrote, Singha Beer manufacturers (Boon Rawd Brewery Co. Ltd., 999 Samsen Road, Dusit, Bangkok 10300, Thailand) months ago, asking for their new URL —or alternatively permission to include those pages and images in FOTW, provided we credited them appropriately— to no avail. Following FOTW webmaster's suggestion, I have extracted all the texts in the Singha Beer webpages plus any (many!) images which are not still in FOTWws. They are divided into:
Santiago Dotor, 26 October 1999
Definitely, someone must have drawn the flags without the full descriptions which appeared close to them in the website; the Commander's Flag should be 2:5 and appears as 3:4, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army flag should be a 5:6 flag whereas the image is 7:10, etc. Those flags which also appear in Flaggenbuch 1939 follow the ratios of the descriptions. So I guess the descriptions are more precise as reference.
Santiago Dotor, 5 November 1999
One more thing. The Thai equivalent for "fleet" has been wrongly translated as "frigate". Thus, the Commander of the Fleet Flag is said to be that of a "Frigate Commander" and about the Pu Yai Flag it says "high ranking officers from a frigate were on board that particular vessel".
Santiago Dotor, 12 November 1999
I have around 100 Thai GIFs but I think that many of them are very similar and less interesting. If anyone has interest in a concrete flag please tell me and I post it off list (if I have it). Provinces have their own flag: the national flag with the provincial emblem in the center. I don't have good designs of this emblems or shields and I haven't made the provincial GIFs. List member Dirk Schoemoger is working also in this GIFs and I hope that soon they are added to his nice collection. The government departments adopted different flags after WWII and I'm not sure that the national flag with emblem adopted for the departments in 1917 are now another time in use.
Jaume Ollé, 17 August 1997
For provincial flags, I'm not so sure if the Ministry of Interior have them shown up at all. However, I think Bangkok Metropolitan Administration will have them.
Wisarut Bholsithi, 29 October 1999
In Thailand there were often two flags used in parades and other celebrations. The Thai National Flag was used everywhere (...). The other flag was saffron coloured with a red wheel similar to the wheel on the Indian flag except much larger. It was explained to me that it symbolized Buddhism, the national religion; or the Chakri (Royal) family; or loyalty to the King. Given the colour of the field I would bet on the Buddhism theme. My wife claims that she never saw it although there is one hanging in her mother's sitting room.
Phil Abbey, 17 September 1998
The flag Phil Abbey mentioned is Thong Dhammacak (Dharma Wheel Flag) — yellow flag with a red Dhammacak at the center. This the flag for Thai Buddhism.
Wisarut Bholsithi, 29 October 1999
From the Singha Beer source:
The Flags of various Boy Scout Troops
This is the flag King Rama VI ordered to be conveyed to the boy scouts as a symbol of himself as their King. Each member of the troop, therefore, had to swear an oath to protect the flag at all costs — even at the cost of his life. Consequently, each individual troop in the provinces had to note the date on which the flag had been delivered to them and memorize the words of advice given to their unit by His Majesty so that they would always be reminded of their mission.King Rama VI started the Boy Scouts' movement and from B.E.2458 [1915 AD] onwards presented Boy Scout troops from various regions with their own individual flags. King Rama VII added to each one so that at the First Jamboree of Thai Boy Scouts in B.E.2470 [1927 AD] every region had its very own flag.
This is followed by 14 regional flags:
Santiago Dotor, 29 October 1999
I read that the flag attribued to the Pattani United Liberation Movement is blue with two red stripes in the top and bottom. In the upper red strip, near the hoist, is a yellow five-pointed star; in the center of the blue is a half-moon and a star or sun of 15 points (similar to Malaysia) - symbolising the movement's demand for the separation of Pattani from Thailand and its union with Malaysia. The Pattani state had a flag after its annexation by Thailand - can anyone describe it?
Jaume Ollé, 6 November 1996
Clive Jackson's flagchart, Flags of Non-Independent Peoples, shows a Pattani flag with two equal horizontal bands of red over white. Over this in the hoist is a green band one third of the flag's length and superimposed on this green stripe is a white crescent and white five-pointed star.
Paul B. Lindsay, 8 November 1996
For Pattani flag: you can see them at PULO (Pattani United Liberation Organization) page — just be careful before getting brainwashed.
Wisarut Bholsithi, 29 October 1999
![[Dhammakaya pagod (Thailand)]](../images/th_dhamm.gif)
by Ivan Sache
A paper in Courrier International, translated from Asiaweek (Bangkok) is illustrated by a picture of the Dhammakaya pagod, in the North of Bangkok. The picture shows the pagod in the background, monks in meditation in front of it and two identical flags in foreground. Identification of the flag is quite easy from the picture.The flag is a 1:2 saffron field with the solid silhouette of the pagod in yellow.
Ivan Sache, 31 July 1999
