Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Bangkok and Pattaya. I got to thinking of this, I want to be clear as a preface, I am not talking about free cities in the sense that they are any different than any other location in Thailand, they are obviously under the same laws as every place else here in Thailand but every time I think of the City Governments of Pattaya and Bangkok I always think back to sort of the Holy Roman Empire and the notion of free cities, and I think there is probably a little bit of a parallel there because Thailand utilizes a Civil Law system that was kind of adopted at a time when Thailand was interacting a lot with European powers. We will do another video on this but there is a lot of law in jurisprudence that predates the creation of the Thai Civil and Commercial Code and the notions of Civil Law that were sort of, how do I put it, grafted into the Thai notions of jurisprudence. Things like the Three Seals Law pre-date the Civil and Commercial Code by a lot, quite a long time, and still at least according to a 1978 Supreme Court opinion, may have some bearing on jurisprudence even today.

Leaving all that aside, I am not really talking about this in the sense that Pattaya and Bangkok are separate and apart or anything from Thailand, no not at all. It is more just kind of a differentiation of Administrative function. Under the old Holy Roman Empire, there were these notions of free cities and for one reason or another they had been granted a certain decree of sort of again autonomy is the wrong word, but limited self-government within a very limited, maybe self-administration is the way to think of it; they administer themselves. The Bangkok City Government is kind of like that, it administers itself and in a sense, Pattaya is almost a replica in a certain way of that model but kind of in miniature a little bit but it is notable that they both have these City governments that basically there is no other jurisdiction in Thailand, there is no other city that has their Administration where it operates in that way. 

I was just kind of thinking about it and I just thought you know it is worth a video I think because I don't think people realize that there is some depth to why Pattaya operates a little differently than the rest of the province, Chonburi, that surrounds it. Why Bangkok is, in a very real sense it almost operates as if it's its own province kind of. It has a Governor and it does things that way but a lot of the reason I think Bangkok exists in a sort of separate administrative state or a different administrative state I guess I should say, is because there are so many people there and administering a city government with that many people kind of requires its own specific kind of bureaucracy; maybe you could argue Pattaya is the same way. 

In any event, I just think it's noteworthy that look these aren't just towns that you just kind of drive through and they are the same as any other town. They really have differences in terms of the way that they administer themselves.