Phra Athit Road

Phra Athit Road takes its name from Phra Athit Fort—the “Fort of the Sun.” It was built as one of the fourteen fortifications of the new Bangkok in the late eighteenth century. A siege never came. In the following century, people dismantled the walls that got in the city’s way and laid out a road here. Nothing remains of the fort itself, but its name survives on the street signs.

On the river side of the road stand long fences and offices of international organizations. These plots were once occupied by palaces of nobles connected with the nearby Front Palace. One of them survives at number nineteen: a white two-story house behind UNICEF’s gates. It was once called the palace on Phra Athit Road, then the Tha Chang residence.

In the early nineteen forties, the government housed Pridi Banomyong here, one of the leaders of the People’s Party. At the time, he was regent—performing the monarch’s duties while the young King Ananda Mahidol was abroad. The house belonged to the state and served as both a home and a working residence. Pridi later left government posts, but continued to live here with his wife Poonsuk and their children. The prime minister and army commanders still came to him for advice.

On the evening of November eighth, nineteen forty-seven, the military began a coup. They intended to seize Pridi first: although he was no longer in the government, he was considered the leading civilian politician capable of organizing resistance. Shortly before the soldiers arrived, he was warned. From the river side of the residence, Pridi boarded a hired boat and left along the Chao Phraya River.

Poonsuk had already gone to bed and did not know where her husband had disappeared to. She was awakened by the headlights of armored vehicles on the side of Thammasat University’s gates. Bullets struck the upper floor. Poonsuk and the children lay down on the floor in a dark room, then she shouted to the soldiers that only women and children remained in the house. When the shooting stopped, she went down to the armed men. One of them explained that they had come to change the government. Poonsuk asked why, then, they were doing it here rather than in parliament. They did not answer her and searched the rooms.

Pridi reached naval headquarters, then took shelter at Sattahip Naval Base. Fearing civil war, he refused to raise his supporters to armed struggle. The coup succeeded. Pridi’s attempt to return to politics two years later failed; he spent the rest of his life abroad and died in France. Poonsuk and the children left the residence.

Now the house once again bears the number nineteen prominently, and UNICEF operates behind the gates. Armored vehicles approached this plot from the street side; on the opposite side, the river still flows, the one by which Pridi left the house.