With this historical backdrop, two special types of local government were also added to the total picture of local administration: Bangkok Metropolitan Area (BMA), which was enacted under the Bangkok Metropolitan Act of 1972, and the City of Pattaya, which was established in 1978. Table 1 show that currently there are 7,853 Local Administrative Organizations (LAO) in Thailand. Of this number, 76 are PAO; 2,266 are municipalities of different size, and the TAO comprise the largest number with 5,509. With 5 types of local government of different sizes, all of which were born from the womb of a bureaucracy characterized by highly centralized power, a conundrum was created. It became difficult for us to see how these units functioned for the benefit of local people. It is even of greater interest to observe how people view either the municipality or the TAO in the area in which they live as they compare these arrangements and their outcomes with the PAO in the same province of either a municipality or a TAO.