SIAMESE YELLOW

Bangkok. Western tradition associates royalty with the color purple.  Not in Siam, or as it's called today, Thailand.  The royal color here is yellow – and the whole country right now is wearing yellow, yellow shirts, hats, sashes, or ribbons, in celebration of their beloved King Bhumibol's 60^th anniversary of his reign. 

The King's picture is everywhere, and not because of a personality cult.  He is genuinely revered as the embodiment and father-figure of the Thai nation.  And at the same time, the streets of Bangkok are clogged with protestors in yellow shirts waving yellow banners, demanding their democratically elected government be overthrown.

The Siamese are an interesting people.

One of the welter of tribal peoples in southern China, they began migrating into this neck of the Southeast Asia woods over a thousand years ago.  One of their chieftains, Ramkhamhaeng (1239-1317) succeeded in overthrowing their Khmer rulers and established the first Kingdom of Siam with its capital at Sukhothai (in north-central present-day Thailand).

This was absorbed by a second Siamese kingdom founded by U-Thong (1314-1369), who established his capital at Ayutthaya on the Chao Praya River just north of present-day Bangkok.  Although U-Thong renamed himself Ramathibodi, "Rama the Bold," after the hero of the Hindu epic, the Ramayana, and named his capital after Rama's birthplace in India, Ayodhya, he nonetheless established Theravada Buddhism as the state religion.

After over 400 years of maintaining rule over a patchwork of Siamese principalities and fighting off the Vietnamese to their east and the Burmese to their west, Ayutthaya was invaded by a Burmese army and destroyed in 1767.

In 1782, a Siamese general and nobleman, Thong Duong (1737-1809), declared himself King as Rama I, creating the Chakri dynasty that rules to this day (Bhumibol is officially Rama IX).  He kicked out the Burmese, re-united Siam, and established a new capital along the Chao Praya called Bangkok.

This began a series of remarkable regents that succeeded in keeping Siam free of colonial rule throughout the 19^th century.  Chief among them was Rama I's grandson, Mongkut or Rama IV (1804-1868).  Sandwiched between British Burma and French Indo-China, Mongkut was determined to both modernize Siam and retain its independence.

It was Mongkut who hired an Englishwoman, Anna Leonowens, to tutor his children, primarily Prince Chulalongkorn.  Mongkut is thus the King played by Yul Brenner in The King and I.

As Rama V, Chulalongkorn (1853-1910) negotiated the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 and a similar treaty with the French securing his country's borders, and ushered it into the 20^th century.  His son Vajiravudh (Rama VI, 1881–1925) tried his best to continue modernization but just wasn't as competent as his dad.

Chulalongkorn had named his youngest son Prajadhipok (1893-1941) to be second in line for the throne after Vajiravudh.  So when the latter died in 1925, Parajahipok was crowned  Rama VII.  The economy so deteriorated that a group of generals staged a coup in 1932 and forced the king at accept a constitutional monarchy.  The king abdicated in 1935, and a ten year-old grandson of Chulalongkorn's, Ananda Mahidol (1925-1946), was crowned Rama VIII.

On June 24, 1939, the teen-age king declared out of the blue that his country would no longer bear the ancient name of Siam, but now be called Thailand.  His people were no longer to be called Siamese but Thais.  "Thai" means "Free" in Siamese.

After the war, in which Siam – Thailand – had remained relatively unscathed, on June 9, 1946, the now-21 year-old king was found shot to death in his bedroom in the Grand Palace.  No one believed it was a suicide.  The murder was evidently perpetrated by a Japanese agent hiding in Thailand, Tsuji Masunobu, on the instructions of a pro-Japanese Thai General, Palek Pibulsonggram who had aligned himself with the Communist Chinese.

Young Rama VIII, you see, was asking for protection from the Chinese and an alliance with America.

The assassination's purpose failed.  On the very day of Mahidol's murder, his brother Bhumibol was crowned Rama IX.

In the sixty years since, Thailand has indeed become a major ally of America's, and Thailand has grown into a modern prosperous nation.  There have been numerous bumps along the road, mostly caused by generals attempting military dictatorships.

The King put an end to this finally in 1992 when he forced General Suchinda Kraprayoon to resign as Prime Minister and ordered real democratic elections be held.

The current Prime Minister is Thailand's richest businessman, Thaksin Shinawatra.  You would think that the Thais would welcome someone so rich he has no need to be corrupt as their leader, particularly in the wake of his predecessor, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, whose corruption was legendarily monumental.

But no.  Rescuing Thailand's economy from the disaster of Chavalit and the collapse of the Baht (Thai currency) in the late 1990's, helping millions of rural Thais out of poverty and illiteracy, being far less corrupt and dictatorial than any other Thai government is somehow not good enough, especially for Bangkok's left-wing press.

Thus the thousands of frenzied anti-Thaksin protestors on Bangkok streets almost on a daily basis.

Such societal masochism could not come at a worse time. 

Thailand shares the Malay Peninsula with Burma and Malaysia:

The southern region bordering Malaysia is known as Pattani.  Thailand is Buddhist and Malaysia in Moslem, so a substantial portion of Pattani's population is Moslem – among whom al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist organizations have been busy.

Thus Thailand has a full-blown Moslem Jihadist terrorist movement going in its deep south – which started uncoincidentally when Thaksin became Prime Minister in January 2001.

The terrorism has been escalating – along with demands for the imposition of Sharia Moslem law in Pattani.  Any attempt of Thaksin to crush the terrorism and ask America's help in doing so is hysterically condemned by Bangkok's left-wing press.

Here's the corker.  Take a look at the map again and notice the border town of Hat Yai.  It's the crossing point from Malaysia into Thailand, especially for thousands upon thousands of good Allah-fearing Malaysian Moslems on a day, or rather night, trip to Hat Yai.

Hat Yai, you see, has the world's largest concentration of prostitutes in the world.  The place has about 15,000 hookers, mostly Thai but also from just about any nationality you can think of.

The international seeker of easy women doesn't go to Hat Yai.  He flies to Bangkok and heads for Phat Phong Alley off Suriwongse Road.  I must admit to a familiarity with Phat Phong in the years before I was married.  I even took a United States Congressman to the infamous Kangaroo Bar in Phat Phong once in the 1980s.

Hat Yai, on the other hand, exists for the pleasure of Moslem Malaysians slipping across the border to escape from their insufferable Sharia existence.  The Pattani terrorists claim they're fighting for the same Sharia law – and yet they say not a word and do not a thing about Hat Yai.  They leave the place alone.

Their hypocrisy is just too delicious – as is that of the yellow-shirted anti-Thaksin protesting puppets of the Bangkok media.

For the protests are only in Bangkok.  In the eyes of most other Thais, especially those in the countryside, Thaksin comes in only below King Bhumibol.

So here is one of the most wonderful countries in the world, led by a worshipped King and a competent, pro-capitalist, pro-American Prime Minister, and it wants to tear itself apart while capitulating to a bunch of Sharia crazies.

I hope folks finally wake up and start ignoring their Bangkok media in time.  I love Thailand.  I've wandered around most of it over the years (my favorite area is the "Golden Triangle" region with all its tribes, where Thailand, Burma, and Laos come together way up north).  I still love to call it Siam, for it's such a magic name.

Yellow, for the Siamese – Thais, excuse me – is the color of sunshine, of life and happiness.  That's what I wish for them.  I hope they achieve it.