Bangkok Vistas

...When one builds five stories or higher in brick or cement, there are no "Oriental" styles to follow...

...and Britain (which count as Asian powers because of their territories fronting the Pacific), plus Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and other European countries interested in Asian trade...

...Being a prince gives him, apparently, few special privileges...

...Next week: Rangoon, Burma...

...Bangkok, like almost every Asian city, including Tokyo, follows the British system of left-hand drive...

...Aren't you afraid of being assassinated...

...The Thais seem quite proud of their old monarchy, and seem to like it even more than their present-day English-style kingship...

...In these Thai palaces, the kings "become" the Corida, the eagles that only Rama could ride...

...Although this was a conclave of Asian powers, the languages used were English, French and Russian...

...Once a year it tempers my extreme democratic sensibility...

...Outside the main business center, with its wide, clean boulevards—and apart from the colorful, concentrated Chinese section (there are 500.000 Chinese in Bangkok)—-much of Thai life is lived along the canals...

...there is large-scale corruption which disgusts the population and feeds Communist propaganda...

...The people were so outraged at The King and I that the film has been banned in Thailand...

...What does this mean...

...Since that time, of course, the Marshal has been forced out by the Army...

...No," he replied, "if anything did happen, all the women in Bangkok might rise in revolution...

...the UN's economic agency for Southeast Asia...

...Equal in interest to the temples are the city's rivers and canals (called klongs), which give it a sense of life and laughter and relaxation...

...A kindly, sophisticated people, they adorn their Buddhist temples with gold more for the love of beaut)' than out of religious zeal...

...Well, once a year the 5,000 persons in the villages over which I am the "lord' prostrate themselves before me...

...Most Asian states, newly created, have no really national language, cross-hatched as they are with local dialects...

...in the eye-catching 60-foot sign which reads, each letter almost four feet high, "CADILLAC SERVICE...

...One problem which this Americanization process will have to solve is the roads...

...I know little about Thai politics, and certainly am ill-equipped to pass judgment, but if the reaction of the students and the university people forms any criterion, then American policy is a disaster and is driving the best, democratic-minded elements into opposition to the U.S...

...Kukurit, apparently, is "worth" 700,000 rate...

...It was once a delta, and the old capital was many miles above...

...Which Asian tongue, other than Chinese, is spoken in more than one country...

...I asked, having read the detailed accusations he had made against the Government...

...Oxford-educated, he and his brother Semij Pramoj have the strong civic pride characteristic of in old, responsible, aristocratic class whose chief disdain is for the greedy and vulgar...

...Shortly after, I read in the London Times that Kukurit, who edits one of the new independent newspapers in Thailand, the Siam Rath Press, was leading a fierce campaign against the Government, charging it with having stolen the recent election...

...The "Americanization" of Thailand is evident everywhere: in the large number of department stores, with their gleaming hardware gadgetry...

...As the Thais point out, the King had been a priest for 29 years and was a learned old man when he assumed the throne, rather than the bald, virile, muscle-bending figure created by Brynner...

...But the majority of cars now are American, with right-hand drive: and while the large American auto companies make an export model with left-hand drive, the conflict, symbolic and actual, remains...

...One large cut-out, perhaps 200 feet wide and 40 feet high, showed a great battle scene from War and Peace, with Napoleon looming ominously over one edge of the scene and a demure Audrey Hepburn at the other end...

...He is the fifth generation from the first head of the present dynasty, but, as he explained, in Thailand there operates a "law of diminishing nobility...

...The fact is that most of the large cities of Southeast Asia—Calcutta, Bombay, Rangoon, Singapore and Hong Kong—look "Western...

...The many large palaces, with thrones of beaten gold and individual squares of hand-drawn gold leaf wallpaper (almost 2,000 of them in some instances), raise an old, yet new question...

...But since Thailand has become the military anchor for SEATO, American aid has poured in lavishly, the Government has begun to live beyond its means, and Thailand would be in economic trouble if a capricious U.S...

...I enjoy it...

...The Marshal prudently moved outside the city, fearing further demonstrations against his sleep and peace of mind...

...Max Bishop, a "ruffian...

...However, this edict applies only to those within the fourth generation...

...And, like many Asian people, they are quite syncretistic...

...Royalty in Thailand is addressed by a different language, an archaic Sanskrit, from the common tongue...

...Bangkok, I met the most remarkable man in Southeast Asia, Kukurit Pramoj, a prince of the royal family...

...As a by-product of this aid...

...A week later, after I had left, I read that he had been arrested, charged with having called the U.S...

...Bangkok itself was "created" by the river...

...In the next fifty years, unless the river is dredged, the capital may be moved downstream again...

...Such structures were possible only in absolute monarchies, where the kings, like the Pharaohs, could celebrate themselves...

...After Calcutta, Bangkok with its "quaint" temples and well-ordered streets seems like a fairyland...

...In Thailand, which was once an absolute monarchy, each man has an assigned rank, the minimum being about 25 rate, or the measure of land which could provide subsistence...

...Kukurit's father had left him a little money...

...The King and the royal family do not have to know this court language, but those who address them do...

...Yet these structures are infinitely more beautiful than the monuments which democracy builds, such as the one the Thais erected to the recent war—four large, ugly, cream-colored slabs of stone, each obliquely facing another...

...A slim, handsome man of 40, with dark, wavy hair, he walked with a litheness and grace that caused women to stare as he sauntered into a room...

...And he was probably right...

...A few miles up the curving canals, one is almost in the jungle...

...Ambassador...

...Thailand, which was never occupied by a foreign power, has been allowed its own development...

...Kukurit has charged that the police protect the Bangkok underworld —whose revenues, as traditional in the Orient, derive largely from vice and gambling—and that the Government used the underworld to steal last spring's election...

...I asked...

...A friend had written him from Paris that I would be coming to Bangkok...

...They were British cities, and their architectural styles, particularly in the administrative and business sections, are Western...

...What is most striking is the numerous palaces and Buddhist temples, with their gilt tops and lovely roofs of successive slopes of red tiles ending in gracefully curved abstractions of swans and snake heads...

...Most of the anger was directed against Yul Brynner and his creation of a rude barbarian king who was finally tamed or shamed by Anna into tolerant behavior...

...I feared that I might not be able to see him, but he showed up for lunch, talking freely of the extensive corruption in the Government and of how American aid w:as ruining his country...

...And you permit this...

...Kukurit Pramoj is, perhaps, the proof of this argument...

...Thailand, he points out, has never known the terrible poverty of other Asian countries since it has a small population and produces a rice surplus for export...

...Bangkok, after all, is now the headquarters of the Southeast Asia Treatv Organization created by John Foster Dulles and the seat of ECAFE...

...hence Kukurit can be addressed in the common tongue...

...These beautiful, graceful structures were built during our own Colonial days and a comparison of the two styles is all to the credit of the Thais...

...But Anna did leave some excellent influences...

...How religious the Thais are seems difficult to say...

...But I read economics," he said (actually, he had taken a "first" at Oxford), "I worked in a bank, taught economics at the university, learned to make some wise investments—even have the Pepsi-Cola franchise here—and so bought the press I now run...

...Kukurit, a democrat who attended the Milan conference which the Congress for Cultural Freedom held in 1955, is quite bitter against American policy, and most of all at his inability to obtain even a hearing from American officials...

...And the ruling party seems to be made up of ambitious politicos, lawyers and military men, who, as Kukurit charges, all have "sticky fingers...

...in the numerous agencies for American products, such as International Harvester and General Electric...

...Oh, yes," he replied, laughingly...

...Much of this is due to the self-consciousness of the Government in presenting a modern face to the world...

...The children seem more friendly and sociable than any in the world...

...Following this expose, the Thais, who normally are a very mild people, gathered outside the home of Field Marshal Pibul Songgram, the ruler of Thailand, and demanded a recount...

...nd, if the heat gets a little prickly, as it does through most of the year, one can quickly take a plunge into the waters...

...While I was in Bangkok, ECAFE was holding its annual meeting, with representatives from all the Asian countries, plus Russia, the U.S...

...In the temple of the Emerald Buddha, with its extraordinary stone, one finds Brahmin motifs and statues of the Hindu Loki...

...Congress were to suddenly cut off aid...

...Yet he still has one royal privilege...

...As a consequence of his activity, martial law had been declared...

...As the river silted in, and ships could no longer proceed to the old city, Bangkok was Created...

...Most striking, perhaps, is the extraordinary number of movie houses which fill the city—huge, imposing 20th-century temples, rectangular slabs of stone and cement, half a city-block long, dominated by huge cardboard cutouts of erotic or "action" scenes from Hollywood movies...

...There is a floating market, where people come to buy their food from '"stores" in boats, and little floating "restaurants," i.e., canoes selling rice, fish and coffee to people paddling by...

...I asked...

...The large, beautiful throne palace, which is about 60 years old, was built by the young prince to whom Anna was tutor...

...If a man held, say, 10,000 raie, he had to produce 400 men for the King's service on demand...