Si Satchanalai & Chaliang Historical park: well worth the detour
The 45 km² large Si Satchanalai Historical Park is an attractive and, above all, a full-fledged initiative for the Sukhothai Historical Park. This Unesco World Heritage Site is located about 70 km north of Sukhothai. The big difference with the Sukhothai Historical Park is that it is a lot less crowded here and that most of the ruins are located in a much more wooded and therefore shadier area, which makes a visit in the hot dog days a lot more pleasant.
Anyone who looks at the glossy photos of Thailand will have come across him. The statue is now world famous and you can see it in real life in Ayutthaya at the Wat Phra Mahathat.
How Siam/Thailand responded to the pull of the West
How did Thailand respond to contacts with the West? How did they view the West? Which things did they admire and which aroused their aversion? What did they adopt, how and for what reasons, and what did they reject? A short cultural guide.
The Lanna influences in Northern Thailand
Those who visit the north of Thailand such as Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai still see many influences from the Lanna era. Lanna means in Dutch: one million rice fields. The Lanna kingdom, which also covered part of Burma, lasted for 600 years and was founded in 1259 by King Mengrai the Great. He succeeded his father as leader of the Chiang Saen kingdom.
Polygamy was common in Thailand at court and bourgeoisie
Tino Kuis gave a very favorable book review of 'Woman, Man, Bangkok. Love, Sex and Popular Culture in Thailand by Scot Barmé He read this book in one breath as if it were a political thriller and promised more. Here again a contribution based on Barmé's book. About polygamy or polygamy.
I am not telling you a secret when I say that the influence of the Thai army on the social and political developments in the country in the last century has been indispensable. From coup to coup, the military caste not only managed to strengthen its position but also – and this until today – to maintain its grip on the country's government.
It's been a while since the updated version of The Mekong-Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future' by Australian historian Milton Osborne 'rolled off the presses, but that doesn't change the fact that this book has lost any of its value.
Phya Anuman Rajadhon พระยาอนุมานราชธน (1888-1969), who became known by his pen name Sathiankoset, can be regarded as one of the most influential pioneers, if not the founder, of modern Thai anthropology.
Looking for Burmese traces in Chiang Mai
In the official Thai historiography, there are a number of historical phases that people prefer to talk about as little as possible. One of those periods is that of the two centuries that Chiang Mai was Burmese. You can already question the Thai identity and character of the Rose of the North anyway, because formally Chiang Mai, as the capital of the kingdom of Lanna, has not been part of Thailand for even a century.
The Temples of Mae Hong Son
When I first visited Mae Hong Son, the capital of the least populated province in Thailand, more than thirty years ago, I was immediately sold. Back then it was one of the country's most pristine and remote towns, tucked away between towering mountains and difficult to reach from Chiang Mai via a road that seemed to wind forever in sharp hairpin bends between the steep, densely forested slopes.
A book that I purchased almost immediately after its publication was “Encounters in the East – A World History” by Patrick Pasture, professor of European and world history at KU Leuven.
The History of Catholicism in Thailand
The history between Thailand and the Vatican goes back hundreds of years. Already in 1669, under the reign of King Narai the Great of Ayutthaya, the establishment of the Mission de Siam was announced, under the leadership of the then Pope Clemens LX. One of the many Catholic settlements was Songkhon Village in Mukdahan Province. With only 600 inhabitants, it had a church, a school and a French parish priest with two nuns from Laos.
I've never made a secret of my affinity for Chiang Mai. One of the many – for me already attractive – advantages of the 'Rose of the North' is the large concentration of interesting temple complexes within the old city walls. Wat Phra Sing or the Temple of the Lion Buddha is one of my absolute favourites.
The Dutch war cemeteries in Kanchanaburi
A visit to Kanchanaburi War Cemetery is a captivating experience. In the bright, shimmering light of the Brazen Ploert blazing mercilessly overhead, it seems that row upon row of the clean-lined uniform gravestones in the trimmed lawns reach to the horizon. Despite the traffic in the adjacent streets, it can sometimes be very quiet. And that's great because this is a place where memory slowly but surely turns into history...
Thai Mekhong whiskey is actually rum
Mekhong (แม่ โขง) is a Thai liquor with a long history. The gold-colored bottle is also called "The Spirit of Thailand". Many Thai call it a whiskey but actually it is a rum.
Don't just say stupa to a chedi
You simply cannot miss it in Thailand; the chedis, the local variant of what is known in the rest of the world - with the exception of Tibet (chorten), Sri Lanka (dagaba) or Indonesia (candi), as the stupas, the round structures containing Buddhist relics or, as in some cases also the cremated remains of the Great Ones of the Land and their relatives.
The Thai National & Other Libraries
It all started in the seventh century BC with the thousands of clay tablets of King Ashurbanipal in Nineveh. A collection of texts that was systematically arranged and catalogued and it has continued in this way for twenty-eight centuries, albeit with trial and error. So the oldest library was that of good old Assurbanipal, the youngest newcomer is the internet.
And that's where the gold diggers show up again!
I have previously written on Thailandblog about the Thai version of the Loch Ness Monster; a persistent myth that pops up with the regularity of a clock. Although in this specific case it is not about a prehistoric aquatic creature, but about an even more imaginative enormous treasure that the retreating Japanese troops are said to have buried near the infamous Burma-Thai Railway at the end of the Second World War.
The unknown Railway of Death
Lung Jan has been working for a few years on a book in which he tries to reconstruct the almost forgotten story of the romusha. Romusha was the collective name for the voluntary and forced Asian laborers who were employed by the Japanese occupier in the construction and maintenance of the Thai-Burma railway, which soon and quite rightly became known, or rather, infamous, as the infamous Railway of Death, the Railway of Death….
Thonburi, the 250 year old capital of Siam
More than 250 years ago, Thonburi became the capital of Siam. This happened after the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767 to the conquest of the Burmese. However, the new capital only functioned as such for 15 years, because the current Bangkok took over as the capital.
The secret of the name Siam
A few years ago I made a translation of an article about Sukhothai. In the introduction I called Sukhothai the first capital of the kingdom of Siam, but that was not a good translation of the "Siamese Kingdom of Sukhothai", as stated in the original article. In response to the recent publication, a reader pointed out to me that Sukhothai was not the capital of Siam, but of the Sukhothai Kingdom.
Kanchanaburi, gripping history and beautiful nature
Most tourists travel to Kanchanaburi for a day as part of an excursion from Bangkok. However, the region is certainly suitable for a longer stay, especially if you want to travel independently.