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A few steps from Yaowarat, Bangkok's Chinatown, a handful of streets in the old city sell saris, gold braid and lengths of fabric. Above them rises…
Understand 12 min read
For more than four centuries, from its foundation in the mid-fourteenth century to its destruction by Burmese armies in 1767, Ayutthaya was far more…
Understand 12 min read
Neither wholly terrestrial nor wholly marine, the mangrove fringes the estuaries and muddy shores of Thailand, from the upper reaches of the Gulf to…
Understand 14 min read
Under the reign of Rama III, commonly placed between 1824 and 1851, several of Bangkok's royal temples were clad in ceramics and filled with stone…
Understand 12 min read
In official speeches, at school and in public debate, *khwam pen thai*, 'Thainess', literally 'the fact of being Thai', is taken as self-evident. Yet…
Understand 14 min read
For nearly six centuries, the north of present-day Thailand answered to a capital other than Sukhothai, Ayutthaya or Bangkok. Founded in 1296 by…
Understand 13 min read
The flooded paddies that now make up the image of the Thai countryside are not a timeless backdrop. Archaeology shows that the first rice cultivated…
Understand 13 min read
In the 13th century, Tai chiefs broke away from Khmer authority and established at Sukhothai a power that rose to prominence, then, in little more…
Understand 13 min read
On 21 April 1782, on the eastern bank of the Chao Phraya, a wooden pillar is planted in the ground. This act founds the capital of the new Chakri…
Understand 12 min read
For hundreds of kilometres, the Mekong separates Thailand from Laos. Yet this line of water is no immemorial natural barrier. It was born of a…
Understand 13 min read
From the Khorat Plateau to the Chao Phraya valley, stone sanctuaries are a reminder that between the 11th and 13th centuries much of present-day…
Understand 13 min read
On the walls of Wat Phra Kaew, as on the stages of the *khon*, Phra Ram has been doing battle with Thotsakan for more than two centuries. Their story…
Understand 11 min read
Some one and a half kilometres long, Yaowarat Road has become the emblem of Bangkok’s Chinatown, with its shop signs, its gold shops and its…
Understand 13 min read
It left no certain capital, no king list and no chronicle of its own. Yet Dvaravati is the name engraved, in the 7th century, on silver medallions…
Understand 13 min read
In 1946, a family of Hainanese origin bought an outlying plot of land between Silom and Surawong. Within a few decades, Patpong had become Bangkok's…
Understand 9 min read
