THAILAND - THE ANCIENT KINGDOM OF SIAM

摘要

Intriguingly, Thailand is one country in south-east Asia that has never been conquered or colonized by a foreign power, considering all the various warfare and battling that went on all around it, although there have been several coups and imposed dictatorships from inside. Re-named in 1932 from the ancient Kingdom of Siam, today Thailand has a nominal constitutional Monarch with a Parliamentary system of government. King Maha Vajiralongkorn acceded to the throne in his sixties, after his father Bhumibol, who was much loved and had been on the throne since 1946, died four years ago. I was in Thailand a month after his death and there was much public grieving with official mourning declared to last for a year. His son however is less popular, known for being something of a womanizer and fathering many children, and his consort Queen Suthida is his fourth wife. Geographically the country is spread over 500,000 square kilometres, twice the size of Britain with around the same population and many frontiers, notably Burma (Myanmar) and Laos to the north and Cambodia to the east. The peninsula of Phuket hangs down to the south of the main country with myriad small islands around it.