Word: bhumibol
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Last week the glittering ceremony was revived to celebrate the bicentennial of the founding of Thailand's ruling Chakri dynasty. No fewer than 51 of the mammoth regal barges were restored, at a cost of $3.5 million, to transport King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 54, ninth of his line, and his entourage along the Chao Phraya River. For months, 2,180 cadets and officers of the Thai navy had worked strenuously to perfect their oarsmanship. Their main worry: the barges are notoriously unstable, and the slightest mistake could have resulted in a regal dunking...
There were no such mishaps. Flanked by royal guards dressed in scarlet, black and turquoise uniforms with plumed helmets, King Bhumibol stepped out of his pale yellow Rolls-Royce and boarded the Suphannahongse (Golden Swan), a 15-ton, 148-ft. vessel with a fierce, swanlike prow. Propelled by 54 crimson-clad rowers, the barge glided down the river like a giant mythological bird. As gold-encrusted conch shells and silver trumpets heralded the royal procession, several hundred thousand Thais gathered along the riverbank to catch a glimpse of their King...
...were barely in place when the familiar scenario began to unravel. Instead of retiring quietly, Prem, also a general, and the army's cornmander in chief, escaped to the garrison city of Korat, 150 miles northeast of Bang kok. There, with the backing of the immensely popular King Bhumibol Adulyadej, he rallied his forces and skillfully set about isolating San and his fellow conspirators. "Only those who are bund are with the opposition," Prem declared in a radio broadcast from his temporary head quarters. "Almost all the army is in my hands, and the King is with...
...practicing Buddhists, and the symbols of religion are omnipresent: young men in saffron robes practicing the 227 rules of tripitaka (the summation of Hinayana Doctrine), temples that dominate the jumbled skyline of humid, traffic-jammed Bangkok. Another symbol of Thai unity is the country's constitutional monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 51, whose official title is King Rama IX. A talented jazz saxophonist who was born in Cambridge, Mass. (where his father was a medical student), the shy monarch travels constantly throughout the country. He personally hands out diplomas to all graduates of state universities and military colleges. That...
When that might happen is anybody's guess. A mild monarchy under the rule of the figurehead King Bhumibol Andulydej, Thailand is less notable for its democratic tradition than for its periodic military putsches and bottomless corruption. Yet at the height of the Viet Nam War, the U.S. shipped squadrons of bombers and some 50,000 troops to this California-size land, making it a fortress of American power. As the war in neighboring Indochina began to wind down, riotous Bangkok students overthrew Dictator Thanom Kit-tikachorn in 1973 and ushered in a neutralist government that requested U.S. withdrawal...