Word: phraya
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...winding, traffic-jammed klong (canals) that made Siam's capital an eastern Venice. Strawhatted boatmen on the wider canals that crisscross the rice-rich central plains to the north had told it to farmers' wives in houses perched on stilts. Up the great rivers, the Chao Phraya, the Mekong, the Tha Chin, the Ping, the Si and the Mun, it had gone with wandering merchants thumbing barge rides. On the lips of mendicants with shaven heads and shaven eyebrows it had traveled through cobra-ridden jungles where tigers lurked and elephants lurched, and on into the cool, airy...
...Ayuthia came up the Chao Phraya river, thousands of sampans rushed out to greet him, and radios blared recordings of Anchor's Aweigh and the King's own musical compositions. By noon of a blistering day, crowds jammed all Bangkok vantage points. At 3 p.m. a landing stage at the Memorial Bridge collapsed, pitching a hundred people into the water. Since all Siamese seem to be born swimmers, no one was drowned. Since all Siamese are born cheerful, all came up grinning...