Word: phumiphon
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...more than a year before his quiet coup, Sarit was Thailand's absentee strongman, with an obedient Premier in office and a contented young King Phumiphon staying regally above politics. But Sarit was spending so much time in Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. because of his liver-the result of a lifetime of high living-that some of the country's tolerated bad habits had become intolerable. To break up the entrenched corruption and to ward off the increasing appeal of Communism, Sarit decided to take on the premiership in person. He liked to think...
...ordered his priests to keep out of the way until the crop was full grown. As centuries passed, the practice turned into a kind of spiritual excursion that every Buddhist layman tried to enjoy, and eventually entering the temporary priesthood became a matter of course; laborers, businessmen, monarchs (King Phumiphon in 1956) went through the 90-day ritual. "It's like going to college in the United States," explains a Thai. "Every boy wants...
...liver ailment in Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, and then in Britain. Back home, his Chart Sang-khom Party seemed safely in control of two-thirds of the seats in the Assembly, after an election he had decreed; his own man, General Thanom Kittikachorn, was Premier; young King Phumiphon was carefully holding himself above politics and giving no encouragement to the opposition. When a Soviet attaché and a Tass newsman spoke slightingly of Sarit this month, the government reacted sharply by kicking both out of the country...
...remembering them. In 1912 Prince Jaisinh Rao, son of the Gaekwar of Baroda, got a Harvard bachelor's degree, and in 1928 Prince Somdet Chao Fa Mahidol won his M.D. from the Harvard medical school. It was while the prince was a student at Harvard that his son, Phumiphon Aduldet, the present King of Thailand, was born in Cambridge-perhaps the only king born in the U.S. But these are recorded facts, nothing more. The legends are few, the tall tales rare...
Change for the Better. His victorious successor, granite-faced Marshal Sarit got official blessing from 29-year-old King Phumiphon Aduldet, then sent personal messages to the U.S. and British embassies assuring them that the change in government presaged no change in Thailand's pro-Western foreign policy. As an earnest of his intentions, Sarit saw to it that able, pro-Western Pote Sarasin, a 52-year-old aristocrat who served for five years as Ambassador to Washington, was named temporary Premier. Meanwhile, a scheduled meeting of the SEATO military group convened in Bangkok without a hitch. Said Sarit...