Word: siam
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...remains a quiet seaside community with an authentic, provincial flavor?street-side Thai eateries instead of Pizza Huts. But it's no bush-league backwater. In fact, no beach in Asia can claim quite the bloodline. Dotted with palaces, steeped in history, Hua Hin celebrates the grandeur of old Siam. You feel it with every creak of the teak floorboards at the old Railway Hotel, built at the Queen's command as a guesthouse for royal parties. Nowadays, it's been reborn as the grandiose 200-room Sofitel Central Hua Hin Resort. Yet the enormous balconies, antique furnishings and white...
...Exactly 130 years ago, my wife's great-grandmother, then a seven-year-old named Bua, left her village to walk with her parents to a new life in old Siam. Why they left is lost in the mists of time?most likely it was amid turmoil as colonial powers bickered over the region, sandwiched between Burma's Shan states and modern-day Laos. They were following a well-worn path. For centuries, the Buddhist, rice-farming Dai have been tempted by the wide open spaces of Thailand's north, and have ventured across the Mekong to start anew. Sawitree...
...Although snack carts are less numerous in Bangkok than they once were, this most convenient form of Thai cuisine is alive and well on the ground floor of the quaint (and air-conditioned) Old Siam shopping mall, bordered by Triphet, Burapa and Charoen Krung in west Chinatown. Women in traditional Thai dress use original recipes and equipment to create popular standards such as khanom krob (coconut milk batter poured into tiny cast-iron molds and steamed), khanom beung (taco-like shells with sweet and savory fillings) and khanom thuay (tapioca flour and coconut milk steamed in porcelain cups). Just about...
...until British and French trading companies began importing it into China during the 18th century. Chinese EmigrEs then brought their habits with them, setting up opium dens in most of Asia's major capitals and introducing locals to the drug. At one point, during the 1930s, the kingdom of Siam earned 14% of its revenue from its 1,000 licensed opium dens. In French-controlled Indochina, 15% of government revenue came from taxes on opium sales...
...used to obliquity. But this, to quote the King of Siam, 'tis a puzzlement. And when you're trying to get business managers to make plans for a recovery (and to make those desperately needed capitol outlays just as soon as they can possibly stomach) you don't give them a mixed-signals migraine...