The Ramakien

The Thai are one of the more elusive peoples of the Oriente. Although the West has been in constant contact with the Southeast Asian kingdom since the sixteenth century, and in spite of the glamor that has always invested the court and people of Siam (as the country was called until recently), the number of definitive or even reliably informative works on the Thai amounts to no more than a handful.

This is the more puzzling as few Asian countries are as accessible as Thailand, and few peoples more apparently friendly towards foreigners. Neither political, religious nor social obstacles of an overt kind stand before the institutions, tempies and homes of the Thai, and many Westerners, thinking that to see is to understand, gain the impression from having seen so much of the country and people that they understand it-and them-completely. But nothing could be further from the truth. For like the chameleon, the Thai have perfected the useful art of being fully in view and remaining almost invisible. And nowhere is this art better displayed than at the Bangkok temple of Phra Jetubon...