Distillery Breakfast: How Shan Rebels Took Phrae in 1902 Wake up early on 25 July 1902 in Phrae and the air smells like teak dust and diesel from the sawmills lining the Yom River. Walk past the market where Shan traders unload turmeric from baskets stacked on ox carts, and you will see men in … Read more
The Portuguese Who Never Went Home: Thailand’s Five-Century Secret Ask anyone in Bangkok where to find European history and they will point you at the Grand Palace, or maybe the old shophouses in Charoen Krung, or that French bakery in Silom that charges 400 baht for a croissant. Almost nobody will send you west across … Read more
Phaya Tani: The Symbolic Cannon Taken from Patani to Bangkok In front of Thailand’s Ministry of Defence, opposite the Grand Palace in Bangkok, stands one of the most quietly controversial objects in the country. It is a huge old cannon called Phaya Tani, and although most visitors walk past it without a second glance, it … Read more
Patani: The Lost Sultanate of Thailand’s Deep South A note before you get confused: Please understand the difference between Pattani province (note the spelling) and Patani which was an independent Sultanate. Many of you who read this will have heard about the “deep south” and the ongoing problems there. This story is about the history … Read more
Anouvong Rebellion: The Last King of Vientiane vs Siam In the dry season of 1827, smoke from burning villages drifted across the Khorat Plateau like a warning. A Siamese patrol captain rode through the ashes and found something worse than empty granaries and scorched fields: the entire population was gone. Tens of thousands of Lao … Read more
The Bunnag Family: From Persian Traders to Thai Philhanthropists Most people who know Thai history recognise the Bunnag name as one of the great aristocratic families of Thailand. Fewer realise that this very Thai clan actually began as Persian merchants in Ayutthaya more than 400 years ago. Their story is one of the most striking … Read more
How a King Turned a Swamp Into Thailand’s Greatest Rice Bowl Back in the 1890s, if you’d walked through what’s now Rangsit in Pathum Thani province, you wouldn’t have seen any of the tidy canals or tangerine orchards that made the place famous. You’d have found yourself in a vast, marshy wilderness called Thung Luang, … Read more
(Unknown Thailand — Story No. 100) Unknown Sukhothai: King Lithai, the Crystal Chakram, And The Sky That Fought for Him This story begins with King Lithai, a spinning disc of light, and a 14th‑century battlefield in Sukhothai. The year is sometime in the mid‑1300s. The place is the Sukhothai region, in what is now northern … Read more
The Women Who Built Phuket If you walk down Thalang Road in old Phuket Town today, you’ll see beautiful Sino‑Portuguese shophouses glowing in the sun — pastel yellows, soft blues, deep reds, with intricate archways and carved wooden shutters. Cafés, bookshops, boutiques, and restaurants spill out onto the pavements. It’s lovely, peaceful, and full of … Read more
Princess of Khok Phanom Di: The Woman Buried Under 121,000 Shell Beads On a quiet mound in central Thailand, archaeologists uncovered one of the most dazzling prehistoric burials ever found in Southeast Asia. Beneath layers of earth at Khok Phanom Di, a woman lay wrapped in garments stitched with more than 121,000 tiny shell beads, … Read more