Can't believe there are still monarchs in 2016. Definitely there are millions of people living in 1500. Abolish monarchy!!!
There are more unbelievable things taking place on Earth.
Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej Dies at 88
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Re: Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej Dies at 88
#22His daughter dated my roommate in college. I always thought he was just making it up. She was a very attractive, nice, intelligent woman (they met in Physics class at MIT), but I never believed that she was from the ruling family of Thailand. She never mentioned that her father was a king and never acted any different than the rest of us commoners. One summer, I read about their wedding in the paper. He wasn't BSing…
My wife is friends with her daughter Mia. Really nice people, down to earth for being the direct descendants of a royal family.
Re: Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej Dies at 88
#23This quote from Lawrence Osborne is apt:
> Thailand is a unique society in the modern world: a Theravada Buddhist monarchy with a parliamentary system. The clarinet-playing king, believed to be a living incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, presides via lèse majesté laws over a hedonistic and technology-obsessed Asian Tiger economy, centered in one of the most sophisticated urban cultures on earth. No one has ever been able to understand how it all holds together.
The mystery behind that last sentence may just about to be revealed.
Re: Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej Dies at 88
#24The reverence that Thai people have for this King is no joking matter. They take their monarch deadly seriously and it seems fair to let them honor the King as they see fit without a lot of outsiders casually weighing in with half-baked opinions.
I'm American and there are people from all over the world casually weighing in about America on HN. That's totally OK. Let's not have a double standard and let's be free to have opinions about other peoples' royals.
Re: Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej Dies at 88
#25I'm in Thailand at the moment and I'm interested to see how this plays out. This guy is super popular. His picture is on the wall in every business and many homes. Not out of compulsion. They just love the king. I'm sure most places will close for mourning. We have been advised to take out lots of cash and get food sorted as we may not have access for a little while. The bigger question is what is going to happen wit…
> This guy is super popular. ... Not out of compulsion.
Making it a crime to criticize the royal family with punishments up to 15 years tends to make it look like uncoerced love.
Re: Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej Dies at 88
#26The reverence that Thai people have for this King is no joking matter. They take their monarch deadly seriously and it seems fair to let them honor the King as they see fit without a lot of outsiders casually weighing in with half-baked opinions.
Not insulting the king while in Thailand or on Thai sites sounds fair enough, but it shouldn't apply to those of us in the rest of the world. Just as US laws and norms shouldn't apply outside of the US, Thai norms and laws should not apply outside of Thailand.
Re: Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej Dies at 88
#27According to the FT ("King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, 1927-2016"): "Bhumibol Adulyadej ... chose not to condemn the 1976 massacre at Bangkok's Thammasat University of dozens of pro-democracy protesters ..." Time Magazine: "Thailand Bids Farewell to Beloved King Bhumibol Adulyadej", regarding said events: In early October of that year, demonstrations convulsed Bangkok in response to the arrest of prominent studen…
Thailand has cycled between elected government and military dictatorship something like 15 times while he was King, the miracle is he didn't have an outright civil war during his reign. If you've ever visited Thailand, you'd know that compared to surrounding countries (with the exception of Malysia perhaps) the level of infrastructure and standard of living is much higher in Thailand, things generally work there whereas in neighbouring countries like Cambodia/Laos/Burma they generally don't, or at least they haven't until very recently.
To at least my outside perspective, The King seems to have been a stabilising force which prevented Thailand from descending into outright civil war.
And I can't help but feel that somehow insinuating that America shouldn't consider Thailand an ally after the events you listed is a bit ridiculous considering the year before they occured the US was still in Vietnam fighting a war with allies who were torturing and killing a damned site more people than what was happening in Thailand around the same time.
Re: Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej Dies at 88
#28I'm in Thailand at the moment and I'm interested to see how this plays out. This guy is super popular. His picture is on the wall in every business and many homes. Not out of compulsion. They just love the king. I'm sure most places will close for mourning. We have been advised to take out lots of cash and get food sorted as we may not have access for a little while. The bigger question is what is going to happen wit…
> This guy is super popular. ... Not out of compulsion. Making it a crime to criticize the royal family with punishments up to 15 years tends to make it look like uncoerced love.
To note: that's not from the royal Thai family, but from the policing structures in Thailand.
Re: Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej Dies at 88
#29N.B. gov.uk has updated its official travel advice (it's always useful check this before travelling, especially if you're UK-based) [1] "...there is now an official period of mourning of one year from 14 October 2016; you should respect the feelings and sensitivities of the Thai people at this time; access to entertainment, including restaurants, bars, and shopping areas may be restricted and you should behave respec…
That's helpful.
Re: Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej Dies at 88
#30I'm in Thailand at the moment and I'm interested to see how this plays out. This guy is super popular. His picture is on the wall in every business and many homes. Not out of compulsion. They just love the king. I'm sure most places will close for mourning. We have been advised to take out lots of cash and get food sorted as we may not have access for a little while. The bigger question is what is going to happen wit…
> This guy is super popular. ... Not out of compulsion. Making it a crime to criticize the royal family with punishments up to 15 years tends to make it look like uncoerced love.
Thailand in a sense is a very divided country, the one thing that the majorities on either sides could agree on was their respect for the king. They called him a "stabilising force" for precisely that reason, the huge majority of Thai's genuinely loved and respected the man if for no other reason than he was a public figure who'd been around before most of them were born and whom was mostly above the kind of day to day dirty politics that lead Thailand to be in an endless cycle of elected government followed by coup.