The Cult of Yellow

It's King Bhumibol of Thailand's 80th birthday on the fifth of December, and the whole country is gearing up for a massive celebration. The streets of Bangkok are already decorated with banners and bunting (and an occasional Christmas tree), a brass band sails jauntily through the streets on a flat-bed truck and every day the number of Thai people dressed in the King's colour of yellow increases, giving the unnerving impression that most of the population has joined a mysterious cult.

I saw the King, accidentally, when I was wandering through the outskirts of Amphon Park in Bangkok and he was driven past at unnecessarily high speed in a yellow Rolls Royce pursued by about twenty red police cars. As his car-chase of a cavalcade approached, everyone in the vicinity stopped what they were doing and stood still and silent by the roadside. It brought to mind that joke about the Queen believing everywhere in Britain smells of fresh paint - Mr Bhumibol must be under the impression that he's ruling Narnia after the White Witch has been on the rampage. Only with less snow.

But their excessive royalism aside, I had a great time in Thailand. It is much more westernised than Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos and so has had the effect of easing my transition back to London. During my ten days in Thailand, I visited Chiang Mai, memorable for its moat and organic cooking school, ancient Ayuthaya which was once the capital city of Thailand and is now a collection of ruins, Kanchanaburi and Bangkok.

For me the hightlight was Kanchanaburi, a town almost entirely devoted to telling the story of the Bridge on the River Kwai. As well as the bridge itself, in the town there is an immaculately tended Allied war cemetery, a museum run by monks containing a fascinating collection of newspaper articles written about various individuals who were prisoners of war, and an information centre which approaches the emotive topic of the Death Railway with a remarkable level of honesty and empathy. Somehow they managed to sensitively address the question of what could have caused the Japanese soldiers and Korean guards to behave as they did towards the POWs and other labourers, attempting to understand while still condemning what happened.

Stories of war and religion have dominated the last three months for me, partly because of the influence they hold in the countries I have visited, but also because I have actively sought them out. Perhaps for this reason, by the time I reached Bangkok I had reached my limit of museums, temples and historical monuments. And so, apart from attending Loi Krathong, a Thai river festival which happened to coincide with my 30th birthday, I eschewed the tourist attractions and instead spent my last couple of days holiday drifting through Bangkok's different neighbourhoods, sitting in the shade of the trees in the city's many parks, and preparing for my journey home. I look forward to seeing you all soon.