The Land of Ihe Cheerful People

The airborne travelers who alighted last week in a steady stream at glittering, jingling Bangkok were apt to think that they had landed in the middle of Shangrila. The chaos that filled the rest of Asia seemed like a distant nightmare. At Bangkok's busy, orderly Don Muang airport, immigration officers smiled toothily at newcomers, whisked them through a onceover-lightly customs inspection, politely urged them to stay as long as possible.

Tourists behaved as tourists should, trekked dutifully to the Floating Market and the Cobra Farms, gawked earnestly at the gleaming Emerald Buddha in the Grand Palace temple. Bangkok's shops were bulging with niello silverware, hand-woven silks, carved teak heads and snakeskin bags. What was more, the prices were low. For lunch the visitors ate cold prawns in the air-conditioned Chez Eve,* while an Indonesian quartet imported from Singapore played Slow Boat to China.

At night they watched graceful Siamese dance exhibitions or sipped drinks under the fake banana trees of the Silver Palm Club. The more adventurous let fleet-tongued, fleet-footed samlor (pedicab) boys wheel them off to the Cathay Night Club, where they jitterbugged the night away with wriggly Siamese taxi dancers. (Lest the visitors get any improper ideas, signs at their hotels informed them sternly: "It is forbidden to entertain lady guests in the bedroom without permission of the management.")

Siam's incredible cheerfulness did not stop at Bangkok. It spread across the whole funnel-shaped country of 18 million people--to the farmers slogging behind lumbering carabao in the knee-deep water of the rice paddies, and to the tappers working their way down long, slanting rows of rubber trees.

Men with Shovels. Siam's people had reason to be cheerful. Since the middle of the 18th Century their country has been free from foreign rule (except for the Japanese occupation during World War II). The Siamese feel no smoldering resentment against any former colonial masters, are also happy because their country is comparatively rich and not overcrowded. Yet all of its cheerfulness cannot shield Siam from the crosswinds of Communist insurrection which blow across the border from Burma, Indo-China and Malaya.

"Right now," said a Siamese engineer last week to TIME Correspondent Roy Rowan, "the Communists are digging quietly with shovels, instead of blasting with dynamite." The men with the shovels are mostly Chinese; for the past 20 years they have had a monopoly on Communism among the easygoing Siamese. The government gave the Siamese Communist party legal status in 1946 (to win Russian support for its bid for U.N. membership), but the Reds continue to work entirely underground; when known Chinese Communists are caught, they are deported. Siam's 30,000 Communist party members have no real leader, but the man most frequently tagged as their boss is slender, ferret-faced Ku Kip, a Chinese Communist veteran who saw service under notorious Comintern Agent Michael Borodin.

Government officials regard Siam's 3,000,000 Chinese minority with some wariness. "Before the war," said a Foreign Ministry official last week, "the Chinese came here with the idea of becoming Siamese citizens. When China became one of the Big Five, they suddenly proclaimed themselves Chinese again. They want to be with the victors." Recently, more & more Chinese shopkeepers in Bangkok have torn down the pictures of Chiang Kai-shek which hung on their walls, replaced them with pictures of Chinese Communist Boss Mao Tse-tung.

Bullfights & Burials. The Communists carry on their propaganda through Bangkok's press and a crop of 40 new Chinese-run sport clubs and night schools, including the "School for Marching Young Orators." All eight of Bangkok's Chinese language newspapers went Communist this spring, and four influential Siamese papers, bought by Chinese, promptly did likewise.

Siam's Communists are also infiltrating the country's new, government-sponsored labor front. Last year the government suppressed the Red-dominated Central Labor Union and organized its own. The new union is under strict military control, runs an import-export company and job printing plants, stages bullfights, promotes marriage, pays burial expenses for members, and offers legal counsel.

Over these activities, 41 Russian officials at the Soviet legation watch silently. "I think they are hermits," said a Siamese teacher last week. "They never come out, but many people go in."

Astrologers & Kings. The man who is doing his best to make things tough for Siam's Communists is trim little Premier Phibun Songgram (pronounced Peeboon Sangrum), a devout Buddhist and a staunch believer in astrology; he determined the date of the coup which brought him to power (Nov. 8, 1947) with the help of one-eyed Astrologer Tong Kam. There were some questions, however, which the stars would not answer. "Internally," said Phibun last week, "we can combat Communism by economic means. Our economy is good. We have neither beggars nor roadblocks. But if armed Communists flood across our borders, there is not much we could do without military assistance from the U.S. What steps will America take? We would welcome plain words."

What Phibun failed to say plainly is that Siam has a wobbly political structure (Phibun is the eighth Premier since war's end). Continual coups and countercoups, government corruption and a bitter army-navy rivalry, which is apt to flare into open warfare, make his government even less secure against Red assault than Phibun is willing to admit. During one attempted coup last February, a British resident of Bangkok slipped up behind a sailor who was crouched behind a machine gun at the curb. "What's it all about?" asked the Briton. "Navy fight army. Bloody good!" snapped the sailor.

Many Siamese call Phibun two-faced, suspect he is more interested in establishing an army dictatorship than in making democracy work. "Government leaders just like to talk about democracy," a Bangkok university student complained last week. "They spell it out with their hands, and rub it out with their feet." Most Siamese wish fondly that cowlicked, 21-year-old little King Phumiphon (pronounced Poomeepone) would return from his voluntary exile in Switzerland, where he spends his time writing songs. His 'Tis Sundown and Rainfall are enthusiastically sung by Siamese students everywhere and played frequently in Bangkok nightclubs. Sample:

The birds come to their nest;

At peace, they bill and coo;

The wide world sinks to rest,

And so do I

And so do you.

Meanwhile, Siam remains a land of cheerful people who hate to admit that things may one day change. Skinny Seni Pramoj, Siam's wartime ambassador to the U.S., recently quipped: "There's nothing wrong with Siam. We just happen to have contentment instead of iceboxes. But there's something wrong with the world."

* Heeding Noel Coward's famed advice: "In Bangkok at 12 o'clock...only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun."

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