SIAM: Garden of Smiles

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"Maybe half a million Siamese know who Joe Stalin is," said a high official of the Siamese court. "Fewer can identify Harry Truman. But everybody, right out to the most remote borders of the nation, knows about the King." Last week, for the first time in almost four years, the Siamese got a glimpse of their King, and Siam's 18 million cheerful, childlike citizens prepared to make the most of it.

For weeks past, the news of his coming had been heard amidst the clatter of traffic on Bangkok's twisted, crowded streets. Peddlers had passed it from sampan to sampan along the winding, traffic-jammed klong (canals) that made Siam's capital an eastern Venice. Strawhatted boatmen on the wider canals that crisscross the rice-rich central plains to the north had told it to farmers' wives in houses perched on stilts. Up the great rivers, the Chao Phraya, the Mekong, the Tha Chin, the Ping, the Si and the Mun, it had gone with wandering merchants thumbing barge rides. On the lips of mendicants with shaven heads and shaven eyebrows it had traveled through cobra-ridden jungles where tigers lurked and elephants lurched, and on into the cool, airy teakwood forests of the uplands. In ancient, serpent-topped temples, yellow-robed monks prepared a welcome.

As the Great God on My Head Phumiphon Adundet,* the Power Coming from the Strength of the Earth, at long last stepped ashore from the flagship Sri Ayuthia onto Siamese soil, every temple bell in the land rang out a greeting.

All Grinning. TIME Correspondent John Stanton cabled the following report of Phumiphon's return:

"Bangkok's newspapers appeared in odd-colored inks to mark the day—red, blue, green, and a raspberry known locally as impulsive red. Instead of news stories they carried long columns of verse. At 5 a.m., a navy radio station began to broadcast the proceedings. It was a most discreet broadcast, failing to mention that when the King was transferring by PT boat from the liner Selandia to the Sri Ayuthia, he did a good-humored dance to the buffeting of the waves.

"As the Sri Ayuthia came up the Chao Phraya river, thousands of sampans rushed out to greet him, and radios blared recordings of Anchor's Aweigh and the King's own musical compositions. By noon of a blistering day, crowds jammed all Bangkok vantage points. At 3 p.m. a landing stage at the Memorial Bridge collapsed, pitching a hundred people into the water. Since all Siamese seem to be born swimmers, no one was drowned. Since all Siamese are born cheerful, all came up grinning.

"Along the broad King's Walk, behind whose fashionable modern apartment buildings lurk some of its best-advertised houses of prostitution, Chinese merchants set up hobbyhorse displays and giant paintings of the King. Incense candles were made ready to be lighted and to waft pleasant smells (very important in Siam) when the King arrived. A youngster got tired of waiting, climbed up into a tree and went to sleep. Passers-by tickled the soles of his feet. He went on sleeping. Police wormed their way through the crowd notifying property owners that a police order issued the day before had been a big mistake: contrary to the order, people were allowed to watch the procession from rooftops.