Bangkok stinks

Sir Arthur de la Mare's valedictory despatch on the "indolent ... feckless ... vain ... charming ... irritating ... frustrating and endearing" people of Thailand

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Sometime in the early 1970s, Sir Arthur James de la Mare, Britain’s ambassador to Thailand, and his wife were at a lunch at the Klai Kangwon Palace in Hua Hin with King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Queen Sirikit Kitiyakara, and the lord mayors of Bangkok and London. Klai Kangwon, which means “far from worries” in English, was commissioned by King Prajadhipok, Rama VII, in 1926 as a summer palace for the royals, and completed in 1933.

In his valedictory despatch upon leaving his post in Bangkok and retiring from the British foreign service in November 1973, de la Mare recounted an exchange with the king during lunch.

According to de la Mare, Bhumibol told the assembled guests that Bangkok stank.

The Scene: The King of Thailand's summer palace at Hua Hin. Their Majesties, the then Lord Mayor of London and Lady Studd, the Lord Mayor of Bangkok and my wife and I are seated round the luncheon-table.

The King (from across the table): “Well, Your Excellency, what do you think of Bangkok?”

Myself: "Your Majesty, it was not entirely new to me when I came to take up my post, but I know it a lot better now and I like it very much."

The King: “You are too polite. Tell me what you really think. Never mind about the Lord Mayor [of Bangkok]; he doesn't understand English anyway.”

Myself: “Well … er … Your Majesty...”

The King: “I know, I know. I won't try to embarrass you. I'll tell you what I think of Bangkok. It stinks.”

When the despatch was declassified in 2004 in line with the standard practice in Britain that most documents should be available in the National Archives at Kew on the outskirts of London from 30 years after publication, this first paragraph was deemed so sensitive that it remained censored for another decade. The full cable only became available in 2014.

In his despatch, the ambassador wholeheartedly endorsed the king’s opinion:

It does. Decayed garbage left for months on the side of the roads; stagnant canals that serve both as cesspools and as the dumping ground for dead dogs; buses and lorries that belch uncontrolled clouds of diesel fumes; scarcely a pavement without potholes and open manholes to break the legs of the unwary; bag-snatchers in every block; assault and violence a way of life; prostitution and every form of natural and unnatural vice on a scale astonishing even in Asia; a city of 4 million with only one park, and that littered with refuse and infested by thieves; unplanned hideous ribbon development; no proper drainage, so that in the rainy season large areas of the city remain flooded for weeks on end; and the whole set in a flat mournful plain without even a hillock in sight for a 100 miles in any direction: this is Bangkok, the vaunted Venice of the East. A small section, the old city with its palaces and temples, retains some of its oriental charm, but it is but a poor compensation for those who have to live in this ‘improved’ latter-day version of Sodom and Gomorrah.

In an article a few days ago, “Gazelles and butterflies”, I shared the valedictory despatch of a predecessor of de la Mare, Sir Anthony Rumbold, who opined in 1967 that “Thais are as difficult to understand as other orientals” and the “the general level of intelligence of the Thais is rather low”.

As I wrote in that article, as late as the 1960s most senior British diplomats had been educated at Eton and Oxford and were imbued with the prejudices and chauvinism common among the ruling class of a country that had been a mighty empire when they were born and was now an increasingly insignificant medium-sized island.

For centuries, until the practice was stopped on the orders of the government in 2006, there was a tradition in the British foreign service for ambassadors about to depart their posting in a country to write a so-called valedictory despatch, in which they threw all diplomatic niceties to the wind and gave their uncensored opinions on the nation they were leaving and the character of the local population.

Most ambassadors, many of whom liked to consider themselves superb prose stylists, devoted a great deal of time and thought to their valedictory despatches. The ability to write a compelling final despatch was a status symbol for senior diplomats.

By the 1970s, Britain’s foreign service was slowly becoming more diverse. Arthur de la Mare was born into a farming family in the prosperous island of Jersey, off the south coast of the British mainland, in February 1914, and grew up speaking the local patois Jèrriais, a variation of the Norman dialect which shares roots with French. You can listen to a reading of an article de la Mare wrote in the patois here:

He was educated at the fee-paying Victoria College in Jersey and won a scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he gained a double first in modern languages. So although he was Oxbridge-educated and from a relatively wealthy background, he was a bit different from the men who dominated British ambassadorial posts in previous decades.

He joined the foreign service in 1936 and was posted to Tokyo as vice-consul. In 1938 the consul general in Seoul fell ill and went back to Britain so de la Mare was sent there to cover for him as acting consul general. As J. E. Hoare wrote in his book Embassies of the East:

To make matters worse, de la Mare found on arrival in Seoul that he was to be acting everything else as well as consul-general, for the vice-consul promptly left on retirement. De la Mare had no consular training at that stage, but at least by his own account seems to have coped. His ability to speak Japanese gave him some advantage over his small number of consular colleagues, none of whom knew the language.

The acting consul said conditions in the residential buildings in the embassy compound were far from ideal, according to Hoare:

Heating was expensive and not very efficient; the long periods when the main residential buildings were not in use meant that they quickly deteriorated. De la Mare complained of huge gaps between window frames and walls in the number two house, through which the Siberian wind whistled. He also claimed that when Derwent Kermode and his wife arrived to take over from him in 1939 that the condition of the number one house, which by then had been left empty and unheated for four or five months over the winter, was such that Mrs Kermode’s “consumption of gin and cigarettes, already assuring her of a very creditable batting average, sent her soaring into the Guinness Book of Records”.

De la Mare returned to Tokyo in 1939, and was briefly interned following Japan’s entry into World War Two in December 1941. Later postings included San Francisco, Tokyo again, Washington, Kabul as ambassador to Afghanistan and Singapore as high commissioner. He also spent time in London as head of the Far Eastern department of the Foreign Office, from 1960 to 1963. His posting as ambassador to Thailand, which began in 1970, was his final job in the foreign service before retirement.

After his very uncomplimentary description of Bangkok in his valedictory despatch, de la Mare made a similar point to Rumbold six years earlier about the dominant role of Bangkok in the kingdom:

But why do I begin this farewell despatch from a post which in spite of its many frustrations I have greatly enjoyed with so uncomplimentary a description of its capital city? I have often had occasion to remind London that Bangkok is not Thailand, nor Thailand Bangkok. That is true, but most Thais do not realise it. Bangkok to them is not only all that counts in their country, it is all that counts in the world.

There are reasons for this. There are here no Manchesters, Birminghams or Liverpools to share the industrial and commercial loads with the capital. The two Thai towns next largest to Bangkok, Chiang Mai in the North and Haad Yai in the South, though both growing rapidly are country villages by comparison. If it was ever true that a man who is tired of London is tired of life it is equally true that a Thai who given the choice prefers to live outside Bangkok is looked upon as an eccentric. I have often asked Thai friends why when they retire they do not go to live in more pleasant and salubrious areas such as Chiang Mai or Songkhla. The question astonishes them: “But we couldn't live anywhere but in Bangkok!” Civil servants or business officials sent to man posts in the provinces regard it as demotion and as loss of face. There are practical objections too: if they have children to educate all the “good”schools are in Bangkok, and the provincial universities though by no means bad and constantly improving are still looked down upon as what the Americans used to call “cow-colleges”.

Continuing his discussion of Bangkok, de la Mare correctly noted that in the decades after World War Two, Thailand became a military vassal of the United States and then a location for Japanese economic outsourcing. He repeats the common claim that Siam was never colonised, but this is not strictly true — after the Bowring Treaty of 1853, and until World War Two, the kingdom was effectively a semi-colony of Britain.

For all its faults it is a cosmopolitan city. In the days of steamships it was a backwater, for the main ocean-going lines bypassed it, but air traffic has trans- formed it into the hub of South East Asia: almost all routes to the Far East and beyond and to Australia and New Zealand transit here. Bangkok is the head- quarters of SEATO, as of ECAFE and various other UN offshoots. Compared with neighbouring capitals-Rangoon, Vientiane, Phnom Penh, Kuala Lumpur- it is the "big city". Its status reflects the status of Thailand in South East Asia. By a series of fortunate accidents (which however the Thais attribute to their own skilful diplomacy) Siam was the only country in the area which retained its independence during the colonial era; true it has since become the military client of the US and the economic vassal of Japan and in that sense is now less genuinely independent than say Burma, but like other people including ourselves the Thais tend to gauge their status by the past rather than by the present. Inordinately vain and race conscious by nature they look upon themselves as the élite of South East Asia.

After describing the Thais as inordinately “vain and race conscious by nature”, de la Mare then began a diatribe in which he described Thais as indolent, feckless, superficial and shackled by social hierarchy:

After 37 years’ acquaintance with them and the last three in their own front yard I cannot say that I find their pretensions entirely justified. Except for those who have Chinese blood they are indolent and feckless. Their charm is proverbial, but it is often no more than a polite pose and I am quite sure that of all the Asians of various nationalities whom my wife and I have known and whom we call friends it is the Thais who will most quickly forget us. Trying to determine whether a Thai really means what he says is one of the most difficult tasks I have encountered in my diplomatic life. And, charming and friendly as they are, to do business with them is a constant frustration. They cannot make up their mind; everything has to be referred to a higher authority; and even the highest authority of all, the King, is so shackled by protocol and precedent that though he will speak his mind with refreshing directness he will seldom intervene even in situations which only he can resolve.

The ambassador devoted several paragraphs in his despatch to the fall of the “three tyrants” — Thanom Kittikachorn, Praphas Charusathien and Narong Kittikachorn — in October 1973:

I have attempted elsewhere to describe Thailand's October Revolution and its causes. They were plain enough to see — a government inefficient, corrupt and unpopular, unable to cope with the people’s economic ills and blind to their social and political aspirations; men, Prapass especially, who thought that the medals on their chest adequately camouflaged their hollow interior; vain men, be-ringed and be-jewelled like courtesans…

He argued that Thanam was a decent man, undermined by the excesses of his sidekick Prapass, his son Narong, and his wife, who had an “insatiable greed for wealth”.

De la Mare then returned to “the subject of the Thai way”:

Some two years ago I bethought myself that I would address you on the subject of the Thai way, and got as far as setting pen to paper. But after wrestling for some weeks with a draft I abandoned the project, deeming it prudent not to give you further cause to doubt my sanity. But since it is now immaterial whether my superiors consider me better fitted for a lunatic asylum than for a diplomatic post I shall try to describe the Thai way as it has been vouchsafed and revealed to me.

He began with some attempted humour about the Thai language:

First the idiom. If I were a Thai official in the presence of my superior I would stand at deferential attention while he spoke, then when he had finished would bend low and hiss in his ear the one word: “Crap!” For in Thai this basic four-letter word is not only the appropriate but the mandatory expression of total submission. And, on another plane, what can one make of a language where the word for dentist is “more fun” or where, at least to the foreign ear, the words for “near” and “far” are exactly the same?

The jokes didn’t really hit the mark. The Thai politeness particle ครับ is not really pronounced like the English expletive crap, and it does not denote total submission. Laughing about the word for dentist is a bit lame. De la Mare did have a point though that for those not attuned to Thai linguistic tones, the words for near and far do sound pretty similar.

He then turned to Thai punctuality, or the lack thereof:

But why not? Distance and proximity are matters of the mind, and so is time. Shortly after my arrival here I paid a courtesy call on a senior Minister. I was advised that it should take only 15–20 minutes to get to his office but that as traffic was unpredictable I should allow 30. I did, and arrived at the Ministry flustered and embarrassed 35 minutes late. The Minister heard my apologies with blank astonishment. “But my dear Ambassador, it’s true that in principle our appointment was for four o’clock but it is only four thirty-five and I didn’t expect you until about now.” And then as he remembered my British provenance his eyes twinkled and he added: “If I may offer a word of advice to you as a newcomer don’t worry about punctuality. It is a British fetish but we Thais don’t suffer from it.”

Another paragraph was devoted to the many possible meanings when Thais say yes to something:

So here is there and near is far and a watch merely an ornamental bauble. There are indeed separate and distinct expressions for “yes” and “no” but since it is impolite to use the latter the former is used for both. It is then up to the person addressed to decide whether yes is to be interpreted as a flat no or as a no which he may convert into a yes by putting his request in another form or to a higher authority. But usually it means that his request will receive favourable consideration, which in turn means that no action will be taken upon it. If you invite a Thai to dinner and he accepts you must not deduce therefrom that he will be there, for by accepting he has done you a courtesy; he has thus transferred the obligation from himself to you and is therefore under no necessity to turn up. If you know him well enough to remonstrate he will be taken aback: “But I accepted, didn’t I?” It is then no good replying: “Yes, mate, so you did, and that’s why I expected you”. for he will go away confirmed in his assurance that the thought-processes of the farang are quite beyond comprehension.

The despatch argues that this behaviour derives from a desire to avoid confrontation, which is an aspect of “the Thai way”:

It shuns confrontation, for compromise avoids humiliation and loss of face. Regard for the opponent's face springs from no charitable motive, for charity is not a Thai virtue, but from considerations of self-interest, for who can tell when fate may turn the tables and put you in the weaker position? If the Thais were Christians the Christian precept that they would best understand is to do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. For tomorrow or next week or next year or in the hereafter you may need a favour from them.

Foreign observers of Thailand often say Thais avoid confrontation, but as Thais themselves know, this is not really true. Most foreigners who spend a lot of time among Thais, and those who have some knowledge of Thai history, would also consider it a strange comment.

It would be more accurate to say that social interactions in Thailand are heavily influenced by relative rank in the social hierarchy. A Thai pooyai would not think twice about being rude to a social inferior, but it would be extremely rare for somebody to confront somebody of higher status. The position of foreigners in Thailand is ambiguous because in many cases Thai’s can’t easily figure out their place in the hierarchy. A foreign ambassador is clearly somebody of status, but isn’t Thai, so a common reaction would be to be polite to them while not taking them particularly seriously. This may be why de la Mare formed his opinion on Thai avoidance of confrontation.

De la Mare ended his the observations in his despatch by claiming, as Rumbold had done, that westerners could never really understand Asians. It was a curious comment from somebody whose career had been mainly devoted to diplomacy in Asia, as he himself acknowledged:

And so I take leave of this confused and confusing country and of these charming, irritating, frustrating and endearing people. They have confirmed what my long association with Asia had already taught me— that no Westerner will ever really understand the Oriental. I now know more about him but know him no better than I did in 1936 when I left London for my first post in Tokyo. Is this an admission of failure? I think not, but rather an acceptance of fact. Nor does it betoken dissatisfaction, for if I could choose my diplomatic career anew I would still wish it to lie in Asia.

You can view and download de la Mare’s full despatch here:

Arthur de la Mare valedictory despatch

12.1MB ∙ PDF file

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After he retired, de la Mare spent several years living in Surrey before returning to Jersey for the final years of his life. He died on December 15, 1994

In an obituary in the journal Asian Affairs, British diplomat Michael Wilford, who had been ambassador to Japan from 1975 to 1980, wrote:

His was a career of great diversity, and he was a man of strong likes and dislikes, never hesitating to show his feelings. He earned a reputation in the Service as a man of character… His memoirs, published shortly before his death, were full of that impish charm which so delighted his friends.

On my next visit to the National Archives in Kew, I’ll look up more valedictory despatches from past ambassadors to Bangkok to share here on Secret Siam.

But it will not be until 2089 that a full version of one of them — the despatch from Derek Tonkin on September 11, 1989 — can be viewed. Tonkin’s despatch was partially declassified in 2019 in accordance with the 30-year-rule but some passages were censored for a full century. This suggests that they contained some very frank comments about King Bhumibol and the future of the Thai monarchy, although because he was not just leaving Bangkok but also retiring from the foreign service, they may also have continued observations and criticisms of British diplomacy that were considered sensitive.

Tonkin did share a snippet of the cover note attached to his despatch by the head of the Southeast Asia desk at the Foreign Office in London.

“Worth waiting for!” Tonkin told me, in a tweet.