Koi gone
The story of the rise and fall, and rise again and fall again, of King Vajiralongkorn's "royal noble consort" Sineenat "Koi" Wongvajirabhakdi
Once upon a time, when he reached the age of 67, a fabulously wealthy monarch celebrated the occasion by giving himself a special birthday gift — an official royal concubine.
The thrice-divorced King Vajiralongkorn of Thailand had married his fourth wife, former Thai Airways flight attendant Suthida “Nui” Tidjai, less than three months earlier, just before his official coronation, and she had become the kingdom’s new queen.
But Vajiralongkorn had evidently concluded that just one official partner was simply not enough.
In an extraordinary palace ceremony on July 28, 2019, with Queen Suthida watching aghast as her husband publicly humiliated her, Vajiralongkorn anointed Sineenat “Koi” Wongvajirabhakdi as his “royal noble consort”, pouring lustral water from a conch shell onto her head as she prostrated on the floor at his feet in a posture that demonstrated total subservience.
Koi was just 34 years old. She had risen from humble beginnings in northern Thailand to become a qualified pilot, a major general in the military allegedly trained in jungle warfare and parachuting, and now the consort of the king. It would have been a fairytale story, if Vajiralongkorn had been a wise and kindly monarch. But he’s a violent and volatile psychopath who loves tormenting women, so the story didn’t work out as Koi had planned.
In October 2019, just a few months after becoming Vajiralongkorn’s royal noble consort, Koi was stripped of her royal titles and decorations, and her military ranks, and thrown into jail in Bangkok without any trial or even a pretence of judicial due process. She had become a participant in a different and darker kind of fairy tale — a helpless woman abused and imprisoned by a cruel and malevolent king — but unlike in archetypal fantasy stories there was no gallant hero or courageous knight coming to her rescue. She appeared doomed to a life of incarceration and despair.
Until a dramatic plot twist. The king who had abused and jailed her decided he still loved her after all. She was freed from prison and the couple reunited in Germany to live happily ever after.
The fairytale ending lasted about 15 months before everything imploded.
Koi has not been seen since December last year, and concerns are growing about her welfare. The dizzying rollercoaster ride of her position in the palace seems to be on a sharply downward trajectory once again.
This is her story.
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Niramon Ounprom was born on January 26, 1985, in a rural riverside district near the town of Nan in northern Thailand. Like most Thais she was given an affectionate nickname, which was what her family and friends called her. Koi is the Thai word for the little finger on our hands. The most accurate translation of her nickname in English is probably “Pinkie”.
Most Thais who grew up in the north during the 1980s and 1990s were not impoverished. They had enough to eat, and they didn’t have to worry about basic survival, but their options for breaking out of a parochial existence of subsistence and servitude were relatively limited. Thailand has by far the worst education system of any country in the world with comparable wealth, and young people growing up in rural areas mostly have to endure depressingly inadequate and incompetent teaching. Every year, many young people from the north and northeast move south for jobs in construction, or to find menial work in shops and hotels, or to be servants for wealthy Bangkok families, or to try to earn a living in Thailand’s vast industrialised sex industry. There is plenty of work for northerners who want to join the Bangkok underclass, but even today, it’s quite rare for somebody who grew up in rural Thailand without wealthy connections to find a way out that actually improves their lives.
But Koi was a smart and ambitious student, and she managed to do it. She joined the army, which helped fund her to train as a nurse after she finished her studies at the Wang Pha Witthayakhom school in Nan. She enrolled at the Royal Thai Army Nursing College, located at the military’s Phramongkutklao Hospital on Ratchawithi Road in Bangkok. In 2007, while still studying there, she gave a conference presentation on strategies to help soldiers quit smoking at a conference in the hospital.
Koi graduated with a bachelor’s degree in nursing in 2008 and worked for a while at Phramongkutklao Hospital before transferring to another military facility, the Ananda Mahidol Hospital in Lopburi, close to the headquarters of Thailand’s special forces, known as the Special Warfare Command, and the Khok Katiam air force base, home of the 2nd Wing Air Command.
Some time during 2011 or early 2012, Koi met Vajiralongkorn, and it changed her life forever.
During this period, Vajiralongkorn was still married to his third wife Srirasmi Suwadee, a former hostess at the all-night Thonburi Café nightclub, but he was spending most of his time living in Munich with his latest favourite mistress Suthida, who he met on a Thai Airways charity flight he was piloting from Bangkok to Chiang Mai on January 5, 2007.
Since his late teens, Vajiralongkorn has been notorious in Thailand as a serial abuser of women. He expected whatever wife he was married to at the time not only to accept his chronic philandering but also to help him recruit young women into his harem. For a few decades he preyed mainly on the attractive daughters of the Thai elite, and well-known actresses and singers, but by the 21st century this had already caused so much scandal and resentment that he began focusing mostly on commoners, in particular women working with the Royal Thai Air Force or Thai Airways.
He regularly exploited his air force connections to meet new female recruits, and if somebody caught his eye, he would arrange for them to become a lady-in-waiting at the palace, so they could join his stable of concubines.
Vajiralongkorn’s third wife Srirasmi had initially been recruited from Thonburi Café as a lady-in-waiting for his second wife, Yuvathida “Mom Benz” Polpraserth back in 1993. Vajiralongkorn banished Yuvathida and their four sons in 1996, and married Srirasmi secretly in 2001.
In 2012, Koi was transferred to the palace as a lady-in-waiting for Srirasmi, as this leaked document from August 2012 confirms.
Koi was told to report for duty wearing her army uniform and cap. Vajiralongkorn has a fetish for women in uniforms and runs his harem like a military unit, with his mistresses routinely awarded senior army ranks.
During 2012, Vajiralongkorn was still married to Srirasmi, although he hardly ever saw her because he spent most of his time with his favourite concubine Suthida at the Kempinski Hotel at Munich’s airport, which was owned by the Crown Property Bureau. He rarely returned to Thailand.
Although Koi was now officially a lady-in-waiting for Srirasmi, this was just a fiction to give her a position in the palace as a member of Vajiralongkorn’s harem, and while he was away in Germany she had little work to do, so she continued as a nurse at Ananda Mahidol Hospital for a while. She made it clear to everybody that her status had changed, wearing a badge with the image of Vajiralongkorn’s autistic son Dipangkorn that is known in Thailand to be a signifier of membership of Vajiralongkorn’s inner circle. Here’s an image from December 2012.
Koi was not content to be just another concubine, to be used and then disposed of whenever Vajiralongkorn happened to be in Thailand. She was determined to become his favourite mistress, and she was willing to do whatever it took. She made it clear to him that she would indulge all his fetishes — group sex, public nudity, BDSM games, or whatever else he wanted, and she would help him recruit more concubines and manage the royal harem.