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The bureau's other assets are easier to value. Its 30% share in the Siam Cement Group, the country's second-largest company, is worth $1.9 billion and its 25% share in Siam Commercial Bank is worth $1.1 billion. As of July it also owns virtually all of Deves Insurance, worth $65 million, and stakes in various other public and private companies that Aviruth says are worth $600 million.
Along with the stories of King Thibaw and Queen Supayalat, The King in Exile tells of the strange, twisted lives of their four daughters and seven grandchildren. As foreign visitors surge in, drawn by the idea of a new frontier, the book erodes the mythology, so pervasive in the region, of a happier, fairer era when white European men kept the grateful dumb natives gently in place.
The later parts of this footage are probably from the cremation day. You can see the large urn with the king’s body being transferred from the grounds of the Royal Palace. It was gold exterior encasing a silver urn that contained the king's body.
Estimates that one million people might gather here during the period are probably conservative, says Tongthong Chandransu, a law professor and expert on Thai royal funeral ceremonies. “After all, 500,000 people showed up last year on October 14 to observe when the king’s body was transferred across the river from Siriraj Hospital to the Grand Palace,” he says.
The way he crushed the 1967 Samlaut Rebellion—torching villages, the summary executions, severed heads as trophies—was straight out of the French rulebook, particularly the Nghe-Tinh Rebellion chapter. Though the survivor memoirs usually depict the Sihanouk and Lon Nol periods as an idyllic time, “paradise” even ...
Susan J Cunningham 