Editor, Writer, Researcher
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.
In Japan, digital music players haven't had a chance against the phone companies. Last year, mobile-phone downloads accounted for 91% of the country's $278 million in digital-music sales, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. In Korea the breakdown has been running 58% mobile to 42% online, according to the federation, but probably more than one-third of the online downloads were destined for a mobile phone.
Kirit joined in 1975, when the head office still consisted of just his father, five employees and one of the city's few telex machines. He took over in 1979, after his father had a stroke, and launched an enormous expansion, fueled by the new affluence of the Middle East and the more well-off parts of Africa. He expanded beyond rice to other commodities and traveled for months at a time. "The merchant who used to order 50 tons of rice now had a market for 500 tons," he recalls. "Then they needed edible oil. They'd want maize, sugar, pineapple. I'd say, 'You need uniforms. There are all these construction workers, they need gumboots.' Then they'd need steel, timber, bitumen, asphalt, cement."
"Discovered" may not be the most accurate term. Frequently, local villagers have known that a cave existed, but they had never ventured very far within because they feared ghostly occupants or lacked proper lights and equipment. The recent teams of foreign cavers therefore have often found themselves to be the first people to enter an underground chamber with a 15-metre high roof or to see a thousand-year-old flowstone resembling a frozen waterfall.
By far, most patrons in Thailand are Thai men, yet foreign johns also fuel the demand. They not only come on sex tours from Europe, Japan and Malaysia. There are also conspicuous communities of middle-aged and elderly Western men who live in Pattaya, Phuket and Bangkok solely for the availability of cheap sex, child sex and younger wives. Many make a living by teaching in English schools.
Susan J Cunningham 