Mice and a mystery
Dec. 9th, 2018 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
heliopausaSo, I was in Bangkok, with time on my hands, and decided to randomly jump on the public transport canal boat.
"Where to?" asked the bus-conductor-equivalent - but I didn't know what might be possible, nor where the canal-boat was heading for. So I said
"Two stops", thinking that if it came to the crunch, I could probably walk back from two stops away.
And when the boat got two stops on, lo! there was a sign saying "To Jim Thompson's house". So to Jim Thompson's house I went!
It was more a complex of houses, built from materials taken from local Thai people's houses - a handsome door here, a window there, a staircase, a few whole house-frames - as well as from other places - a chandelier, and old marble floor-tiles collected from post-war Belgium and Italy.
Jim Thompson himself was an architect and a businessman (who started the whole modern Thai silk trade) and a collector - of architectural bits and pieces, of art, of experiences - and "Jim Thompson's House" serves as museum for some of his collection, including this wonderful nineteenth-century mouse-house, which was used for both amusement and gambling.
(Photo taken from jimthompson.com website)
He was also maybe an adventurer, and had been a member of the CIA-predecessor, the OSS, until 1946. After the war he worked in the US legation in Bangkok (doing what exactly? I don't know.) and made friends, and got into the silk trade and collected, and built his house... and one Sunday afternoon, he disappeared.
He had gone with a friend for a weekend over the border, in the hills resort district of Malaysia. They were staying at the bungalow of Penang friends, and had all lunched together. After lunch he said he would take a stroll along the road - the bungalow was on a hill, with just one access road, about a mile long, leading to it. At 4:00 pm he dropped in to a house further down the road, the Lutheran Mission bungalow. Half an hour later he was seen - but this report is less certain - talking to someone in a white car.
And that was it. He was never seen again.
The alarm was raised at 6:00 pm, and an intense search followed, involving, to quote Wikipedia, "the army, the Malaysian police field force, Orang Asli trekkers, Gurkhas, reward hunters, tourists, residents, mystics, scouts, missionaries, adventure seekers, American school students and British servicemen convalescing at the resort."
But they found nothing, and investigations came up blank, and to this day the whole affair is subject of speculation.
So there it is - the mystery. How did, or why did, a confident, successful, fit, trained military man disappear on a mile-long stretch of easy road in a hilltop resort? I have no idea.
"Where to?" asked the bus-conductor-equivalent - but I didn't know what might be possible, nor where the canal-boat was heading for. So I said
"Two stops", thinking that if it came to the crunch, I could probably walk back from two stops away.
And when the boat got two stops on, lo! there was a sign saying "To Jim Thompson's house". So to Jim Thompson's house I went!
It was more a complex of houses, built from materials taken from local Thai people's houses - a handsome door here, a window there, a staircase, a few whole house-frames - as well as from other places - a chandelier, and old marble floor-tiles collected from post-war Belgium and Italy.
Jim Thompson himself was an architect and a businessman (who started the whole modern Thai silk trade) and a collector - of architectural bits and pieces, of art, of experiences - and "Jim Thompson's House" serves as museum for some of his collection, including this wonderful nineteenth-century mouse-house, which was used for both amusement and gambling.
(Photo taken from jimthompson.com website)
He was also maybe an adventurer, and had been a member of the CIA-predecessor, the OSS, until 1946. After the war he worked in the US legation in Bangkok (doing what exactly? I don't know.) and made friends, and got into the silk trade and collected, and built his house... and one Sunday afternoon, he disappeared.
He had gone with a friend for a weekend over the border, in the hills resort district of Malaysia. They were staying at the bungalow of Penang friends, and had all lunched together. After lunch he said he would take a stroll along the road - the bungalow was on a hill, with just one access road, about a mile long, leading to it. At 4:00 pm he dropped in to a house further down the road, the Lutheran Mission bungalow. Half an hour later he was seen - but this report is less certain - talking to someone in a white car.
And that was it. He was never seen again.
The alarm was raised at 6:00 pm, and an intense search followed, involving, to quote Wikipedia, "the army, the Malaysian police field force, Orang Asli trekkers, Gurkhas, reward hunters, tourists, residents, mystics, scouts, missionaries, adventure seekers, American school students and British servicemen convalescing at the resort."
But they found nothing, and investigations came up blank, and to this day the whole affair is subject of speculation.
So there it is - the mystery. How did, or why did, a confident, successful, fit, trained military man disappear on a mile-long stretch of easy road in a hilltop resort? I have no idea.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-10 09:56 am (UTC)We were told that Thompson's Thai silks were the only silks used in the original stage version (and I suppose, the film version) of The King and I - their sumptuousness was what sparked the whole industry from that point.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-11 10:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-11 01:28 pm (UTC)