Paul Handley
The King Never Smiles:  A Biography of Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej
Yale University Press, 2006
512 pages
ISBN 0300106823

In June 2006, the 60th anniversary of King Bhumibol’s coronation brought royals from around the world to celebrate in Bangkok. While Thailand is famous for its deference to its own royalty, it was Bhutan’s Crown Prince Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck who unexpectedly stole the show. Adoring fans—most of them female—tracked his every move, smitten by his charisma and boyish good looks. Oxford-educated, and with a Buddhist kingdom of his own, Jigme became Thailand’s adopted ‘Prince Charming.’ Enquiries from Thai tourists eager to visit Bhutan have reportedly skyrocketed. Such was the love affair that when Jigme returned to Bangkok in November 2006, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Rangsit University.

Soon after, in December 2006, Jigme’s father, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, abdicated. The timing of this transition came as a surprise—the handover was originally planned for 2008. ‘Prince Charming’ became the King of Bhutan. It is no light burden: he has the task of leading his country from absolute monarchy to a constitutional system with a democratically elected parliament. The Thai press has fulsomely welcomed his accession to the Bhutanese throne. In their collective view, a moral, handsome and, fundamentally, desirable Prince has become King. Effusive praise for this peaceful and effective transition has filtered down to the Thai public.  Succession is on many of their minds, too.

Every monarchy inevitably confronts the issue of succession at the end of a long reign.  Just as Britain’s Prince Charles has waited in his mother’s shadow, Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej has been on the throne for so many decades that speculation about the monarchy’s future has fermented for far longer than usual.  In this time, Thai Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, a middle-aged military-man with a reputation for haughtiness and womanising, has largely failed to endear himself to his subjects. His image is not helped by the forces that hide the role of the palace in elite life.  The politics of monarchy in Thailand are secretive and, at times, tinged with violence, providing a stark contrast to the smiling, happy-go-lucky image that Thailand tries to present to the world.

That image of Southeast Asia’s ‘Land of Smiles’ was most recently tested in September 2006 when a group of generals staged an overnight coup.  Every observer wanted to know: would this ‘intervention’ mark a return to the bad old days of cyclical coups and counter-coups?  Thailand has experienced seventeen coups since the Second World War and before 2006 the last was in 1992.  Since the late 1990s, many had assumed that everything (the constitution, parliamentary democracy and the rule of law) had been settled once and for all.  The feeling, then, was that the soldiers were back in the barracks for good and that Bhumibol had finally helped install sustainable democratic traditions.  That consensus was wrong.

Anybody hoping to confirm just how wrong that consensus had become must read Paul Handley’s The King Never Smiles.  It traces the life of Thailand’s King in an unprecedented and critical attempt to understand the political and social role of the monarchy.  At the same time, it shines light on the dark spaces surrounding the Thai royalist and politico-military elite.  This is uncertain and potentially dangerous terrain.  Yale University Press and Handley himself have been subjected to great pressure to stop the publication.  They have not buckled to royalist intimidation, or the palace’s public relations machine. The worldwide study of democratic transitions, and elite military interventions, is much better for it. Thankfully, careful image management does not always triumph.

Other efforts to manage perceptions of Thailand have been more successful. In the days following the coup, the junta’s public relations efforts went global. Through these efforts, and a sympathetic worldwide audience, there was hardly a moment when Thailand’s carefully cultivated image of tranquillity and hospitality was questioned. The coup was widely acclaimed as a bloodless intervention to remove the divisive Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. The generals seized full control and Thaksin, the three-times elected telecommunications tycoon cum maverick Prime Minister, was stranded at the United Nations in New York. Grumbles from some Western governments, and consternation from a handful of academic doubters, did nothing to tarnish the coup-makers’ positive glow. Pictures of dazzled tourists posing in front of tanks, alongside smiling soldiers, graced the pages of newspapers around the world.

Many in Thailand and elsewhere, in fact, breathed a sigh of relief after months of unremitting tension.  The world was relieved by Thailand’s civilised coup; what else could be expected from a land of smiling people? We were told that there was no bloodshed —just a handful of arrests and no real reason to get concerned. The generals went on television and proclaimed that it was business as usual. They smiled and posed for pictures. The King, a man who has learned a thing or two about coups during his 60-year reign, was also snapped consulting with the coup-makers. Many took this as a sign that the King endorsed his generals and their well-timed intervention.

The generals cancelled the elections that were scheduled for October and Thaksin was forced to decamp to London’s poshest neighbourhoods. Many Thais cheered his ousting, particularly in Bangkok.  The urban middle-class had grown weary of what they saw as the immorality, corruption and violence of his ‘regime.’ Under Thaksin there were many problems including nefarious commercial dealings, accusations of corruption and megalomania, and the bloody 2003 ‘War on Drugs.’ Nonetheless, criticisms of Thaksin failed to dent his unprecedented electoral success and his political opponents were so neutered that they were forced to boycott the most recent election.  The problems of Thaksin’s rule were no worse than those that many critics attribute to, say, Tony Blair or George W. Bush. So the question remains, why was it Thaksinm who suffered the indignity of a coup while abroad, speaking at the United Nations?

When the tanks rolled into Bangkok none of his wealth, connections or status could save Thaksin’s mandate to rule. Six months on, the coup-makers and the government they installed are well entrenched.  Worries, however, remain about their future intentions and about their ability to effectively manage the country and its troubles. The simmering Muslim insurgency in Thailand’s southernmost border provinces and a stagnating economy remain major concerns. In response, the generals, and especially junta-installed Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, talk of ‘sufficiency economy.’ This vague conception of simplicity and sustainability is muddied by its own self-satisfaction and ambiguity.  It is, most importantly, the brainchild of King Bhumibol and his advisors.  Inside the Kingdom, its tenets are above reproach

During Thailand’s financial crisis in the late 1990s, Bhumibol used his personal cachet and finely honed image as national saviour to promote his own vision of national social and economic development. Sometimes called ‘the new theory,’ it is built around a conception of rustic self-sufficiency: ‘enough to live on and enough to eat.’ Oddly, its proponents use the same language that has made Bhutan’s ‘Gross National Happiness’ a famous countercultural exoticism. Anybody who has recently passed through Bangkok will see the immediate disjuncture between modern Thailand and this royal ideology. As one illustration, the newest mega-mall, the ostentatious £230 million Siam Paragon in central Bangkok, is even built on land leased from the Crown Property Bureau. Regardless of the many contradictions, before the coup the theory of ‘sufficiency economy’ was of largely academic interest. It was rhetorically significant but lacked any serious grounding in government policy.  Now with a royally-aligned, palace-supported military leadership in charge, the implementation of the King’s economic ideas has full government backing.

One reason there is little public criticism of the King’s theory is because questioning the King, or anybody aligned with the monarchy is not merely dangerous but illegal in Thailand. Foreigners are not immune to charges of lèse majesté. A Frenchman was arrested in 1995 in a bizarre confrontation on a Thai Airways flight when he was accused of making a derogatory comment about a Thai princess. In two very different incidents, a spat in 2002 saw two prominent Far Eastern Economic Review journalists accused of lèse majesté and in 2007 a Swiss man was arrested and threatened with 75 years in jail for allegedly defacing images of the King. When foreigners are not involved, charges of being ‘against the King’ are often deployed to silence opponents in political disputes. Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his sparring partner, media entrepreneur Sondhi Limthongkul, both used this tactic during their 2005-2006 showdowns over the country’s political future.  Neither side could claim the full endorsement of the King: the resulting stalemate was only broken by the coup.

Such restrictions on public commentary are especially relevant to my discussion because the recent book by veteran journalist, Paul Handley, directly confronts the Thai use of lèse majesté. Handley’s tome is banned in Thailand and the Yale University Press website advertising its publication has been intermittently blocked in the Kingdom. Observers widely agree that by writing this unauthorised biography of Bhumibol, Handley may never be allowed back to Thailand.

Handley’s The King Never Smiles is one of the very rare books about Southeast Asia that has actually motivated a wide-ranging discussion, particularly outside Thailand.  Months after its first release, the book continues to be reviewed and debated. Curiously, there are many who claim to have not read the book but yet still feel aggrieved by its publication. Those who dismiss the book tend to do so on the grounds that it is virulently anti-monarchy or, even more simplistically, anti-Thai. Handley’s book is, on the contrary, simply the best introduction for anybody hoping to understand the ongoing tensions racking the Thai body politic. It is the story of the royal network—what political scientist Duncan McCargo has recently dubbed ‘network monarchy’—and the ongoing cultivation of the throne’s matrix of power.

It is obviously a controversial and complex story.  Handley begins by noting that Bhumibol is the only King to have ever been born in the United States.  Raised mainly outside Thailand, he was educated in Europe as the second son of Prince Mahidol Adulyadej. Bhumibol’s older brother, Ananda Mahidol, was made a boy-King in 1935 but, even before he was formally crowned, was found shot dead in mysterious circumstances in 1946. The details of that death remain hazy. Handley explains the various theories and concludes that any of the remaining evidence is inadequate proof. A hasty cover-up ensured that few, if any, real answers may ever emerge. Handley writes that in the immediate aftermath, Bhumibol, ‘the bright, often smiling and joking prince…[was] named king of a country in which he had spent less than 5 of his 18 years.’ According to Handley, the new King ‘would almost never be seen smiling in public again.’

Bhumibol assumed a weakened throne during a time of dictators, geo-political intrigue and, of course, sporadic military coups. Handley argues that ‘ever since the day his brother mysteriously died, he seemed never to be seen smiling, instead displaying an apparent penitential pleasurelessness in the trappings and burdens of the throne.’ In Handley’s account, we learn a great deal about the triumphs and tribulations of this enigmatic and private man, struggling with the public machinations of over 60 years as King. In his analysis Handley is often forced to rely on rumours to support his points, a product of circumstance rather than choice. Such is the tight control exercised by the Palace that most information about the dynamics of palace power can be conveniently dismissed as mere ‘rumour.’

In Thailand the whispered rumours are many but they are not the full story of Bhumibol or his reign. Handley’s account offers an unusually nuanced interpretation of a tightly controlled political machine. According to Handley, when he became King, ‘Bhumibol left behind his European-bred modernist persona to guide his kingdom in the millennium-old tradition of the dhammaraja, the selfless king who rules by the Buddhist code of dhamma.’ Drawing on the legitimacy of old royal patterns, Bhumibol has been cultivated as a figure of adoration. And adored he is. For many months every year, towns and cities across Thailand are festooned with banners, lights and installations marking the King’s achievements and royal milestones. Handley gives a good example of this cult of Bhumibol. He writes that ‘when in December 1997 the palace revealed that the king had set a world record for university degrees, afterward Kasetsart University tossed off all restraint and awarded him ten honorary doctorates at once.’

While Bhumibol has amassed honours at home and abroad, his son and heir, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, has not always matched popular expectations of royal stock. Handley argues that from very early on ‘Bhumibol certainly understood that Vajiralongkorn was a problem.’ It is with the prince that the monarchy’s future is most tested.  His sister, the popular and well-loved Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, would be many Thais’ first choice but, over the years, her elevation ahead of Vajiralonkorn has remained problematic. According to Handley, ‘Bhumibol’s most fundamental failing is the Achilles’ heel of every monarchy; he has been unable to guarantee an orderly succession to a wise, selfless, and munificent king like himself.’

Such an ‘orderly succession’ has occurred in Bhutan and Handley does not discount that it will eventually happen in Thailand. Handley concludes that for its very survival, ‘ultimately, members of the royal family will have to make use of one of the monarchy’s greatest unspoken prerogatives: the alchemic ability and right to remake itself before others do it.’ In this context, can Vajiralongkorn reform perceptions of his character and behaviour? Could he be made over in the model of Bhutan’s ‘Prince Charming’?  Handley shows that remaking the monarchy is the only way that the institution has survived since the founding of the Chakri dynasty in 1782. Through countless political ructions, not to mention the overthrow of absolute monarchy in 1932, the Thai royal family has not only survived—it has prospered.  That Handley’s contribution is the first independent book about the man at the heart of this modern story of royal power and success is remarkable.  Under such difficult circumstances, and with imperfect access, it is hardly surprising that the The King Never Smiles has some flaws or that it has weathered much criticism.  Nonetheless, for many people it is a confronting and difficult book. Many are seemingly unwilling to approach it with an open mind, read the book thoroughly and digest its analysis. To some, its uncensored version of events and personalities bears little relationship to the royal biography with which they are familiar.

But the numerous reviews of this wide-ranging biography are generally very positive. The most critical review, by Hong Kong based anthropologist Grant Evans, drew a reply from Handley himself. Handley retaliated that Evans’s review was ‘strikingly similar to the Thai palace and government’s official view of my book, designed to convince people to dismiss it without reading it.’ Other reviewers—anthropologist Andrew Walker, political scientist Duncan McCargo, author Ian Buruma and prolific Bangkok-based pundit Chris Baker—have given the book strong, positive reviews.  Duncan McCargo’s effort for New Left Review puts it best when he describes the book and its credible, Thai-speaking author as ‘the worst nightmare of the guardians of the Chakri dynasty.’ McCargo argues that from the palace’s perspective ‘Handley’s moves to undermine decades of propaganda and mystique surrounding the royal institution border on sacrilege.’

The great strength of The King Never Smiles is that Handley is not blind to the robust network of people around Bhumibol who have developed his public persona and shielded him from criticism.  What should already be clear is that this book should be read by anybody serious about studying democratic transitions and, in particular, the way that Thailand has struggled to reconcile ancient and modern institutions. In this context, those who continue to ignore the political role of Thailand’s King, and his backers, are naïve and short-sighted. That Bhumibol supported the coup to thwart Thaksin’s parallel power structure is, in the judgement of the best informed observers, beyond doubt. But many questions remain about the potential of any future sovereign to assert a similarly strong political role. Handley’s story of royalty in Thailand does not echo the Bhutanese Himalayan fairytale. Instead, The King Never Smiles provides unprecedented access to the hard fought battles that have come and gone in Bangkok’s sweltering heat.

Thailand now drifts along without even an emerging democratic tradition. Recent events show that the King and his generals are more than willing to displace elected representatives at their whim. Will Bhumibol’s legacy be the renewed assertion of royal prerogatives and extra-democratic intervention? As a strong and much loved monarch, Bhumibol has managed the potential fallout from this ongoing political role by drawing on reservoirs of popular goodwill and patience. Future Kings (or Queens) may not be so indulged. And, most importantly, there is no guarantee that Bhumibol has arranged ‘an orderly succession to a wise, selfless, and munificent king like himself.’ Bhutan provides the contrast. As Jigme’s sun rises in the high Himalaya, Bhumibol’s shadow only gets longer in Thailand. His long and fruitful reign is coming to an end; but in these, its final years, it has become a reign of uncertainty.  For the moment, the people of the ‘Land of Smiles’ find themselves staring at new and unwanted strife.

Nicholas Farrelly is an MPhil student in development studies at Balliol College, Oxford, and an editor of The Oxonian Review of Books.  He is co-founder of the New Mandala website, a daily source of information on Southeast Asian affairs.

Phil Thornton
Restless Souls: Rebels, Refugees, Medics And Misfits On The Thai-Burma Border
Asia Books, 2006
220 Pages
ISBN 9748303918

‘In this light, you can’t even see the border’, the young monk told me as we hunched in the late afternoon, stealing another quiet conversation. The sun had almost finished its descent and the night—crisp and clear in the dry season—announced its arrival. An old man, one of the monk’s friends, interrupted our chat and we became a trio, stooped over, lazily drawing patterns in the dust. The old man was quick to make his point. He was not joining us for idle conversation.

He spent little time explaining his personal background. Sixty-three years old with close cropped grey hair and a big toothy grin, he was a former officer in the local resistance army and wanted me to know that he never came to the border to admire the sunset. He told me he came to reflect on the thin line of national demarcation between Thailand and Burma that protects him from his enemies. ‘This side,’ he emphasised by stamping his foot on Thai soil, ‘is like heaven. Even if you have no religion, you will understand that the other side, over there, that is hell.’

To reinforce this point, the old man reminded me of some of the widely publicised atrocities committed by the other side. For almost his whole life, he said, he had been confronting his opponents and grinding away at their will to fight. He said his army fought for ‘self-rule and an independent homeland.’ When I asked him what he wanted to see happen on the other side of the border he waved his fist. ‘Sending in the UN would be a good start, with American planes and helicopters, and satellites,’ he asserted, as though he was about to mark out a plan of attack. As abruptly as he arrived, he just shook his head and wandered away.

Day in and day out as the years have rolled by, the old man, and many like him, have been fighting against the military dictatorships that have ruled Burma since 1962. Seizing control from the civilian government, the military have prioritised above all else the assertion of ‘unity’ between the country’s Burmese majority and the ethnic minorities who populate the national fringe. Living in a Thai border town, the retired officer, a major, no longer plans attacks against Burmese patrols or plots out routes to supply those who have taken the fight to enemy strongholds. But, even today, the war he fought continues.

Staring across in to the Burmese night, from a vantage point near a border crossing, my friend, the monk, then began to heckle me about our vastly different lives. My friend, whose name is Phra Chaem, considered that it might be karma that I was born ‘so lucky’ in a peaceful country with no wars to fight. Before being ordained, he served as a soldier in the Major’s rebel army and expects—after a stint in dark-red robes which keep him back from the frontline of insurgent life—to return to his vocation as a fighter. The fight against the Burmese military is Phra Chaem’s life, and has been the end of many of his friends.

Many have died, or fled to Thailand. Others are living in the United States, Malaysia, Australia or Europe. To leave Burma, and the misery of life as a despised minority under military dictatorship, they must cross the border to Thailand. This can be perilous, as they have no passports, little money and, in many cases, few useful language skills. At the border there is some safety and respite. ‘Crossing in to Heaven,’ as Phra Chaem now joked, ‘is all that we can do. It is better than dying.’

The Burmese government allows two major border crossings that link significant Thai towns to their Burmese ‘sibling cities’ across the border. Along with many smaller villages that provide illicit opportunities for border crossing, these towns connect Burma to Thailand’s newly industrialising smorgasbord of global tourism and immense social upheaval. In the far north of Thailand, Mae Sai is linked by a short ‘friendship’ bridge to Tachilek in Burma’s Shan State. Phra Chaem makes much fun of the bridge and the ‘friendship’ it symbolises. His life is part of the irony. Maybe that is why he finds it so funny.

Jokes aside, Phra Chaem and his friends have left Burma with serious cause. The wars along Burma’s eastern border—which have continued in some areas almost non-stop since World War II—are based on overlapping ethnic and ideological cleavages. Over the decades, democratic, communist, Christian, Buddhist and ethnically based separatist groups have all raised armies to fight the Burmese government and fight each other. These resistance forces seek to topple the military regime, or gain territorial independence for their own ethnic or political community. It is in areas of the country where the Burmese are a minority—like the Karen, Karenni, Mon and Shan States—that the fighting has been most intense. After decades of conflict, most of the remaining rebel groups are now wedged against the border where Thailand’s openness (and the presence of supportive outsiders) provides some oxygen for continuing their struggles.

Recounting the experiences of ordinary people in this conflict is the goal of a new book by Australian journalist and long-term Thai-Burma border town resident, Phil Thornton. Before shifting his professional gaze to Southeast Asia, Thornton’s previous book-length writings included a sympathetic portrayal of Australia’s working class and a co-authored handbook for activists titled I Protest! Back in 2000, he first wrote about the Thai-Burma border at the request of Burmese democracy activists keen to chronicle atrocities and human rights abuses committed by the other side. That he has since learned so much is testament to his persistence, guile and courage. For a man who reputedly has few regional language skills, his account is remarkably thorough.

In my academic hours I make small efforts to study Burma and the Burmese. The country remains in an academic scotoma, where analysis is formed by conjecture, stolen glances and the idle gossip that oozes from the country’s wounds. Academic books are rarely read beyond a small circle of Burma-watchers, professional voyeurs and technocrats who have made the country their ‘topic.’ Restless Souls fills a notable gap as a conscientious and informed account of the human stories from Burma’s border war-zone.

Most of Thornton’s material comes from Mae Sot, a town in Thailand’s far western Tak province. Bangkok is only about 500 kilometres away. Thornton describes the town’s ‘restless edge’ and the way the border pulls its residents, both locals and foreigners, towards Burma and the nightmare of military rule. Mae Sot, which Thornton estimates has a population approaching 250,000, is now de facto headquarters for most groups with an interest in the fighting in Karen State. This war—which is fought by the Karen National Liberation Army against the Burmese military and its allies—continues with involvement from diverse medical, diplomatic, military, humanitarian and religious organisations. The Burmese military’s 1994 alliance with a rival Karen faction, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, has made recent fighting some of the bloodiest and most dramatic in Burma’s recent history.

The intractability and impenetrability of this conflict mean that its details are, largely, unknown. It plays out far from the orbit of CNN or the major broadsheets. Who has, for example, heard of the Sa Sa Sa or knows the names of Burmese field commanders? How does one become a mercenary in this day and age? Who funds a famous border health clinic and pays for its supplies? What kind of exploitation can you expect as an illegal immigrant in a factory in Thailand? What is it like to carry an injured civilian on a stretcher for days on end with potential ambushes over every ridge and around every corner? In Burma, how do you hunt a deserter or execute suspected spies?

In delving behind these and dozens of other important questions, Thornton recounts conversations in detail and describes the sounds, smells and sights of the border and the Karen State. In his introduction, Thornton writes that ‘some publishers warned me that the story is too unknown and too remote for their readers.’ But Thornton brings the story to life. True to his pedigree as an activist author, he focuses on the lives of the lowly and ignored. Throughout the book he pursues his mission with dogged persistence avoiding ‘big-picture scenarios pushed by politicians and the like. I was more interested in the cracks between their words where I’d find the so-called ordinary people.’

The quality of Thornton’s book comes from probing the lives of the border’s incredible cast of ‘ordinary people.’ It ranges from a committed American military ‘advisor’ running a secret training base to bare-foot doctors and student/insurgent/philosophers, to a girl who dies from a back-alley abortion and guys making money from the mess. The characters are all given a chance to tell their stories. By giving voice to the people who actually live and work on the border, Thornton explains their lives beyond common journalistic caricatures of rebellion and illegality.

To better understand the border region, Thornton did not just sit around and wait for gossip in Mae Sot. He travels to both Karen National Liberation Army and Democratic Buddhist Army bases and does his own interviews with the rival commanders and their troops. The material from such encounters often must be read to be believed. In an interview with Major General Maung Chit Htoo, the notorious commander of a Democratic Karen Buddhist Army special operations battalion, Thornton asks to see a picture of Saw Ba U Gyi, father of the united Karen revolutionary movement before the schism. Thornton asks because the General claims that the picture in his bedroom is bigger than the one owned by the opposition Karen National Liberation Army commander, General Bo Mya. Thornton is led in to ‘the bedroom and there, hanging above the bed, with its stuffed toys and frilly pink bedcovers, [is] a large framed picture of the revered…leader.’ Phra Chaem would find this scene very funny. It is part of a very long story of resistance and oppression.

That story has always attracted foreign observers. Thornton is scathing toward the foreigners who float in to Mae Sot for observation and reconnaissance. One of the few who escape pillory is Desmond Ball, an Australian professor who travelled with Thornton on trips to areas outside Mae Sot. Ball is not known for exaggeration or nonsense. By contrast, Thornton relates that many other foreigners ‘whisper and brag about decapitation, stolen camp funds, spies, extortion, gambling, guns, drugs, sex, corruption.’ For Thornton, this is ‘like kids trying to out-scare each other.’ As he knows, the real horrors of the border are usually outside the experience of itinerant do-gooders and storytellers.

He also skewers the packs of roaming reporters who use the Karen struggle for stories:

As soon as the Asian monsoon ends, photojournalists invade Mae Sot to seek out Karen freedom fighters. The light is right, andthere’s no more damp mould, mud, or dengue fever. By mid-February the dust and heat is intolerable, and the journalists making promises to tell the world and keep in touch, melt away.

Restless Souls is a reaction to this style of coverage. Thornton describes how some film crews offer to pay 30,000 baht (about US$700) for ‘the Karen to use live ammunition and splatter blood plasma’ in fake ‘ambushes.’ Journalists struggle, according to Thornton, with ‘trying to adjust their already mentally written stories to the complex reality confronting them.’ Thornton sets himself the task of writing more thorough analysis of the border, its people and politics. Restless Souls is a salvo in his battle against journalistic fakery and fleeting interest and compassion. With an eye for personal stories, and lots of time, Thornton makes it his mission to better their inadequate and insincere coverage.

Part of Thornton’s sincerity shows in his regular descriptions of different shades of danger. He travels in the Karen State, to the bases of armed factions and even accompanies a medical rescue mission deep in to Burma. On Thornton’s first foray in to Burma his armed companion quipped, ‘Welcome to the Karen State. Unfortunately, we can no longer guarantee your safety.’ He then bursts into laughter.

It is Thornton’s trips into Burma that make this book special. Thornton knows what it is like to walk through a place, like the Karen State, that is ‘a nightmare of unmapped mines and booby traps.’ Thornton acknowledges the hyperactive imaginations of those distant from the frontlines, ‘distorting fears and twisting realities.’ He has few kind words for foreigners, ‘remote from the guns, land-mines, smuggling, drug manufacture, or crime have a tendency to crave exotic or dangerous stories.’

Along the Thai-Burma border there are many examples of exotic and dangerous stories strewn between the ordinariness of daily struggles and laughter, even if the jokes are often black. Thornton describes one U.S. visa applicant’s commitment to honesty. Not wanting to ‘lie,’ this Mae Sot local openly acknowledged to the U.S. Embassy that he was once a ‘bomb maker’ and that he was also a devout ‘Muslim.’ Unsurprisingly, the application was rejected. Thornton concludes that this ‘story was a bad joke but captured the madness of Mae Sot and the Burmese conflict. It was tragic, sad, ironic, pathetic, insane, and funny all at the same time.’

Phra Chaem would find the story funny too. At the edge of heaven and hell, there are restless people, who can enjoy the gallows humour of purgatory and its pain. At its heart, Restless Souls is a story about global moralities and realities, illustrated by Thornton’s own epiphany. ‘Many more Karen will die,’ he writes, ‘or be condemned to a life of misery before the world and its media considers their plight more newsworthy than that of a footballer’s groin strain, a soap star’s sex life, a celebrity’s plastic surgery, or the banality of reality TV.’

In re-telling stories that remove the blinkers, Thornton marks out his argumentative high-ground. In places, the book overdoes its moralistic tone, particularly when Thornton points the finger at the preoccupations of ‘ordinary people’ in the West. It is, however, worth forgiving any perceived lapses. I am sure Thornton is just trying to provoke a broader debate about what really matters. His colourful descriptions and popular touch will ensure, I hope, that this book continues to gather an audience in the years to come.

Unfortunately, Phra Chaem will probably never read Restless Souls. He would, I am sure, recognise his own life in some of the bad jokes and appreciate the way that Thornton has tried to give a voice to a largely forgotten conflict and its ordinary victims. Staring at the border day after day, Phra Chaem knows heaven and hell but learned about them outside his monastic lessons. He has also learned to laugh at the darkness. Restless souls do like to joke, even on the darkest nights at the border.

Nicholas Farrelly is an MPhil student in Development Studies at Balliol College, Oxford. He has lived and worked extensively in Southeast Asia, and is currently researching ethnicity and infrastructure in the region.