Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Plaza.
(
0 2658 0550;
www.thann.info
; 4th fl, Gaysorn Plaza, cnr Th Ploenchit & Th Ratchadamri; massage per
hr 1800B, packages from 3200B;
10am-9pm;
Chit Lom exit 9)
7
100 Tonson Gallery
ART GALLERY
Housed in a spacious residential villa, and generally regarded as one of the city's top com-
mercial galleries, 100 Tonson hosts a variety of contemporary exhibitions of all genres by
local and international artists.
(
www.100tonsongallery.com
;
100 Soi Tonson;
11am-7pm Thu-Sun;
Chit Lom exit 4)
Understand
Jim Thompson
Born in Delaware in 1906, Jim Thompson served in a forerunner of the CIA in Thailand during WWII. When in
1947 he spotted some silk in a market and was told it was woven in Baan Krua, he found the only place in
Bangkok where silk was still woven by hand. Thompson's Thai silk eventually attracted the interest of fashion
houses in New York, Milan, London and Paris, and he gradually built a worldwide clientele for a craft that had
been in danger of dying out.
In March of 1967 Thompson went missing while out for an afternoon walk in the Cameron Highlands of
western Malaysia. Thompson has never been heard from since, but the conspiracy theories have never stopped.
Was it communist spies? Business rivals? A man-eating tiger? Although the mystery has never been solved,
evidence revealed by journalist Joshua Kurlantzick in his profile of Thompson,
The Ideal Man
, suggests that the
vocal anti-American stance Thompson took later in his life may have made him a potential target of suppression
by the CIA.
