History - Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Northern Thailand - page 986

The Thais Hold Out
The Thais are proud of their independent history and that they were never colonised. Suc-
cessive Thai kings courted the Europeans while maintaining their neutrality. It was an am-
biguous relationship, best summed up by King Mongkut: 'Whatever they have invented or
done, we should know of and do, we can imitate and learn from them, but do not whole-
heartedly believe in them.'
The French were able to exert some influence over the Thais, convincing Siam to return
the northwest provinces of Battambang, Siem Reap and Sisophon to Cambodia in 1907 in
return for concessions of Lao territory. This returned Angkor to Cambodian control.
In the end, it was less the Thai manoeuvring that kept the country independent, but the
realisation by the British in Burma (present-day Myanmar) and the French in Indochina
that a buffer zone would prevent open warfare.
Hitch a ride with Michael Herr and his seminal work Dispatches . A correspondent for Rolling Stone
magazine, Herr tells it how it is, as some of the darkest events of the war in Vietnam unfold
around him, including the siege of Khe Sanh.