Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
frame. There were, she said, a couple of other weavers nearby, and at the top of Soi 9 I
found a house with two looms, and close by a shed with another five looms packed in to-
gether. These are the workshops of Lung Aood Ban Krua Thai Silk, an independent busi-
ness owned by Manassanan Benjarongjinda, more usually known as Lung Aood, who is in
his seventies and kept on working after the disappearance of Thompson in 1967, and the
transfer of the silk weaving to Korat, which is where the company's silk farms are located.
Lung Aood has a thriving family business, supplying mostly regular customers, along with
some walk-in trade. His wooden house is production centre, warehouse and shop, and
from here the visitor can buy something that really is a part of Thai culture and history,
and for a reasonable price.
Initially, Thompson had been living at he Oriental, where he was a shareholder.
Needing more room, he moved into a rented house on Sathorn Road, and then built
a small frame-house opposite Lumpini Park. When that became too small, Thompson
began searching around for another plot of land, and eventually purchased the plot on the
side of the canal. It had once been part of a large estate where an aristocratic family kept
a summer palace, but the land had long been parcelled off and sold. Thompson built, or
possibly to be more correct, assembled his house here, using six separate buildings from
a variety of places and owners. The most important section, which became his drawing
room, was an early nineteenth-century house from the weavers' village. Thompson had
been admiring the house, with its teak walling and delicate carving for several years, and
when he moved it onto the site he reversed the walls so that the carvings faced the inside.
The kitchen building also came from the weaving village, and had had an earlier existence
as part of an old palace. Most of the remaining elements he found in Ayutthaya, dismant-
ling the houses, stacking them on barges, and floating them down the river and thence by
the canal directly to the site. He also found in Ayutthaya the large bricks that he used for
the terrace, and the green Chinese tiling, which had been used as ballast on rice boats re-
turning from China, and which he set in the parapet. Thompson completed his house in
1959.
This compound has changed considerably since I first came here, many years ago. A
teak house has been erected as a large shop and museum, and opposite is another house
with a restaurant and a very pleasant little café. But the house itself is unchanged since Jim
Thompson last walked through the door, and I personally never tire of visiting it.
The story of Thompson's disappearance is well-worn in the telling. In March 1967,
Thompson was on holiday in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, staying with friends in a
bungalow named Moonlight Cottage. Thompson's friends, who were taking an afternoon
