Royal Respects - Thailand

In this article from the Bangkok Post, we observe the tail end of a year long mourning period following the passing of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand on October 13 last year. The sight of mourners waiting outside the grand palace to pay their respects to the late King Bhumibol is not entirely new. It has been going on for the past 332 days with over 11.5 million visitors to date. What is new, however, is the sudden surge in numbers from an average of 35 thousand visitors daily previously to almost double, at 65 thousand visitors. Perhaps we can interpret this sudden rise in number as citizens wishing to have their last farewell before the October 5 deadline.

This brings us to the question of why so many Thai citizens are willing to endure the scorching heat, wearing heat-absorbing black, just for a brief moment in front of the royal urn? Another interesting aspect is to observe how many are willing to take days off from work to come pay their respects while some even come to distribute free food and drinks. Here, we can read into how the motivation to come exceeds the economic incentives to stay put.

This royal funeral marks the end of an era that saw the monarchy rise from irrelevance to its current prominent status over the past 70 years. It is also worth noting that the people interviewed in the article are 43, 63, 58, 60, and 56 years old. While one could brush this skew in age off as the Bangkok Post's small sample size, my observations when I visited last December suggest that this skew is not entirely misrepresentative of the crowd. It may be worth investigating the implications of this on the state of the monarchy in Thai society as a whole going into the future.