Enchanted Land

Preface

The poem “Chiengmai Calling” was printed as an epigraph to Margaretta Wells’ Guide to Chiengmai, which first appeared in 1962. Wells adds a note to explain that “Lotus”, who signed the poem, was a pseudonym used by W. A. R. Wood, the former British Consul-General and a “distinguished and long-time resident” of Chiang Mai. Wood had written it especially for her book. Wood’s memoir Consul in Paradise is one of the few examples of writing by members of the foreign community living in the north of Siam in the early twentieth century still to be found in bookshops today. It had first been published in 1935 under the title Land of Smiles.

Only a few hundred westerners (most of them from the British Isles and North America) lived in (or travelled to) the northern region before the Second World War. Though few in number, they left behind a considerable written legacy. Naturally, W. A. R. Wood features in this anthology of writings by Britons and Americans (and also a Siamese and a Dane) who lived in or visited Chiang Mai and the north of Siam (the modern Thailand) around a century ago. Few of the writings featured in this book apart from Wood’s are currently in print or easily accessible and some remain unpublished and in manuscript. They include letters, memoirs, reports, articles in newspapers and magazines, poems, short stories and extracts from novels. Most of the writings are drawn from the period between 1910 when King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) died, and 1932 when a constitution was granted by King Prajadhipok (Rama VII).

The authors represented in this book are a diverse group of men and women who had come to the north as missionaries, “teak-wallahs”, diplomats or travellers. Like Wood, some of them stayed in the north for most of their lives; others came only for a few weeks. Their writing is invariably personal and often vivid, describing, as it does, the hopes and aspirations of the writers, their personal relationships, the challenges they faced in their work and daily lives, and their recreational activities.

Needless to say, it reflects an early twentieth-century view of the world: views have changed as the world has changed in the century that has passed between them and us. Above all, the writing reflects the close bond many felt with the north of Siam, a remote, strange but beautiful land which some saw as a kind of Arcady or paradise but others felt was a “jungle prison”.

The present anthology is a mosaic or a series of disparate impressions by very different individuals linked only by the impact the northern region had on their lives. It is a book to be read and not a scholarly edition to

“The Ma Sa Ngoon, down which elephants had to drag logs before the chute was built.” Note the markings on the cut logs. Oliver Backhouse.

lacquerwork is poor, but the weaving industry makes attractive sarongs. All these things are manufactured for the home market, not for tourists. Still, word had spread that I had arrived, and when we returned for lunch we found a number of ancient ladies squatting on the porch of the Collier house with silver items spread out before them. These were all articles they had used in their own homes and few of them appealed to me. Until I left, the porch was never empty. I did buy a silver bowl and told them what I wanted most was one of the small bronze weights in the shape of an animal that merchants used in the old days.

Rickover, Pepper, Rice, and Elephants, p. 191

Dorothy Le May’s watercolour of Chiang Mai’s walls, moat and mountain was published as a frontispiece to her husband’s An Asian Arcady

The Dreaming Walls: Two Poems

The Moat, Chiengmai

By Mary Lou O’Brien

These crumbling walls did once behold Grim warriors waging battle bold. Antiquity breathes from them now; The history of ancient Laos. And lotus blossoms idly float Upon the waters of the moat; So still and sweet the way of peace When war and all its discords cease. O walls and moat which one time barred The way of warriors battle scarred, Rejoice to be a quiet spot And for past glory sorrow not! For we who gaze would rather see Pink lotus buds nod lazily

And climbing vines embrace the walls Than gallant men become war’s thralls.

Siam Outlook, April 1930, p. 453

On Tip Top

Bertha Blount McFarland came to Siam in 1908 and married George Bradley McFarland (1866-1942), a distinguished physician in Bangkok. Her memoir Our Garden was So Fair: The Story of a Mission in Thailand contains an account of their visit to Chiang Mai.

Doi Sutep is the 3,500-foot mountain at the foot of which lies the old northern capital, Chiengmai. We were carried up in chairs, being tenderfoots from the lowlands. Tough Chiengmai-landers boast of the short time it takes them to make the climb. About halfway to the top is the peak that bears the name Doi Sutep. A little temple nestles on the hillside. Nearby is the summer palace of Chao Dara, the Laos princess who became the wife of King Chulalongkorn. Her rose garden was one of the wonders of the Thailand world. At the temple and rose garden we stopped for a little breathing spell to give our carriers a rest, and to enjoy the roses. Then on we pressed, until the air grew rarer and we felt the change in atmosphere. On Tip Top we were in the temperate zone; the torrid zone lay down in Chiengmai. On the mountain top the sun loses its fiery character and one can go about bareheaded without fear. Even flora and fauna are different; pines grow easily. There we were on the top of the world and could look down in all directions and far off to the farther and higher mountain peaks.

McFarland: Our Garden was So Fair, pp. 89-90

The Van Millingen family relaxes at their bungalow on Doi Suthep, 1933. Oliver Backhouse.

My Mountain

Mary Lou O’Brien celebrates the beauties of Doi Suthep in this poem published in 1928.

My mountain has a wardrobe filled with frocks of varied hues, And loves to change from gown, to gown, from dark greens into blues. I think she tries to charm the sun, with all her garments fine, And when she is successful you should see how he will shine.

She may be very moody, and I think she is quite vain, In one frock or one color she will not for long remain. She makes me rather dizzy, for I try to see them allHer garments for the summer, and her colors for the fall.

I can’t decide which I like best, the purple, blue, or green I seem, like her, to change my mind when each new frock I’ve seen. She sometimes wears a mist of white, so gossamer and frail. I think that she is playing bride in someone’s wedding veil. Of all her little vanities this is the worst by far, At night she pins into her hair a shining, golden star, Then she forgets the sun, this fickle one, and all too soon, Begins to weave a spell about the old man in the moon.

I long to paint her portrait, but I know it would not do, For she would want to change her gown before I quite got through. Then, too, how could I find such blues, and sunshine-mottled green, And color of a dew-drop with its cool and sparkling sheen?

My mountain is not young, I know, she’s very cold, indeed, And from such tricks of vanity her old age should be freed. And yet the sun and moon are surely old enough to know

My fickle little mountain has a heart as cold as snow.

Siam Outlook, July 1928, p. 335

Then and Now

It is difficult, indeed almost impossible, for those of us who have come to Siam but recently to even begin to realize what the Siam of the pioneer missionary days must have been like. We who travel over wonderfully fine roads, ride in automobiles, (albeit they be Fords) read by electric light, have daily supply of ice, travel to the north on the express which makes the biweekly trip in twenty six hours’ time (a trip which is the early days consumed six weeks’ time and had to be made by boat), take for granted the friendly attitude of the Siamese toward us and our work, read daily papers, English and Siamese, and go about Bangkok in trams can only travel at the courage of those pathfinders, and at this safe distance of time wish, half-heartedly, that we had experienced some of the hardships of those days.

Even in Nan, the most remote station of all, a missionary Ford has opened the way for road improvement, and within four years’ time a motor road from Prae to Nan will be ready. Thus does the romance of olden times give way to the spirit of modernity. The most beautiful road in Siam connects Lampang with once-remote Chiengrai, a distance of about one hundred and twenty-five miles, and buses fly back and forth each day of the week.

Siam Outlook, October 1928, p. 304

The old Khua Kula teak bridge at Chiang Mai, irreparably damaged by logs, July 1932, and replaced by a steel construction. Oliver Backhouse.

The Tropical Congress - Travellers Return from Chiengmai

In December 1930, delegates from the Eighth Congress of the Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine visited Chiang Mai in what was almost certainly the first group excursion of its kind to the north. The Bangkok Times reported on the programme in some detail.

The express from Chiengmai bringing back the members of the F.E.A.T.M. and their families ran gently into the Hua Lampong terminus this morning at 9.45 a.m., five minutes ahead of time. The travellers expressed themselves delighted with the excursion, and they were loaded with curios, Chiengmai roses and sins, etc. But the treasures of the north have not been unduly depleted, although the pockets of the tourists are lighter than when they left Bangkok.

Writing from Chiengmai yesterday morning at one a.m. a correspondent says: -

Early on Tuesday the visiting delegates, their wives and friends called in a body to pay their respect to His Highness Prince Dossiriwongs, the Tesa. A visit was then made to the new Health Centre, a building but recently completed, beautiful in appearance and modern in equipment.

Shortly after 10 o’clock the visitors arrived at the Leper Asylum. This institution is located on an island in the Meping River. It is reached by a drive of some five miles from the city along a winding and interesting road.

The Van Millingens motoring near Lampang. Oliver Backhouse.