In the first post-war decade rural-urban migration became the driving force of Bangkok's expansion(accounting for up to 50 per cent of its population growth to 1960) and continued to be the major contributor to population growth into the 1970s(Kritaya 1988: 8), Government restricons on Chinese immigration from 1947 played a role in increasing the demand for urban labour. The majority of migrants were from the central region provinces, but there was a significant and increasing flow from the northeast. It was a process linked to expanding opportunities for social mobility among a range of groups, and was not restricted to the poor. visible new group in the urban However, the rural peasantry were the most landscape. Robert Textor's study of the Lao-speaking samlor (pedicab) drivers from Isan was one of the first to explore the values and experiences of this new group of peasants in the city who found a niche in the expanding urban services economy of low-cost transportation. A vanguard of an increasing northeastern peasant presence in the city, they engaged in a Bangkok subculture marked by consumption-orientated expectations and opportunistic behaviours. While apparently changed by these experi ences, they retained loyalties and aspirations informed by their rural family ties (Textor 1961 : 32-46). In the 1950s Thailand literally came to Bangkok. Communications made Bangkok increasingly accessible to the rest of the country, while also rendering the countryside more open to flows of images and commodities signifying status and modernity. In this way, Bangkok acting as a conduit of new urban aspirations - also came to Thailand (Paitoon 1962).