A dazzle of gold and a blaze of colours _ that's your first impression of the Grand Palace as you come down the avenue of ugly dull buildings. It is a splendid mass of pagodas, towers, halls and chapels with triple roofs ending in flourishes of serpents' tails. The temple bells glint from the eaves below roofs covered with blue and orange, green and yellow tiles. The buildings look like blown up toys. The black spires seem remote and unreal as fairy tales and dreams. High white walls surround the city for it is indeed a little city of its own. in the middle behind a lawn bordered with clipped trees you see with a slight shock a sickly green and pink building with three umbrella-like spires. It looks like a Westerner wearing a Thai dancer's headdress. The building is plainly European except for the roof.The story goes that the King had been thrilled by Victorian and European art after his visit to Europe and so commissioned an English architect to design a new throne hall.in the old days kings had a palace for each season _ cool, hot and rainy _ and each palace had a prasad. So they decided that the conventional European roof in the design should not be used and three traditional Thai ones placed on top. This is one of the many compromises that the King made in Westernising his country
I wanted very much to see inside or at least to know what life inside was like in the days of King Chulalongkorn [Rama V]. So I went to see Princess Chongchitra.So I went to see Princess Chongchitra.Of my father's cousins she is one of my favourites. She is 80 years old and tiny, very thin and has twinkling eyes full of mischief. Her wrinkles are kind and happy ones. Her memory is fantastic, so visits with her are always fun.
"When I was about nine years old I was taken to the cremation of the Crown Prince and there I saw Princess Suddhadibya, who was very beautiful, and I developed a crush on her. She was one of the King's daughters and I was determined to go and live with her but I didn't until three years later after my tonsure ceremony. This is the cutting of the topknot at the age of puberty for boys and girls. When children were small their heads were shaved and only a little tuft of hair was left on top and tied into a knot and fixed with a pretty pin. The topknot was cut when the child was 11 or 12.
"My tonsure ceremony was quite grand because the King cut my topknot. There were about five or six of us all done on the same day. We were beautifully dressed for it _ gold brocade, gold and diamond necklaces, bracelets, anklets and a jewelled decoration round the topknot. The jewels were so heavy they had to carry me. I couldn't move. I felt absolutely gorgeous.
"Before I went into the Palace I had to go to school. The school was under the supervision of the Department of Education. This was at the time of the modernisation of our country. It was a very new thing. My father was what would now be the Minister of the Interior. The school was run by three English women who were helped by three Siamese girls.
The Englishwomen were brought out by the department and most of them married well here. They married the many foreign advisers from Europe and America who were nearly all bachelors in those days. Queen Saovabha herself chose the Siamese teachers and sent them to study in England. They were all very intelligent but they were people of no consequence. It was unheard of in those days for a girl of good family to go abroad to study. It was ruinous for a family's reputation. It was as shameful for a family as a daughter going on the stage in the days of Queen Victoria. Girls in those days stayed at home and suitable marriages were arranged for them.
''The King always said such nice things to people. After eating one of my special nam prik he said, 'You have prolonged my life. The nam prik was so good.' He challenged me to make the same nam prik again for the following day because he said that only expert cooks could make the same sauce perfectly every time. I don't want to boast but I did reproduce it again and again.
''Life in the Palace was very dull. APART from the crazes we had for bicycling and photography and playing croquet, there wasn't much amusement. Physically it was very uncomfortable. There were thousands of women and children inside the palace, living in hundreds of buildings of various sizes made of brick or wood according to the importance and standing of the owner of the house. There was no running water or sewage system. In spite of this everyone was very clean. We washed many times a day in water scented by floating jasmine in it. We kept ourselves cool by covering ourselves with kaolin mixed into a paste with Siamese scent.''It's not hard to make scented water because you just float any sweet-smelling flowers that you like in it such as jasmine. We had huge jars of scented water, deliciously cold.
''There were gardens inside the Palace but only small ones, and with the high white walls you couldn't help feeling shut in. So it was wonderful for us when the King started to go for picnics in Dusit Park. He wanted to get out into the open spaces. He loved gardening and I remember many times when we had to stand about with lanterns at 9 o'clock at night because the King hadn't finished planting his trees. He planted whole woods.
The King died in 1910 at one of the palaces in the park. He was nursed by Queen Saovabha and his favourites. We were all heartbroken and shaved our heads and went into mourning. White was the colour of mourning in those days.
''It was very sad in the Palace after King Chulalongkorn's death because his successor was unmarried and would not live Inside. He preferred his palace in the park, so for us Inside, it was like a world without a sun. Life was all monotony. No King's meals to prepare; nothing to do for him. We, who had talked about what the King did, what he said, what he liked and what he disliked, now had nothing to talk about.
''Now the Inner Palace is like a deserted city.The last of King Chulalongkorn's wives still lives there in the house he built for her. She was 16 when he died.
''It was a hard life but it taught one the qualities of fortitude, courage and unselfish service which seem to be forgotten today. All you young people think of now are freedom and pleasure. Oh well, it's your life. I've had mine . . . I can't complain.''
And with a beaming smile she treated me to the same delicious nam prik that the King had had.