Ayutthaya

Today I went to the Museum of Siam. I figured I should probably try to learn something about Thailand. It turns out Thailand's history, in summary, isn't that interesting. So I shall write about it.

First there were dinosaurs. Next there were big elephant looking things. Then there were the ancestors of humans. Finally there were people.

The people hunted and gathered. Then they planted rice and ran herds. Some of them fished. Then they started mining for copper, tin and gold.

They were nomadic. Then they lived in villages. Some became towns. Some towns became city states.

One big city state (Aya) didn't like the other (Ayutthaya) because the smaller cities in between would always run to Ayutthaya for help whenever they were attacked.

Aya attacked Ayutthaya (also called Siam by foreigners) but Ayutthaya repelled them in a 9 month long battle. So then then next boss of Aya attacked them again and this time he won. The Ayutthaya Kingdom was finished after 400 years or so.

Someone, although I don't know who, decided to build a replacement/replica of Ayutthaya and it is called Bangkok. Then they filled it with cars and made it a horrible place to walk around in. But that was much later.

In 1939 the boss man of whatever this place was called at that point decided to change the name of the country to Thailand. There are loads of different ethnic groups here but he decided Thais were the purest race, hence the name. If you weren't actually Thai, you just had to agree with the doctrine and then you were allowed to consider yourself Thai. Something similar happened around that time in Europe but it went in a whole other direction.

I played one of the interactive games at the museum. In it you were shown a map of South East Asia and could carve out a chunk of it for yourself. I sliced off a lovely piece with gold and forests and a nice deep port. Then I had to check on the villagers and they were dancing and having fun. But an English bloke walked into the village and gave them all hats and they started dancing differently. At that point the message: "Oh well, we'll just have to change our culture" flashed up on the screen and the game was over. There was nothing I could do. The hats were too powerful. I too have been a victim of the mighty English hat diplomacy. I support Spurs because a bloke gave me a Spurs hat.

I also watched this cartoon about the mythology behind the frog as a symbol of fertility (it's used to bring rain). It was a bit like a dream time story, crossed with the story of Noah's ark, crossed with Dragon Ball Z. I know it's boring but I'm writing it anyway.

There was once a King and Queen who had a baby, but unfortunately he was a toad. He was a nice guy but the ladies, despite their Facebook posts to the contrary, don't care for nice guys one bit. So he asked the gods to make him a looker and whoever the God was went "yeah alright" and he became a good looking bloke. Boom, he was married later that year.

He became King Toad and everyone loved him so much they stopped worshipping the gods. A great drought filled the land so King Toad asked his subjects to build a road to the sky, then he gathered up all the creatures on the earth into an army and went to fight the sky lord (he was responsible for the water situation). Oh, Toad could talk to the animals by the way.

Anyway, they both had access to magic so they flew around battling for a day but neither could win. Through the night Toad got the termites to eat all the wooden war machines and replaced the tail of the sky lords battle elephant with a serpent. While they were fighting the serpent snuck up and choked out the sky lord.

After, they had a conversation which pretty much went
Toad: Why you no send rain?
Sky Lord: Why you no worship me?
T: We'll worship. You send rain.
SL: Righto. But how will I know when you need it?
T: We'll shoot a dragon rocket into the sky to let you know.
SL: K

And somehow that is why a frog is used to bring rain...

IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!

But this is Thailand so that's ok.