Last part of a long and brilliantly observed leaving letter by Sir Anthony Rumbold, her Britanic Majesties Ambassador on leaving Bangkok in 1967. I cannot agree with him about the music of course.
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I have very much enjoyed living for a while in Thailand. One would have to be very insensitive or puritanical to take the view that the Thais had nothing to offer. It is true that they have no literature, no painting and only a very odd kind of music, that their sculpture, their ceramics and their dancing are borrowed from others and that their architecture is monotonous and their interior decoration hideous. Nobody can deny that gambling and golf are the chief pleasures of the rich and that licentiousness is the main pleasure of them all. But it does a faded European good to spend some time among such a jolly, extrovert and anti-intellectual people. And if anybody wants to know what their culture consists of the answer is that it consists of themselves, their excellent manners, their fastidious habits, their graceful gestures and their elegant persons. If we are elephants and oxen they are gazelles and butterflies. On the other hand I am glad not to be staying here longer. I am certain that the deterioration in my mental process is due not only to the onset of old age but more particularly to the enervating effects of the climate which no amount of exercise and air conditioning can nullify.
20. Finally I must express my gratitude to the staff of this Embassy without whose cheerfulness and industry I could not have had so agreeable a stay.