A Return - to a place I used to call home.

(In which: I return to Thailand, reconnect with family and consider the plight of border communities caught up in the political psychodrama of old enemies.)

I used to live in Thailand and there was a time when I assumed I’d have a close connection to Thailand throughout my life. As things turned out, I left, and a rift between me, the country and the people I knew grew over 30 plus years. I did visit during that time but the reasons I left in the first place still alienated me. But somehow, that changed. I was persuaded to start learning Thai again and, feeling pleased (and a bit smug) that I still could remember quite a lot, I began to want to see the place again.

 I have lost contact with my old Thai friends, my flat mate, workmates and my best buddy but through re-learning Thai, I have made some new friends and the beginnings of friendship with a community of activists and community workers whose values are very close to mine. I also have a vast number of relatives who are open-hearted, generous and couldn’t be more welcoming. They are also very intense and I do not kid myself that some of their welcome is because I have returned with their beloved grandchildren. Thirty years on from living in Thailand I no longer trust my iron constitution and find myself fearing getting sick. I worry if I can manage another long-distance bus ride. I can’t sleep just anywhere either but I am still quite at home with insects, reptiles and small mammals which are everywhere in Thai village homes. Finding Granny battering a cat intent on eating a decapitated rat where I was about to sleep was a bit of a challenge but I have a high tolerance for sharing space with non-human life.

 One of the biggest changes in Thailand since I was living here (apart from the ubiquity of coffee shops) has been the inevitable shift to digital. For the promise of easy travel and communication, I have handed over my data willy-nilly. I have been far less careful here than in the UK even though I am well aware that Thailand and its neighbours Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar are plagued by scammers. This has, I hear, got much worse since the conflict between Thailand and Cambodia. Fake news, digital propaganda and scamming have been weapons of war. Scam factories and the border casinos that launder money, feed gambling addiction and provide services that are illegal in Thailand were specifically targeted by the Thai military and air force. They were, apparently, being used as weapon stores but were also targeted as centres of organised crime. Cambodian aggression, which included cross-border incursion and the laying of new land mines gave the Thai military the excuse to attack casinos and the scam factories. The view from Thailand is that the conflict was less about border disputes and the ownership of ancient temples than the criminal enterprises that flourish in Cambodia.

 My family live near the border and were evacuated in both July and December of 2025 and also in 2011. They are border people and, like everyone I spoke near the border (my informants include a monk, shopkeepers, family, friends and taxi drivers) they express no animus to their Khmer neighbours. Without exception, they consider Cambodian villagers พี่น้องกัน pii nong kan - siblings, but more than that, family. They are well aware how poor these people are. They know how dependent they are on cross-border trade and on work as labourers on construction sites in Thailand. These are sources of income now denied as border crossing points have closed and permission to work legally in Thailand is denied.

The family live a few kilometres from Khao Phra Viharn, (Preah Vihara to Cambodians), a hotspot in the conflict. It is an 11th century temple complex listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and, allegedly, it has been severely damaged by Thai F16s. The justification for bombardment was that the temple buildings were being used to store arms and ammunition. But even so, this is an appalling act of cultural and historical vandalism. The Temple is stunning and, while on a much smaller scale than Angkor Wat, still takes a lot of exploring. When I lived in Thailand, we were able to go to the top of Pa Mo I Daeng - the Red Cliff from where you can visit 10th century rock-cut relief sculptures and look out across into Cambodia - but it was not possible to cross into Cambodia to visit the temple. At that time, pristine jungle seemed to stretch away into the distance in contrast to the sparse trees on the Thai side of the border.

Khao Phra Viharn and the promontory of the Dangrek mountains it sits upon was awarded to Cambodia by an International Court of Justice ruling in 1962 but it has been a disputed area ever since. In the 1980’s, when I was there, the area was known to be dangerous. There were uncleared landmines dating from the Pol Pot era and I myself saw Vietnamese troops patrolling the border. There were also camps housing refugee Khmer Rouge supporters nearby. In the late ‘90’s, the temple became accessible and was promoted on tourist itineraries. Road access from Thailand improved dramatically and this partly accounts for the economic growth of the area. This means that the administrative area of Kantharalak may soon have a sufficiently large population to become a province in its own right. The Thai state has invested in the preservation of the temple and Thais I have spoken to make the very reasonable observation that the Cambodians do not have the resources or technical skills to maintain and protect the site. But if there were issues with conservation before the war, we can only guess at its condition now.

The Thai state, being economically and militarily stronger than Cambodia, has been able to compensate victims of the conflict and, seeing themselves as the innocent party, have been quicker to publicise the scale of damage. The claims of Thai citizens for compensation for human and material loss are being resolved but the claims of the many Lao and Cambodian citizens living on the border are taking much longer. Undocumented people living on the Thai side are still waiting to receive help and compensation for losses incurred in July’s attacks. There is also still a lot of mine and ordinance clearing to be done. The Grad rocket lying unexploded in the pond next to our family’s house will have to stay there until mine clearance on the border itself, clearly audible from their house, is completed.

Thailand has long been a close US ally but, like so many other countries was severely hit by cuts to USAID funding. Health and nutrition programmes supporting over 100,000 displaced people along the border with Myanmar were cut. I have struggled to find information about exactly how much this aid was worth but it was around the $3m mark. The peace deal part-brokered by Trump on the Cambodian border has most likely cost the US taxpayer much more and has included funds for border ‘security’ which will most likely contribute to the programme of border wall and fence building already underway. As is so often the case ‘following the money’ reveals a lot about what is really at stake.  $15m has been committed to border ‘stabilisation’, $10m for clearing landmines and unexploded ordinance, and the US will contribute $20m to counter scammers and drug trafficking.

While Thailand is busy spending the funds granted by the US, little reliable news is coming from across the border where the casualties and material losses are likely to be far greater than on the Thai side. Reports have emerged of exotic animals, including lions, being found in casinos but we hear nothing of the human losses that surely must have been caused by Thai air force strikes on scam factories; places known to imprison trafficked and bonded labour. 

 The Cambodian’s may have precipitated the conflict, through breaking the uneasy truce on the border and by laying the new landmines that killed and maimed Thai soldiers, but the Thai state, and it’s military have taken the opportunity to display their far superior economic and military strength. And there’s the General Election which took place on the 8th of February. My new taxi driver friend suspected the conflict had only paused for the Election. The war time stand-in Prime Minister Anutin has been elected with a healthy majority so the stage is set. There are itchy fingers on both sides of the border and only on the 5th of February, a Cambodian grenade landed on the Thai side of the border near Khao Phra Viharn.

What is clear however, is that the Cambodian villagers will suffer disproportionately from further conflict. People on the Thai side of the border will suffer disruption, displacement and danger but the Cambodian villagers cannot rely on their government for any kind of support. They face physical danger, social and economic disruption and to make things worse, the conflict means that the Cambodian workers and labourers are being replaced by workers from Laos and Myanmar. It is unclear when or if this important source of income will  re-open.

The war has nothing to do with the ordinary population of Cambodia and everything to do with bad blood between politicians and corruption in ruling elites. The new construction along the border will inevitably damage the precious and fragile ecosystems that have, over several decades, been protected to some degree at least by the possibility of unexploded ordinance and landmines. While many in Thailand have become more nationalistic, people living on the border see the poverty and suffering of their Cambodian neighbours. Lives both sides of the border are being disrupted by forced evacuation and the threat of seemingly random attack by the Cambodian Soviet-era munitions on the one side and ferocious retaliation from Thailand on the other.

My return to Thailand has been emotional. I’ve been moved and delighted to have been welcomed as I have but depressed that many people living where I feel at home are still living such precarious lives. While Thai citizens have been compensated and their suffering grieved, the complexity of border populations and their cross-border fraternity does not seem to have been recognised. This is despite the people of the North-East of Thailand, from Isan, having something of a moment just now. They were the butt of jokes when I lived here - they were the foolish country bumpkins who sweated on building sites and whose women worked in foreign tourist bars, considered too dark-skinned and country-featured to appeal as domestic prostitutes. But Isan has always had the best music in Thailand and the most cultural capital through its films, food, festivals and traditions. It may still have few tourist visitors but it does have the largest settled population of Western men married to Thai women and who bring money with them. Maybe those working women have had the last laugh after all. For many people, Isan is Thailand and people from Isan are proud of where they are from. They are proud of their ethic of hard-work and their sense of fun, though women may be represented more by the former and men by the latter. Despite all the challenges they face, people from Isan seem confident that the future can be better than the past. I’m looking forward to returning.