Annals of TourismResearch, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp.

432-148, 1996
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0160-7383(95)00071-2

NATIONAL HERITAGE AND GLOBAL

TOURISM IN THAILAND

Maurizio Peleggi
Australian National University, Australia

Abstract: This article examines the relevance of Thailand’s heritage attractions to both inter-
national and domestic tourism. It also analyzes the state tourism agency’s promotion of
heritage and the ideologikal implications of heritage sightseeing in relation to the official
historical narrative. Despite the present emphasis on cultural tourism, heritage is still of
marginal significance for international visitors; yet, it constitutes a major attraction for the
expanding domestic tourism sector. Study data are interpreted within the context of
Thailand’s cultural and social change. The increase of privately managed heritage attractions,
at the end, is seen as a potential challenge to state-sanctioned definitions of national history
and identity. Keywords: World Heritage, international and domestic tourism, ruins, museums,
national historical narrative, promotional narrative, nostalgia.

R&urn& Patrimoine national et tourisme global en Thai’lande. L’article examine l’importance

du patrimoine d’attractions en Thailande pour le tourisme national et international. On
examine aussi la promotion du patrimoine par l’agence de tourisme de l’etat, et les implica-
tions idkologiques du tourisme patrimonial par rapport B la narration historique officielle.
MalgrC l’importance actuelle du tourisme culture], le patrimoine n’a qu’un inttr&t secondaire
pour les visiteurs internationaux, mais reste one attraction majeure pour le tourisme national.
On interprtte les donnkes de 1’Ctude dam le contexte des changements culturels et sociaux
en Tha’ilande. On finit par montrer quc l’accroissement des attractions patrimoniales privtes
constitue un dtfi aux dkfinitions consacrks par l’etat de l’histoire et I’identite nationales.
Mots-cl&: patrimoine mondial, tourisme national et international, wines, mustes, narration
historique nationale, narration publicitaire, nostalgic.

INTRODUCTION
Cultural heritage, as is defined by the 1972 UNESCO Convention
on the Protection of the World’s Cultural and Natural Heritage, is
the complex of monuments, buildings and archeological sites “of
outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or
science” (cited in Hewison 1987:15). However, ruins and monuments
rarely survive untouched through the centuries. Relics are constantly
transformed and thus updated, both directly - by protection,
restoration, or iconoclasm - and indirectly - by replicas, emulations
and fakes (Lowenthal 1985:chap. 6). In fact, as Hewison (1987:9)
laments, heritage can be manufactured like other commodities. At a
time when the authority of archeology to authenticate the remains
of the past is questioned as being functional to nationalist agendas
(Fowler 1987; Trigger 1984), the quest for authenticity has assumed
a global dimension. The ultimate authentication is the bestowal of

Maurizio Peleggi is a doctoral candidate in the Division of Pacific and Asian History,
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University (Canberra ACT
0200, Australia. email pele@coombs.anu.edu.au). His research focuses on the cultural repre-
sentations of tradition and identity in late 19th- and 20th-century Thailand.

432
 MAURIZIO PELEGGI 433

the status of World Heritage by the International Council of

Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), an advisory body under UNESCO,
that examines for possible approval the nominations of sites
sponsored by various states. The underlying relation between the
notion of World Heritage and tourism was made explicit by UNESCO
itself in its 1976 Declaration, which states that tourism “more than
an economic phenomenon with social and cultural effects, has
become a phenomenon of civilization” (UNESCO 1976:75).
In 1991, the World Heritage List included the ancient cities of
Sukhothai and Ayutthaya, in northern and central Thailand, respec-
tively. (On the same occasion the forest area of Thung Yai-Huay
Khakhaeng was listed as a World Heritage natural site.) As the
centers of polities that once ruled over part of present-day Thailand,
Sukhothai and Ayutthaya have been construed by the official histor-
ical narrative as the antecedents of the modern Thai nation-state.
This enlistment, besides boosting national pride, has prompted
further expectations of economic gain by the tourism industry.
Thailand, whose popularity among vacationers has been predomi-
nantly due to its hedonistic appeal, is now largely promoted as a
destination for cultural tourism, as if the word culture could
thaumaturgically purge tourism of its disturbing aspects, particularly
evident in Thailand, by dignifying it. Moreover, domestic tourism has
become in recent years a sizable industry. The nomination, however,
has also put on the alert the conservationist front composed of
academic groups, social workers active in the nongovernmental
organizations; and intellectuals, who criticize the conservation
approach of the state’s Fine Arts Department and openly oppose the
government’s policy on tourism.
The ICOMOS’s decision acknowledged the accomplishments of
some 15 years of state heritage policy. The preservation of historic
and archaeological sites has been undertaken by the Thai authori-
ties on quite a large scale since the mid 197Os, but the selection of
sites! and the methods and aims of their restoration, underscore the
pohttcal design of restating the hegemony of the official historical
narrative that has been challenged since the early 1970s (Peleggi
1994). Briefly, Thailand’s “contested” heritage has become an arena
for confrontation among the advocates of different schools of
monument conservation, different conceptions of the past, and
different models of development. But, above all, heritage remains an
arena for representations. As is the case with customary practices
and handicraft, heritage attractions marketed as “authentic sites”
promote perceptions and definitions of national and cultural identity
(Wood 1980, 1984). The first part of this article shows that, in spite
of the stress that planners and critics place on international tourism,
heritage attractions in Thailam’ are definitely more popular with
local patrons. The foreign visitors’ sightseeing focuses, instead, on a
number of sites that form a sort of alternative “tourist heritage”.
The image of the past depicted by the heritage attractions may
well be, as its most severe critics contend, nothing but nostalgia, the
terrain for “. . . a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality;
of second-hand truth, objectivity and authenticity” (Baudrillard
434 NATIONAL HERITAGE IN THAILAND

1983: 13). Thus, the multiplication of “Olde Siam” simulacra in

present-day Thailand exploits the yearning of a rapidly industrializ-
ing society for its recent agrarian past, with the reinforcement of
stereotypes of social equality and benevolent royal rule. But it also
reflects the collective fear that modernization could destroy the
essence of “Thainess”, even though the constituents of this essence
are a matter of public contention. The article concludes by the
suggestion that if the tourist consumption of heritage sites allows
the official version of national history to achieve hegemonic central-
ity, it can possibly offer, in turn, the means to deconstruct and
reassemble the past in different forms.

HERITAGE IN THE THAI TOURISM CONTEXT

The appearance of tourism in Thailand dates from the late 192Os,
even if royal sponsorship of tourism can be said to have started in
the late 19th century with the modernizer King Chulalongkorn
(Meyer 1988:61-63). An English-language guide to Bangkok written
by a Danish adviser and published by the Siamese Royal State
Railway Department (Seidenfaden 1927) had three editions between
1927 and 1932. Since tourism was then eminently an elite activity,
it tended to have elitist goals, in the range of what today qualifies
as cultural tourism. Thus, in the guide’s suggested program, the
tourist was, first of all, “advised to visit the more important temples,
palaces and monuments”. The itinerary of a week’s sightseeing in
Bangkok included places that today hardly appeal to foreign tourists,
such as the National Library and the University, alongside still
prominent attractions such as the Grand Palace with the Temple of
the Emerald Buddha, the floating market and the ruins of Ayutthaya
(Seidenfaden 1927:47-53).
The push for mass tourism began in the late 1950s in the context
of the economic development that characterized Marshal Sarit
Thanarat’s premiership. The rapid growth of the service sector,
particularly in the capital, was of great support to the burgeoning
tourism industry. Despite the absence of an explicit policy, 1959 was
the year of the establishment of the Tourist Organization of
Thailand (TOT). In the same year, the new airline company, Thai
Airways International (Thai), was created through a joint venture
with, and under the initial management of, the Scandinavian
Airline System (Meyer 1988:67-68). Sarit’s obsession with the
khwamsahat (cleanliness) of the fasade of society as proof of an
achieved standard of khwampen araya prathet (civilization), and the
extensive world tour of the Thai royal couple in the same period
were major contributions to the promotion of the kingdom abroad.
As remembered by Charles Keyes, a leading scholar of Thailand
(personal communication in 1994), it was in the early 1960s that
images of Thai women in TOT brochures started to oust those of
Buddhist temples and monks. If some characteristics of the Thai
tourism industry predate the Vietnam War era, this period nonethe-
less left on it a lasting mark. The tourism sector benefited consid-
erably from the huge flow of American aid spent in the development
 MAURIZIO PELEGGI 435

of infrastructure, particularly roads. The presence of USS military

bases in the northeastern provinces occasioned the mushrooming of
hotels, restaurants, bars, nightclubs and massage parlors; the same
took place in Bangkok, destination of American soldiers on their
live days of Rest and Recreation leave (Meyer 1988:69-73).
In the mid 197Os, in a regional climate of communist takeovers
and rising Islamic fundamentalism, Thailand was virtually the most
pleasant and safe country to visit in Southeast Asia. Thai guerrilla
warfare was a rural phenomenon that never endangered public
safety in the cities. During the politically tumultuous period between
1973 and 1976, the main targets of demonstrations were Japanese
economic interests, though one of the most memorable strikes of
Thailand’s social history centered around the employment condi-
tions at the Dusit Thani Hotel in Bangkok (Meyer 1988:76-78). In
the second half of the decade, in the midst of an economic slowdown,
tourism became a major source of foreign exchange earnings. In the
Fourth Economic and Social Development Plan (1977-81), for the
first time an entire section was devoted to tourism development and,
in 1979, the TOT was upgraded to the Tourist Authority of Thailand
(TAT).
The 1980s registered a spectacular growth in annual tourist
arrivals, from 2 million at the beginning of the decade to 5 million
at the end, figures largely outstripping those of neighboring
countries, also in terms of tourist receipts and shopping expenditure
(Walton 1993:224). Tourism revenue grew from the 17 million Baht
of 1980 to the 110 million of 1990, constituting since 1982 the largest
foreign exchange earner (Somchai 1992:8). Air-link increases and
fare reductions as a result of deregulation policy have transformed
Bangkok’s airport into a regional hub today challenging Singapore’s
supremacy; accordingly, more and more travelers have been experi-
encing Thailand also as an en route stopover.
In the 198Os, “cultural heritage” became the promotional catch
phrase for events such as the Bangkok Bicentennial in 1982 (for
which several of the city’s monuments were renovated); the celebra-
tions for the 60th birthday of Ring Bhumibol in 1987 coupled with
Visit Thailand Year (a model imitated throughout the region); and
ceremonies for the longest reign of Thai history held in 1988,
followed by Thailand’s Arts and Crafts Year. In conjunction with
these promotions, the country’s monumental ruins, extensively
restored since the mid 197Os, were highlighted at a time when travel
to the other monumental sites of the region, Angkor and Pagan, was
virtually unfeasible. The second half of the decade saw a major
change in the direction of government tourism policy. Under the
Sixth Plan (1987-91), budget allocations started to be made directly
to TAT in order to develop both short- and long-term plans with a
wide agenda, from monument conservation to road construction.
The repackaging of Thailand as a destination for cultural tourism
was also aimed at mitigating its reputation as the most notorious
host of sex tours in Asia at a time when the pressure of religious
and social organizations and the spread of AIDS were transforming
this major attraction into an embarrassing burden (Ritcher 1989).
436 NATIONAL HERITAGE IN THAILAND

However, international arrivals throughout the 1980s continued to

show a high ratio of male visitors.
In 1991-92, a decrease in tourist arrivals was recorded for the first
time since 1976. The concurrence of the world recession, the Gulf
War, the February 1991 coup and the bloody events of the May 1992
crisis broke the tourism industry’s dream of indefinite growth.
Furthermore, the rapid deterioration of Thailand’s natural resources
in the face of the growing ecotourism market and the gradual
opening of long-secluded countries such as Burma and Vietnam have
been forcing tourism operators and TAT to rethink strategies of
development in a regional, rather than national, perspective. 1992
was declared Visit ASEAN Year, while TAT signed a tourism agree-
ment with Laos (TAT n.d. a). Environmental issues in Thailand are
a pressing concern, but despite steps in the right direction such as
the 1992 Environmental Act, the incapacity of provincial govern-
mental bodies to enforce the legislation against polluters and illegal
builders in big resorts like Phuket Island and Pattaya is evident. In
Bangkok the dramatic levels of air pollution and traffic jams are
already inducing tourists to shorten their stay or even skip the capital
altogether. Watthatlathammuchut (Culture and nature), TAT’s promo-
tional catch phrase for the early 199Os, sounded therefore like
unintentional irony or an exorcism for a future that poses serious
questions about the sustainability of tourism growth (Parnwell 1993).
Domestic tourism has also assumed a pronounced position in Thai
society. But the apparent lack of statistics concerning domestic
tourism-an isolated figure for 1987 shows 8.7 million tourists -
prevents any quantitative analysis. In descriptive terms, the Thais
can be said to be people inclined to internal mobility, and this is
particularly true at the time of feast-days and festivals. The religious
function of making a pilgrimage to a Buddhist shrine in order to
acquire thum bun (merit) has been always coupled with the hedonis-
tic aspects of a pay thiuo (journey). Yet, merit-seeking travelers
tended to stay at relatives’ and friends’ places or in cheap guest-
houses. Therefore, this originary form of domestic tourism was for
a long time overlooked as a negligible source of income, as well as
not affecting the demand for international-standard infrastructures.
As for the present, a decade of fast economic growth has given rise
to affluent urban strata that can afford traveling for leisure. So,
while pilgrimages and excursions with friends continue to be part of
the social life of a majority of the Thai population, the tourist
experience is being sought after by an increasing number of people
as a hallmark of status. Well-off Bangkokians may spend their
weekends at Kanchanaburi’s riverside lodges or at the beach resort
of Huahin, the 1920s royal resort where the grand Railways Hotel
has been refurbished by an international hotel chain as one of
Thailand’s top hotels; or visit what Central Thais regard as the
“exotic” region of the country, the Northeast, whose recently
restored Khmer temples have become major attractions. The TAT
itself is meeting its past shortcomings: in planning events, it devotes
much space to local fairs and festivals that appeal essentially to
domestic tourists (TAT n.d. b).
 MAURIZIO PELEGGI 437

When visiting up-country areas, the educated middle class adopts

a “tourist” attitude, which underlines its own divergence (in terms of
status, habits and culture) from provincial people. This consciousness
of a Thai “national” heritage, initially acquired through schooling, is
then strengthened by a thriving publishing industry that allows its
readers to become hobby archeologists or art connoisseurs. In this
regard, it can be reasonably argued that urban Thais are keener than
foreign tourists in their longing for the quaint or nostalgic aspects of
a pre-industrial Thai lifestyle and certainly more receptive than they
to festivals, national celebrations and heritage attractions that
exploit the folk patrimony and the repertoire of historical and nation-
alist symbols (for Indonesia’s case see Lindsey 1993).

Heritage Sites as Tourist Attractions

Thailand, as is emphasized by tourism advertisements, is a country
with a rich cultural patrimony: a ubiquitous religious architecture as
a consequence of the secular presence of the Buddhist faith; public
museums with valuable archeological collections even in small
provincial towns; royal palaces open to the visitor both in the capital
and in the provinces; and monumental ruins that are among the
most significant of Southeast Asia, together with its oldest prehis-
toric sites. Still, the question of whether heritage sites are success-
ful attractions, and whether their promotion is effective, is not
usually addressed. This discussion begins with the presentation of
major heritage sites and their 1991 attendance figures obtained
from the National Museums Division Annual Report (FAD 1992:
33-34), or otherwise collected in situ by this author. The standard
entrance-fees at the time of these statistics were: for foreigners, 20
Baht (US 0.80) at Historical Parks and the Bangkok National
Museums, and 10 Baht (USO.40) at all the other museums; for Thais
half the price, with monks and students enjoying free admittance.
The Grand Palace and the adjacent Temple of the Emerald
Buddha (Wat Phra Keo) in Bangkok are arguably the most visited
of the country’s heritage sites by Thais and foreigners alike.
However, while foreigners, who pay a 100 Baht entrance-fee, wander
around as tourists, the visit of Thai people, who have free access to
the compound, “constitutes a form of pilgrimage, during which
obeisance is made to the politico-religious symbols of the realm”
(Cohen 1992:40). Just a few hundred meters from the royal
compound is the Bangkok National Museum, with probably the
richest archeological collection in all Southeast Asia and weekly
guided tours in six foreign languages (Chinese, English, French,
German, Spanish and Portuguese). Still, in 1991 foreigners repre-
sented just about one quarter of the museum’s total attendance, or
58,5 18 visitors (around 1.1% of that year’s 5,086,899 tourist arrivals).
Definitely more popular with international visitors was the Royal
Barges Museum -a stopping point of boat tours along the
Chaophraya River: of its 100,687 patrons, 90,120 were foreigners.
The ancient city of Sukhothai, regarded as the first Siamese
independent state in the mid-13th century, lies 450 kilometers north
438 NATIONAL HERITAGE IN THAILAND

of Bangkok. The site is the better-known among Thailand’s nine

utthuyan pruwattisat (historical parks). The park project (UNESCO
1982) was developed since 1977 with a budget allocation of 220
million Baht (about US9 million) on a 70 square-kilometer area
containing 193 monuments. Its implementation caused the resettle-
ment of 200 households, the construction of roads, water resources,
and infrastructures such as car parks, restrooms, an information
center and an open-air theater (Vira 1986). The park’s landscaping,
with trees, plants and ponds, was openly inspired by the description
of old Sukhothai in a stone inscription considered to be the first
document of Thai writing at the very time the authenticity of this
inscription was under debate (Chamberlain 1991). While some criti-
cized the Fine Arts Department’s criteria of restoration- “. . . a
park rich in fantastic structures and recreational sites reflecting no
trace or shadow of the urban setting and planning of the past”
(Dhida 1987:40) -the park was pompously inaugurated in
November 1988, the year when the incumbent king became the
longest-ruling monarch in Thai history,
Despite the polemics, Sukhothai Historical Park has proven very
successful. It attracted 433,476 visitors in 1989, 396,150 in 1990, and
373,338 in 1991, of whom approximately half were foreigners. The
park’s ratio is reflected in that of the nearby museum: 66,232 visitors
in 1991, 38,026 of whom were foreigners. Also, the figure for official
guests (4,301 people), considerably larger than any other museum,
proves Sukhothai’s role as a showcase for national heritage. The
consistent financial investment required for the park’s realization
over a decade has been justified not only in terms of national pride
but also of economic return. The consequent promotional emphasis
on Sukhothai, added to its World Heritage status, may well explain
its relative popularity with foreigners.
The tourist figures for Sukhothai are paralleled by those for
Thailand’s other World Heritage site, Ayutthaya, 80 kilometers north
of Bangkok, capital of the Siamese kingdom between 1350 and 1767.
The implementation of the Ayutthaya Historical Park, underway
since 1977, is as yet incomplete because archeological remains are
mixed here with human settlements. Heavy monument reconstruc-
tions took place in 1956 and in the early 1970s creating “a garish
half-hashed mix of old red-bricked rubble and gray new concrete at
some sites” (Buckley 1992:195). Excursions to the ruins of Ayutthaya,
its two public museums, and the nearby royal summer palace of Bang
Pa-in, generally take place on a daily base from Bangkok. But tourism
operators, trusting the power of World Heritage to attract a large
number of visitors, are building huge hotels that have brought the
wrath of conservationist groups (Wisuth 1993).
Apart from Sukhothai and Ayutthaya, other significant heritage
sites attract a scant proportion of foreign tourists. One example is
Phimai Historical Park in the Northeast, containing the biggest
Khmer temple outside Cambodia, which was fully restored and open
to the public in 1989. In 199 1 Phimai had only 26,491 foreign visitors
against 181,866 Thais. Another example is the museum at the
famous prehistoric site of Ban Chiang, where excavations by Thai
 MAURIZIO PELEGGI 439

and American archeologists in the 1970s uncovered pottery 3,000

years old. Here, out of a total of 45,408 visitors, only 5,162 were
foreigners, or 0.1% of 1991 tourist arrivals.
Even more popular than Sukhothai and Ayutthaya with domestic
tourists is the Phra Nakhon Khiri Historical Park, in the Petchaburi
province. This is the summer palace built by King Rama IV in 1858.
In 1991 the park had 259,367 Thai paying patrons, 10 times more
than foreigners, plus some 14,790 monks and student visitors. The
palace’s popularity with nationals is explained by its spectacular
location, its proximity to the capital and its link to a much-admired
king. But it also reflects the general appreciation of Thais for all the
royal heritage, from Bang Pa-in to the teak mansion Vimanmek in
Bangkok, restored by the queen of Thailand for the bicentenary of
the House of Chakri in 1982. Arguably, Thai people’s sightseeing of
the royal heritage goes beyond the tourist dimension to entail
complex feelings of nationality and political loyalty.
These attendance figures show that a very small proportion of the
5 million foreign tourists who visited Thailand in 1991 paid some
attention to its heritage sites. When this was so, sightseeing was
confined to celebrated landmarks such as the Grand Palace-Wat
Phra Keo and, outside Bangkok, the Sukhothai and Ayutthaya
Historical Parks. This appears to be consistent both with Thailand’s
long-established image as a recreational destination and with the
local tourism industry’s largest market, that of package tours with
prearranged itineraries. These usually include attractions such as
the Rose Garden or the Nong Nooch Village, where overtly staged
“cultural” shows feature sketches of ancient Siamese life including
elephant warcraft. Even in the case of individual and “alternative”
travelers, who generally stay for longer periods and arrange their
own journeys, the focus of interest is not so much on historic or
archeological sites but on living cultures of the northern ethnic
minorities around Chiangmai (Cohen 1989; Meyer 1988: chap. 8).
In short, for the great majority of international tourists, the
notability of Thailand’s built heritage is limited to the “setting” of
their holiday, a backdrop that gives it a unique “color”. In Thailand,
this color owes much to the gilded Buddhist architecture, exotic not
only to Westerners but also to the now preponderant Malaysian and
Singaporean visitors. Of course, the differences in the cultural and
educational background between foreign and domestic tourists
account for the disparity in heritage sites’ attendance figures.
However, that the significance of monuments can go beyond provid-
ing the architectural landscape is doubted even by the government
tourism office, as emerged in an interview with the deputy of TAT’s
Public Relations Office (personal communication in 1993). Such an
idea informs TAT’s strategy of staging festivals at heritage sites in
order to increase their appeal rather than making the most of their
historic and artistic value: the focus of promotion is thus on having
sanuk (fun) with ruins furnishing a scenic background. This strategy
is arguably ineffective with foreign visitors because the few who are
culturally motivated are attracted by the monuments per se and not
by the accompanying fairs, while the latter are of limited interest
440 NATIONAL HERITAGE IN THAILAND

for the recreation-seeking tourists. Quite the contrary appears to be

true with regard to local excursionists, who, in their selection from
a number of leisure options, may regard festivals as inducements to
visit a heritage site rather than some other place.
Among the 79 tourist events staged in 1992, 65 had folk, religious
or historical themes (TAT n.d. b). Many of these festivals were held
at heritage sites such as Phetchaburi, Phitsanulok, Lampang,
Phanom Rung, Phimai, Kamphaeng Phet and Ayutthaya, among
others. The most famous of all is the three-day Loi Krathong festi-
val celebrated in November amidst the ruins of Sukhothai and
during which a son et lumiere show with performers in traditional
costumes is staged at Wat Mahathat on the night of the full moon.
This extremely popular event was presented since its first staging
in the early 1980s as a genuine tradition from the age of Sukhothai,
and Princess Sirindhorn’s attendance of it in 1987, the year of the
completion of the park, can be seen as royal recognition of this
Broadway-like historical reenactment. An archeologist who is a fierce
critic of the Sukhothai Historical Park and similar enterprises has
claimed that, besides the improper restoration of archeological sites
for tourism exploitation, “historical legends were written. . . which
are entirely against the history, e.g., the Loy Krathong Festival at
the ancient city of Sukhothai” (Srisakra 1992:22). This criticism is
even more trenchant, as this festival is essentially a national event;
its staging increases only Thai attendance of the park, which peaks
in November.
In fact, TAT is often criticized for planning deficiency even by the
tourism industry (Meyer 1988:86-93). Perhaps TAT’s greatest
success has been the global marketing of Thailand as “The Land of
Smiles” through a voluminous literature and perhaps thanks to the
very photogenic character of the country and its people - “an
archetypal presentational society”, according to Mulder ( 1992: 159).
The captivating image of “The Land of Smiles” seems to have
crossed the limits of tourism promotion and become, in the eyes of
many, a faithful characterization of the country (National Geographic
1982). The rapid recovery of tourist arrivals even after the bloody
events of October 1976 and May 1992 can be traced back to
Thailand’s cliche as the exotic country par excellence (Urry 1990: 108).
But what is the reality behind the cliche?
Anticipation is the first stage of the tourist journey (Butler 1980).
A holiday starts at home, when the destination is selected and
initially experienced by gazing at the deluge of images in brochures,
tour operators’ catalogs, travel and geographical magazines,
sometimes accompanied with a videocassette. This impressive flood
of visual messages is correctly said to create expectations and stereo-
types that the actual journey is often supposed to confirm and
consolidate (Stabler 1989). In the jargon of tourism analysis it is said
that tourists select their holiday destination on the basis that its
naive image (the image formed through the mass of information)
exceeds their evaluative image (the aspiration level) by the greatest
amount (Ashworth and Goodall 1989:232). This formula maintains
that the marketing of countries’ images is crucial to the process of
 MAURIZIO PELEGGI 441

destination selection. Information adding up to the destination’s

naive image is generated from two kinds of sources: informal (such
as friends, the tourist’s past experience, etc.) and formal (such as
the media in general and promotional materials in particular). The
present analysis is not intended as a contribution to the already
consistent literature on this topic (Dilley 1986; Hunt 1975; Thurot
and Thurot 1983; Urbain 1989). What matters here is to note that
the colonialist deployment of an Orientalist discourse in shaping
representations of exotic otherness (Said 1978) has become today a
prerogative of the “other” itself; and, as in the colonial epoch, this
activity is not devoid of a political valency.
The wording and images of brochures of state agencies like the
Tourist Authority of Thailand, the Malaysian Tourist Development
Corporation and the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board, all dupli-
cated in the advertisements of their national air-carriers, are state-
ments made by these boards on behalf of their respective
governments. Whether the given brand is “Exotic Thailand”,
“Fascinating Malaysia”, or “Surprising Singapore”, the aim of
national tourism boards is not to sell holiday packages directly, like
tourism operators do, but to highlight the attractions of the desti-
nation country and, above all, to present a high profile of it. As these
images are constructs imbued with official viewpoints, the promo-
tional literature of national tourism boards is nothing but a varia-
tion of the narratives that in the same countries articulate
hegemonic versions of history, culture and identity. For example, a
TAT brochure circulating in the early 1990s reads:

Giving a unique character to the land and people is a quintessen-

tial quality of “Thainess” which stems from a strong adherence to
traditions that have evolved over more than 700 years of indepen-
dent development.. . . At the same time, Thailand is a modern
dynamic nation, firmly planted in the 20th century and eyeing to
the 21st with confidence. Throughout the land there is thus a
remarkable blend of the old and the new. This means that while
the cultural heritage has been preserved to an extraordinary
degree, the visitor can also appreciate the comfort and convenience
provided by the most up-to-date facilities (TAT n.d. c:2-3).

This excerpt resounds with the same motifs that are fully articu-
lated in the several publications of the Thai government’s National
Identity Board and National Culture Commission. The message,
exploiting the romanticized idea of the Orient, is that of a culture
where dichotomous elements coexist smoothly rather than cause
conflict. Development is said to have been “independent”, hinting at
Thailand’s past as the only non-colonized country in Southeast Asia,
a strong point of the Thai nationalist historiography. Modernization
is assumed as an already achieved goal that has spared deep-rooted
institutions such as the monarchy and Buddhism - still valued and
honored as pillars of society - in contrast to the morally disruptive
effects of modernization in the West. Cultural heritage is said to be
“preserved to an extraordinary degree” in spite of the ease with
which antique hunters practiced looting until very recently (Byrne
442 NATIONAL HERITAGE IN THAILAND

1993). The sensitiveness of this point is illustrated by the following

anecdote. In 1988 some Thai newspapers started to campaign for the
return of a lintel stolen from the hill-temple of Phanom Rung in the
mid 1960s and later purchased by the Art Institute of Chicago. As
the campaign aroused nationalistic feelings, the lintel was returned
and restored in its niche. Phanom Rung is one of several Khmer
temples in Thai territory that have recently engendered a strong
public response as symbols of national identity (Keyes 1991). Like
the already mentioned Phimai, it was fully restored and arranged as
an “historical park” in the late 1980s. These temples have naturally
become major domestic attractions and also ligure prominently in
the most recent TAT advertisements that endorse their anachronis-
tic ascription to the Thai heritage: “But if you want to feel truly
alone with Thai culture, the two 700-year-old Khmer temples at
Phanom Rung and Phimai in the Northeast are a special recipe for
calm” (TAT 1994:78. emphasis added).
The degree to which state promotion affects the tourist’s final
choice is in any case open to question. Reviewing earlier research,
Ashworth and Goodall (1989: 222, 231) conclude that the official
“supply” image projected by the destination country’s tourism board
is rarely the most decisive source of information about it. Media
reports, the tourist’s personal experience, and second-hand experi-
ences gathered from acquaintances, are more effective than promo-
tional literature in shaping the destination country’s naive image
held by the potential visitor. The possible mismatch between the
supply and the naive images detracts from a destination country’s
ability to realize its tourism development potential. Indeed, tourism
boards often try hard to counteract the negative image generated by
other sources. This seems to be exactly the case with Thailand,
whose sex and drug trades have often had wide coverage in the
media and, without doubt, in travelers’ tales. Yet, figures suggest
that this “vicious” image has for a long time favored, rather than
discouraged, tourism. It is significant that in 1985, when sex tourism
was still very attractive, up to 57% of the total foreign tourists were
on a subsequent visit (Meyer 1988:256). In other words, the well-
known racy reality of Thai tourism does not detract from the
enchantment of “The Land of Smiles”. Rather, it gives it character.
Bangkok’s infamous Patpong Road, with its succession of go-go bars
and peep shows, now also filled with a night bazaar, is innocently
gazed upon by many tourists, even in family groups, as a character-
istic landscape of the city, an “authentic” Bangkok sight, according
to tourism mythology. TAT has apparently been trying hard for some
years to purge this licentious image, but the fact is that this is
something that the majority of foreign visitors do identify with the
fabled “Land of Smiles”. To put it bluntly, and somewhat sarcasti-
cally, Patpong also is a sort of heritage site, the legacy of decades of
a certain type of Thai tourism that has come to be regarded, rightly
or wrongly, as its very essence.
A site that attracts mostly Western visitors in Bangkok is the
house of Jim Thompson, the American entrepreneur who revived the
local silk industry in the 1950s. This stunning residence, under the
 MAURIZIO PELEGGI 443

patronage of the Thai Royal Government, is made of six teak houses

disassembled and rebuilt on site and is preserved as Thompson had
lived in it; as such, it hosts a sort of personal museum with a valuable
art collection, which includes artefacts of various Asian provenance.
Its interiors are often reproduced in glossy magazines and books to
exemplify the traditional Thai lifestyle, glossing over the house’s
true nature as a sophisticated reenactment of that lifestyle
(Thompson himself was originally an architect). Here it is not so
much the Thai cultural heritage on display, but rather the taste, and
the underlying economic success, of a Western businessman. Jim
Thompson’s House is indeed Orientalism reified and made available
to all those who, at best, can afford to sip a drink in the pool of a
live-star hotel.
In another vein, one historic site that is very popular with Western
tourists is the River Kwai (Khwae) Bridge in Kanchanaburi, just 130
kilometers northwest of Bangkok. Memories and images of the
“Death Railway”, boosted by David Lean’s film The Bridge Over the
River Kwai and extensive war-memoir literature, are arguably the
strongest reasons to visit this place. The bridge, however, shows how
a site that is testimony of a tragic past can be neutralized as a sort
of mini-rail or disguised as a picturesque element of the landscape.
Admittedly, interpreting heritage in the case of the River Kwai
Bridge would be an extremely controversial operation, touching on
questions such as the war atrocities perpetrated by Japan, present-
day Thailand’s major foreign investor, as well as the latter’s publicly
forgotten role as Japan’s ally in wartime Asia. Even the bridge’s
iconography by the Allies could be questioned, given that almost
9/10 of the some 106,000 victims caused by the bridge’s construction
were in fact Asian prisoners. Thus, between the “cold” and “hot”
interpretation of historical sites (Uzzell 1989), TAT has opted for
the jocular: a week-long festival at the end of November, with “rides
on vintage trains” (TAT n.d. c:23) whose hallmark is a son et lumiere
presentation simulating an air attack. The possibility of making
sense of the site comes from two other places in Kanchanaburi City:
the war cemetery, with the graves of 6,982 Allied prisoners of war;
and a museum displaying a collection of prisoners’ photographs and
personal objects in a bamboo hut built to reproduce those of the
prison camps. Visiting this small exhibition, created by a local
Buddhist monk, is indeed a disturbing experience of the kind few
tourists associate with the idea of a holiday in Thailand. No wonder
that many prefer to end their visit further up, at the bridge.

Towards a Tourism Pluralization of the Past?

A decade ago Wood (1984:366-368) argued that state policies on
tourism in Southeast Asja were going to affect the definition of
“tradition” no less than that of “modernity”. The theme parks offer-
ing overviews of the national heritage on the capital city’s fringe
(The Ancient City in Bangkok, Mini Indonesia in Jakarta), and the
international-standard hotels in the capital, represented the two
poles of this dialectic. In the following 10 years, the Southeast Asian
444 NATIONAL HERITAGE IN THAILAND

tourism industry has been one of the fastest growing in the world,
while economic development has made the sight of modernity, at
least in urban areas, by no means restricted to the international
hotels but extending to much of what lies around them. As a result,
hotels have become among the favorite loci for recreation of the
nostalgic flavor of the past. Singapore’s experience in this regard is
very telling. The most visited country in the region and Thailand’s
direct competitor, Singapore has based its character and popularity,
not just with tourists but also in terms of internal consensus, on its
modern outlook, its technological advancement and its material
wealth (Sandhu and Wheatley 1989). Yet, the massive clearance of
old quarters in the 1970s was subsequently regretted for having
deprived the city-state of a large part of its colonial and ethnic archi-
tecture, an “authentic” city landscape much sought after by tourists.
The 1980s refurbishment of the colonial Raffles Hotel, a matter of
private enterprise, was thus astutely marketed as the recovery of a
major asset of Singapore’s heritage.
Bangkok never was a colonial city, but in the second half of the
19th century it had a Western business district. There still lies the
Oriental Hotel, the oldest in Bangkok and frequently rated as the
best in the world. The original building is now called the Authors’
Wing in reminder of some illustrious writers who stayed there (e.g.
Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham) and whose books and
memorabilia are part of the suites’ furniture (Buckley 1992:150).
The Oriental, like the Raffles, is an attraction in itself, a sort of
“secular museum” celebrating a by-gone epoch of colonial privilege.
Indeed, what the present popularity of colonial imagery- from
films (e.g. The Sheltering Sky, The Lover, Indochine) to clothes and furni-
ture fashions to, of course, tourism attractions-reveals is the
regret for a past when tourism was, socially and culturally, an elitist
experience and hence a status symbol. Ironically, the “democratiza-
tion” of tourism that has allowed more and more people to travel
abroad is felt by the tourist masses themselves to have spoiled the
aristocratic nature of this experience. Given the impressive volume
of present-day tourism, the stress is now on sophistication, material
as well as cultural, the distinction-marker between the holiday of the
classy traveler and that of the mass-tourist (Bourdieu 1986).
Targeting this quest for distinction, the owner of the Venice-Simplon
Orient Express has launched in August 1993 the Eastern and
Oriental Express, which links Singapore and Bangkok in a 42-hour
journey that allows patrons, foreign and the local well-to-do to “get
the best of two worlds - the luxury of the train and Asia at your
fingertips” (Conway 1993:43).
The increase of a nostalgia-oriented tourism shows itself to be the
other side of Thailand’s striving for the status of Newly
Industrialized Country. In the country that industrialized first,
Britain, nostalgia has led to what Hewison (1987) has caustically
termed the “heritage industry,” the epidemic spread of private
museums. Horne (1984:93) h as warned about the “potential conser-
vative function” of tourist nostalgia. Urry (1990: 106), more pragmat-
ically, has underlined that private museums have inspired new ways
 MAURIZIO PELEGGI 445

of representing history as well as of cornmodifying the past. In

Thailand too the last decade has seen an expansion in the number
of private initiatives (e.g. the Historical Study Center of Ayutthaya,
the Isan Art and Cultural Research Institute of Mahasarakan, and
the Institute for Southern Thai Studies of Songkhla). The perma-
nent exhibitions of these cultural centers aim at giving greater
visibility to the country’s regional cultures, very much in line with
the objectives pursued by the academic clique of Local History and
the militant heritage magazines Muang borun (Ancient City) and
Sinlapa watthanatham (Art and Culture). Apparently, this pluralizing
outcome is not in contrast with government goals; indeed, regional
cultural identities are being promoted for “ethnic” tourism now that
regionalism+ no longer a threat to national security as it was in the
1970s. Yet, the Fine Arts Department has found in such a develop-
ment enough cause to advocate the control of both public and
private museums, with a clear normative intent (Ptomerk 1993). In
theory, the coexistence of manifold interpretations of the past could
have a liberating effect. To couple the actual plurality of histories
with a plurality of heritages would eventually deprive the state of its
monopoly in establishing an official, unified version of the national
past.

CONCLUSIONS
This analysis of the relevance of Thailand’s heritage to tourism has
adopted two perspectives: that of visitor trends, which have been
scrutinized in terms of site attendance and of response to official
promotion; and that of heritage as a tourist construct, whose meaning
and authenticity in the tourism context can be alternatively given by
an international organization (ICOMOS), a government office (TAT),
a dissenting archaeologist (Srisakra), or the tourists themselves.
Following Cohen (1988), this analysis entails a notion of heritage’s
authenticity as “negotiable” on the basis of the tourist’s own experi-
ence. In fact, there is no heritage as such. Heritage is the result of
the process of selection and authentication of the material past
operated by scholarly discourses. But the more globalization, of which
tourism is a main agent, homogenizes habits and landscapes all
around the world, the more whatever is available of the past tends to
be iconicized as a symbol for national identification and, in touristic
terms, as a unique sight. This “end-of-modernity” search for histori-
cal likelihood (Vattimo 1988) is resulting in the unfolding, recovery
and creation of a variety of pasts, including those that have been
excluded or marginalized by national historical narratives, such as
colonial and regional ones, insofar as they can be cornmodified by the
tourism industry. Once the material evidence of these recovered pasts
is given emphasis, they may result to be at variance with the tenets
of the official historical narrative and thus promote alternative
readings of it. Thailand, which is proudly purported by the national-
ist historiography as the only country to have avoided colonization in
Southeast Asia, should also be able to sell a “colonial past”, such as
the Oriental Hotel or the Eastern and Oriental Express. With
446 NATIONAL HERITAGE IN THAILAND

Bangkok’s entrepreneurial and tourist gaze moving towards the heart

of mainland Southeast Asia, economic interests, state policies and
nostalgia are going to superimpose new grids of coordinates to old
maps of ethnic and cultural identity (Reynolds in press)
The secularization of the past fostered by tourism is likely to have
another possible outcome. As Thai society abandons its rural
origins, the forms in which the collective memory of a peasant
society are retained will depend on the significance to contempo-
raries of the representations articulating that memory. In this
regard, Thai people are at the same time actors and spectators. As
actors, their agency has been so far limited by state hegemony in
key sectors such as education and cultural policies. As spectators
and as consumers in the global market of the cultural industry that
includes tourism, their position is as yet undetermined. On the one
hand, they may indulge in the more shallow tourism attractions and
in the stereotyped messages of its promotional narrative. On the
other hand, traveling as leisured individuals, they may engage
themselves in the intellectual exercise of deconstructing the inter-
pretations of the past conveyed by heritage institutions; and going
abroad as tourists, they can compare familiar motifs to those that
in other countries articulate the representation of national histo-
ries. 0 0

Acknowledgments - Insightful comments and suggestions came from Denis Byrne,

Thongchai Winichakul, Craig J. Reynolds and Dayaneetha De Silva.

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Submitted 9 March 1995

Accepted 2 May 1995
Refereed anonymously