One would have thought that after ‘Siam Mapped’ by Acharn Thongchai Winichakul, we’d all grown up a bit.  But no such luck.

Ignoring past boundary agreements, the seeming acquiescence of the unapologetically irredentist Prince Damrong in a 1930 visit, an International Court of Justice ruling in 1962, and Thailand’s failure to lodge any appeal in the following 10 years, we all suddenly remember our semi-fabricated schoolbook maps showing all the territory Thailand has ‘lost’ over the decades.  And Preah Vihear and its surrounding scrub suddenly reverts to being a highly des res for all true Thais.

The outrage expressed in parliament, on the semi-permanent PAD stage and in the editorial columns of virtually every rag in the land is nothing, however, compared with what will happen when further examples of territorial disintegration come to light.  Prachatai has been reliably informed that the Foreign Ministry is desperately trying to keep the lid on similar problems on the borders with other neighbouring countries.

The first alarm bells were raised by farmer Somsak Bohumang in Chiang Khong District of Chiang Rai when he reported the loss of a mango tree to ‘encroachment by the communist Lao government’.  

Officials who went to investigate found that Khun Somsak’s farm is on the Mekhong River, opposite Lao’s Bokeo Province.  Khun Somsak led officials to the river bank and pointed to a spot where he said there had once been a mango tree.  The tree, and the Thai soil on which it stood, had been washed into the Mekhong, he claimed. 

Since he had never experienced anything similar before, Khun Somsak had deduced that the Lao authorities had ‘pushed’ the waters of the Mekhong across to his side, causing the erosion that cost him his tree. 

Although experts in the Ministry of Natural Resources have argued that there is no known way of ‘pushing’ a river sideways, and that cases of riverbank erosion are common on all rivers, the government’s fear is that such an explanation will not be acceptable in the current atmosphere of unreasoning nationalism.  Army and Navy engineers and officials of the Royal Irrigation Department have been asked to develop a plan for ‘pushing’ the Mekhong back again, so as to prevent any future losses of Thai territory.

A second controversy has broken out over the Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge at Mae Sot in Tak Province. 

When the bridge was completed, it was decided that the boundary between Thailand and Myanmar would be at the exact middle of the span.  However, local people have argued that the boundary was previously marked by the mid-point of the Moei River that runs beneath it.

The problem arises because the flow of the Moei changes considerably from the dry season to the rainy season.  This means that the mid-point of the stream shifts from side to side.  There is therefore almost always a difference between the boundary as defined by the river and the boundary marked on the bridge. 

When the river’s mid-point is closer to the Myawaddy side, then using the bridge-based boundary means that Thailand loses sovereignty over part of its rightful half of the river.  Alternatively, when the river’s mid-point shifts closer to the Thai side, then using the river-based boundary line means that Thailand effectively cedes control of more than half the bridge to the Burmese.

Either way, Thailand appears to shrink, and this process goes on with every change of the season.  Local sentiment fears that unless urgent action is taken, the Myanmar boundary will slowly advance down Asian Highway 16 until it reaches Mukdahan on the Lao border, at which point Thailand will have been cut in two.

Foreign Ministry efforts to consult the Burmese authorities in an attempt to sort this out have been stymied by the fact that the Burmese side has used exactly the same data to conclude that Thailand is encroaching into their territory.  This situation risks developing into a dangerous diplomatic impasse.

And finally, a scientific study of traffic across the Thai-Malaysian border has reached a startling conclusion.  Researchers from the Pattani Institute of Strategic Studies and the Songkhla-Haadyai Institute of Technology have compared road surfaces in southern Thailand and northern Malaysia.

It is an open secret that years of government neglect in the southernmost provinces have left roads in the region in a measurably worse condition that those maintained by Malaysia just across the border.  This has the result of ensuring that vehicles travelling north-to-south carry on their wheels (and in wet conditions on the underside of their bodywork) far higher trace levels of Thai soil, grit and litter than traffic moving in the opposite direction.

As the vehicles travel further into Malaysia, these Thai resources are, willy-nilly, deposited onto Malaysia’s roads.  By measuring the average amount of detritus per vehicle and the total number of vehicle crossings each year, it has been calculated that Thailand suffers an annual net loss of 0.625 kg of mixed natural resources.

The government is currently evaluating various measures to counter this unacceptable loss of the nation’s treasure.  These include hosing down all vehicles leaving Thailand, imposing a ‘dust’ tax on all vehicles entering from Malaysia, to be deposited on Thai soil, or deliberately restricting the number of vehicles crossing into Malaysia so that the amount of vehicle-borne dirt in each direction is kept in balance. 

The option of upgrading the roads of southern Thailand has, under current security conditions, been ruled out as ‘impractical’.