Siam in its heyday was a magnet for foreign merchants and explorers, centuries later Thailand’s appeal is still pulling a vast range of global nomads to its shores. In the National Discovery Museum Institute in Bangkok, multimedia exhibits document the influence of the West and Far East on Siam during the heyday of Ayutthaya (1350-1767). The Dutch, British, Japanese, Indians, French, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Chinese, and others, are all depicted in stereotypical fashion, along with their contributions: The Europeans brought firearms, alcohol and luxury goods, the Chinese packed tea leaves and ceramics, while the Indians stitched up the trade in textiles.

One sign notes, “The Siamese state designated an area of settlement within the city for each of the major peoples. Here they could form communities and live according to their own customs.”

That hasn’t changed. Nor has Siam’s welcome mat ever been rolled up except for those periods when it was trampled by invaders like the Burmese and Japanese, or pulled out from under the feet of foreigners by rabble-rousing nationalists. Even today, the sizable expat community – numbering anywhere from 200,000 to 250,000 – has retained a certain autonomy, within the confines of Thai law and business practices, to live as they please.

No wonder the Kingdom has exercised such a magnetic pull on a wealth of adventurers, merchants, artists, traders, explorers, libertines and financial prospectors. One such businessman is Kevin Noah Windfield. A finance broker for 18 years, Windfield was sent to Thailand in the early 1990s by a Wall Street firm anxious to capitalise on the country’s double-digit fiscal growth that inspired a Newsweek cover story entitled Thailand’s Economic Miracle.

Because he did not graduate from an Ivy League school, and does not have a bankable surname, Windfield realised he was battering his head against a low career ceiling on Wall Street. “Better to be a big fish in a small pond here than a little fish in a big pond back home,” he reckoned.

If he had stayed in the States, he would not have had the chance to collect all sorts of cerebral souvenirs, stamps in his passport from India, Australia, Indonesia and Cambodia, meet two American presidents in Bangkok, and have a five-star lunch with the former head of General Motors, Rick Wagoner.

“I asked him if he could bring affordable Hummers to Thailand. He laughed and offered to sell me the entire company,” said Windfield, still looking a little awestruck by the encounter.

In 2006, Windfield opened the Manhattan Asset Management Co Ltd. specialising in everything from monthly savings plans to international life insurance and offshore mortgages. The company acts an agent for top financial institutions from America, Asia, and Europe.

Apart from authoring his own success story in high finance, the 42-year-old has also organized the BKK Nomads Golf and Tennis Leagues, and worked with the American Chamber of Commerce Thailand on their charity golf tournaments that swing into action every Thanksgiving and Memorial Day.

The American Chamber of Commerce here, or Amcham Thailand, was formed in 1956 under a special chamber of commerce law with a membership of eight American companies and 60 American nationals. Amcham now boasts more than 650 company members, and 1,800 professionals from firms great and small, NGO do-gooders and individuals. Of the more than 20 legally registered foreign chambers of commerce in Thailand, it is one of the largest and most active.

Though it’s not affiliated with the US government, Amcham’s founding presaged an increased American military presence in Thailand. As four big military bases were constructed by the Americans in northeast Thailand during the 60s, the Westernisation of modern-day Thailand began in earnest. Until this point, the Thai slang term for “trendy” was based on the English word “postcard,” pronounced bosacar, because most of what was known about the outside world came from the mailbox.

The composer, symphony conductor and prize-grabbing author, SP Somtow, grew up on Sukhumvit Soi 24 in the 1960s, when the area was still awash with rice fields. “Our greatest cultural influences then were American. The TV channels at the time showed programs like Leave it to Beaver and The Twilight Zone,” he said. At the time, Thai gangsters like the notorious Daeng Bailey (nicknamed after the soft drink he loved) sported Elvis-style coifs, and hung around American-style bars, dancing to rock ‘n’ roll with Thai women in beehive hairdos.

Somtow, who first rose to infamy in the 70s by combining the strains of Western symphonies with Thai classical music – a local taxi driver once chased him down the street for daring to create such a cacophonous racket – is a mascot of how the Kingdom has always flavoured the ingredients of other cultures with distinctively and piquantly Thai spices.

A short video in the Museum of Siam illustrates how the street sweets known as foy thong – golden strands with a coconut flavour – are of Portuguese descent. So is chili for that matter. But the museum’s exhibition on the quintessence of “Thai-ness” has a tuk-tuk. Actually, these flatulent vehicles are a Japanese invention, given a Thai spin; pad Thai noodles are Vietnamese; the parliamentary system is British; and royal barges came from the Khmers.

We can also thank the Americans – through the CIA and their war in Vietnam – for helping to get the first big office tower in Bangkok off the ground. Built in 1969, the Chockchai International Building (near the Emporium on Sukhumvit Road) was equipped with the most efficient communications system at that time in the whole Kingdom, maybe all of Southeast Asia. The 24-floor structure also had air-conditioning, an elevator and internal phones. Once again, Thai ingenuity rose to the fore as architect Rangsarn Torsuwan designed the building so it could withstand the tropical heat. 

The Vietnam War also gave rise to the mixed-marriage phenomenon. Some Thais denigrated these local women as mia chao (“rented wives”), but, in their own unwitting way, the GIs and their partners were psychosexual pioneers. As the northeast became a breeding ground for both love and war, the number of mixed couples, and their offspring, grew exponentially.

These unions are still going on. A 2003 study by the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) revealed that there were almost 20,000 women in Isaan married to foreigners. Most, but certainly not all, of the men are of retirement age. According to the NESDB, the foreign Romeos have pumped some 10.5 billion baht into local coffers and created somewhere around 580,000 jobs.

Across the 19 provinces of Isaan, there are now enclaves of foreigners, invariably nicknamed “Soi Farang.” Unofficial estimates state that the number of farang-Thai households across the region may number 100,000, or about 3% of the married populace.

Many of these expats have been reduced to a stereotype, based on a morality tale, and retold as a dirty joke. In this case, one size does not fit all. Steve, a young Brit in his early 30s, who has his own IT business he runs from the Northeast, is hardly a caricature of the obese and lecherous species of sexpat. Married to a local woman, with whom he has two children, Steve (who did not want to give his surname), said he prefers the friendly, pastoral, and easy-going life in the Thai hinterlands, to the dreary city and sullen people he left behind in London.

Still, the clichés about men like him do rankle. “Many people think that our girlfriends or wives are only with us because of the money, but Western women are incredibly materialistic these days. In places like Singapore or Hong Kong you’ve got what Chinese women call the four C’s, ‘cash, credit cards, a condo, car,’ or piss off, which they look for in male partners. So materialism is a facet of relationships everywhere.”

In recent decades, those intermarriages have resulted in more visibility and a greater respectability for mixed couples and their hybrid kids. Last month’s Guy Fawkes Night at the British Club in Bangkok provided plenty of living proof. On the manicured grounds of the club, locals and foreigners mingled in an atmosphere that seemed more festively Thai than subdued British, while children of both races, or mixed ethnicity, played.

The bonfire and food may have been decidedly British, but the entertainment was supplied by a troupe of young Thai dancers and sword-fighters, musicians and acrobats from a Bangkok orphanage, performing against a diorama of a London skyline punctured by Big Ben, and edged with fairy lights.

The club’s lineage is an expat history lesson in itself. Begun more than a century ago, it was based on Victorian coffee houses, where women were forbidden to enter, said Warwick Newton, one of the members of the elected general committee. “It’s only been about 20 years since women were allowed to drink here and granted full membership rights.” 

During World War II, the club was commandeered by the Japanese military, which destroyed many of the archives and vintage photos. “I’ve heard stories, perhaps apocryphal,” Newton said, “that expats and some of the club’s members were also arrested and interred in dreadful Bangkok prisons, where the Thais treated these prisoners much better than the Japanese did.”

Older expats from Allied countries may still have a few bones to pick with the Japanese, but it should be said that veterans’ associations in Japan have gone out of their way to make amends in Southeast Asia. They have arranged meetings between former POWs and their Japanese captors in Kanchanaburi, often around the time of this month’s martial-themed River Kwai festival, in a spirit of reconciliation.

For young Japanese, however, backpacking through Thailand has become a rite of passage. That’s what propelled Eri Nishigaki in this direction 11 years ago. “Thailand is only six hours away from Japan and Japanese people feel safe here,” she says, adding that the Kingdom’s affordability and friendly vibe are other enticements.

Some of these backpackers put down roots in transplanted soil. Now 31, Ari works as an executive assistant for Silom Assets. The Thai firm runs two golf courses, property development businesses, and one of the finest business clubs in Bangkok. Part of Ari’s job description entails looking after the Japanese members of the opulent Pacific City Club.

Through her contacts with the Japanese embassy here, Nishigaki says there are around 46,000 Japanese nationals registered with them, but around twice as many living in the Kingdom, making them the largest demographic of expats.

The economic and cultural dragnet of the Japanese is so widespread that it pulls in many other expats, like Ellen Boonstra. Formerly a senior technical editor and content manager for Holland’s most popular financial news website, Boonstra went on to work as a business analyst in Tokyo, before returning to journalism in Thailand, and also becoming a consultant here for Garde, one of the top Japanese interior design firms.

For her, the sheer surrealism of life in Thailand is a main attraction. Take the September 2006 coup, for instance. Boonstra recalls all the channels going off the air before a message flashed up on the blank screens, which her Thai friends translated as, “We have taken control of the city. Apologies for the inconvenience.”

Boonstra had never seen a tank before taking her mother to the Government House the following day, where she was astonished to find she could have her photos taken with the soldiers and even climb on a tank to hold the gun turret. “It was almost a tourist attraction kind of thing,” says the Dutch woman, “with guards handing out bottles of water.”

Bantering with Boonstra, and some other Dutch businesspeople and embassy officials at the recent Biggles Big Band swing and jazz gig held on the grounds of their embassy, it was another cultural mish-mash, with an Amsterdam-based group playing Frank Sinatra songs, female Thai staffers wearing traditional Dutch regalia, and a Thai-language video playing on the big screen about an elephant foundation in Kanchanaburi. The crew on hand estimated the Dutch community in Thailand is anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 strong.

That demographic is considerably less than the Scandinavian contingent. Kai Tuorilla, the director of the Thai-Finnish Chamber of Commerce, says that in, descending order, the number of Scandinavians residing in Thailand is the Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and then the Finnish. The latter group boasts about 500 official expats and several thousand unofficial ones.

Fleeing icier climes, many Scandinavians are meteorological exiles, who have taken a shine to tropical living. The number of retirees is also on an incline, with retirement homes and “Scandinavian Villages” sprouting up in and around Pattaya, Phuket and Hua Hin.

Tuorilla says the number of businesspeople from Scandinavia has continued to rise in the last decade. When he arrived in Thailand some 20 years ago, “The telecom, the traffic and the infrastructure were not working. Many companies then had to set up in Hong Kong or Singapore, but now you see more regional offices moving to Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok,” says Tuorilla.

The Bangkok Chess Club, which Tuorilla founded a decade ago, is a huge draw for Scandinavians and expats alike. “During the last year,” he says, “we’ve had about 300 players from 40 to 50 different countries.” As travellers and visiting businessmen hear about the only international chess club in Thailand, there is a constant influx of new players coming from Iraq, China, Singapore, Australia, Europe, and elsewhere.

In speaking with Tuorilla, Boonstra, Nishigaki, Newton, Steve and Windfield, all witty, entertaining, well-travelled and highly educated folk, it became clear that hanging out with other foreigners here remains a chief attraction in its own right, and the expat community – did I mention that the British Club has its own bagpipe band, and that AMCHAM hosts regular social networking nights at Bourbon Street – remains as diverse and dynamic as it was during Ayutthaya’s halcyon days.