Michael Batson

When I first visited Jim Thompson’s house a decade ago, I was already much taken with the idea of living in Asia. After seeing the house I was sure I wanted to return. I was envious of Thompson and what he had created, a farang in Asia living his dream, comfortably off. There was also Thompson’s murky past as a WWII operative, full of intrigue and culminating in his eventual disappearance, never to be seen or heard from again. As someone else famous once said, once you’re dead you have got it made.Thompson’s subsequent fame earned him the title of the Legendary American of Thailand. His house became a celebrated social centre with the nickname ‘the talk of the town.’ Not so much a lost soul like many expats, more like he was marooned in a sanctuary that is part museum, part house, part movie set, part Thai, and part European. He was Lord Jim, a real life incarnation of Conrad’s literary character.Thompson’s wartime journey took him from OSS agent in North Africa to Europe, Sri Lanka and on to Thailand. By the time he arrived in Bangkok however, Japan had surrendered. The post-war Bangkok Thompson found himself in was a melting pot of intrigue described amongst other things as ‘one huge arms bazaar’, stocked by supplies from surrendered Japanese garrisons and by Allied airdrops to the Seri Thai or Free Thai resistance.  According to academics and authors, Christopher Bailey and Tim Harper, ‘buying arms in Thailand was as easy as buying beer.’ The Filipinos and Burmese