Respect for the monarchy and admiration for the King show themselves most clearly on occasions that carry some particular weight. We touched on this when we went to the celebration of the King's birthday, and again in the visible grief that spread through the streets when he was recently hospitalized.

This year, because it was his 80th birthday and his health has been fragile, people have been expressing their affection for him all year long.

Along the walkways of the BTS (the elevated train), people hung hundreds of small slips of paper covered in warm messages and good wishes, written in both Thai and English.

Below you'll find a few photos of something that drew a great deal of attention.

On Thursday, January 3, 2008, the King of Thailand's sister passed away. She was his only surviving sibling; there had been three of them, but the eldest brother, who ascended to the throne in 1935 and held it until 1946 as King Ananda Nahidol, Rama VIII, was ten years old, had been born in Germany, and died in 1946. In 1945 he had returned to Thailand after studying in Switzerland to take his place on the throne, but in June of that year he was found dead in his bed in the royal palace, a gunshot wound to the head, and whether he took his own life or was murdered has never been established. His brother's death was the reason the current King, Bhumibol Adulyadej, known as Rama IX, came to occupy the throne and has reigned over Thailand for 61 years.

Bhumibol Adulyadej was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while his father was studying medicine at Harvard University.

The young king completed his education at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland before returning to his country to take the throne.

He married the daughter of Thailand's ambassador to France, Mom Rajawongse Sirikit. They wed in April of 1950.

It is said that he has governed with "Dharma" (the Buddhist principle of righteous conduct) in order to bring benefit to his people.

He is an accomplished saxophonist, a lover of jazz and the arts, and an excellent photographer.

When you live here in Thailand and you haven't grown up with an entire people's devotion to its leader, none of this is easy to grasp. It takes time to begin to explain it, and even then what I can offer is only my own point of view as a foreigner, an observer, someone curious about the society she has landed in the middle of.

The King is the most important person after Buddha, and so the reverence shown him goes well beyond anything you might feel toward other monarchs or world leaders.

There genuinely seems to be a deep esteem for this King, who has involved himself directly with his people on many projects.

Everywhere you go, including private homes, people tend to keep a photograph of the King or the royal coat of arms somewhere on the wall.

The days of the week each have a specific color assigned to them in the Buddhist calendar, and yellow belongs to Monday. Since the King was born on a Monday, Thailand has been dressing itself in yellow for 61 years now. Especially on Mondays, as I've mentioned in other posts, people wear at least a yellow polo shirt bearing the royal crest, in honor of and solidarity with their King. This, as I've also noted before, is one of the first things that catches your eye when you've just arrived in the country.

Since the beginning of his reign there have been several coups d'état, and the most recent one, which we happened to witness and have already written about, only made people wear yellow more insistently, as a way of showing their support for the monarchy.

This is entirely voluntary, though I'm not entirely sure whether in some government agencies it forms part of the official uniform, because you frequently see a great many people who work in those agencies wearing yellow every single day of the week.

The death of Princess Galyani Vadhana made the general mourning of the Thai people impossible for us to miss.

We went out to eat and found very few restaurants open on the streets near where we live (and I'll remind you, we live in an area densely populated by people close to the Crown), with black dominating everywhere and faces to match.

There will now be something like a hundred days of mourning, during which no celebrations of any kind will be held, because this sister was very close to the King.

It was for this reason, in fact, that the King had been living in Bangkok while she lay hospitalized for nearly a month with the cancer that ultimately claimed her, and the traffic consequently became much heavier at times. Whenever he, his family, and their motorcade move out from the palaces or through public spaces, vehicle traffic comes to a complete stop with near-perfect coordination, and even pedestrians freeze in place to clear the way.

Since we walk frequently through the streets near one of the palaces, we've witnessed this many times, and it still surprises me today.

Everything stops. The police, with perfect courtesy, ask you to stand still, and the cars pass through at high speed, or simply enter and exit the palace grounds.

The King and his guard always travel in yellow Mercedes-Benz vehicles. His son (possibly the next in succession), by contrast, travels in red BMWs.

One of the princesses, I'm not sure which, moves about in white automobiles.

One day we happened to see a teenager walking along talking on his mobile phone. A police officer signaled him to stop, and when he tried to sit down on a concrete ledge, the officer immediately gestured for him to remain standing.

The boy obeyed at once, with complete respect, which surprised us, given the times we live in. In Thailand there is still a great deal of deference shown toward authority, hierarchy, and elders.

The greeting, as many people know, consists of pressing the palms together and bowing the head over them. But this varies depending on who you are.

For example, if an older person walks by and the young people around them (which almost never happens) fail to offer this bow, the elder will certainly not offer it first.

But if an elder does want to return the gesture of courtesy, they will never bow as deeply as the younger person is expected to bow before them.

The same principle applies when the hierarchy is more pronounced in a workplace context, and so on down the line.

The King's birthday is also Father's Day. By the same logic, the Queen's birthday is celebrated as Mother's Day.

His birthday is celebrated in grand fashion, and people spontaneously crowd into the streets, especially in front of the palace, to celebrate, sing, and salute the King.

They sing songs, there are fireworks, and candles are lit, the typical Buddhist candles sold everywhere, in yellow.

We ventured out the first year we were here for this celebration, but this year we preferred to watch the fireworks from our balcony and let the music reach us from a distance.

The crush of people, much like on Chinese New Year, was simply too much, and we had no desire to repeat the experience.

I should note that the Thai people surprised me once again with their decency and good conduct at these events. Everyone is respectful, and I have never seen anything unpleasant.

I, standing in the middle of the crowd, began to feel claustrophobic and asked Juan if we could try to make our way out as quickly as possible. It was genuinely moving to feel people opening a path for us as soon as they saw the look of panic on my face, doing what they could to let us through.

As a conclusion, all I can say is that the figure of the King and Buddhism are the twin engines of this society, one that seems to function better than many others, at least when it comes to how people treat one another. I think that is the reason for the deep sense of safety you feel on the streets of Bangkok and other Thai cities. It really doesn't seem to come from police repression, but from a genuine, internalized conviction that other people deserve to be respected.

Sanuk