Return To Thailand
Three years later ascending the throne, the young King Ananda Mahidol returned to visit his country and his people for the first time. Upon their return, Princess Sri Sangwal was elevated to the ranks of royalty with the title Her Royal Highness. Throughout the 2 months that the young king appeared in the midst of his people, the Thais had a chance to admire his maturity and his demeanor, which was most becoming to a monarch and far beyond his years. For this, they could only credit the Princess Mother; she had moulded a monarch worthy of obeisance and respect single-handed.
The Princess Mother also took advantage of this brief sojourn in their homeland to make sure that the king saw as much as he could of the important temples and historic sites in Bangkok and the environs, and of the national arts and culture. She also kindled his desire to help others, to contribute to charitable projects including public health and medicine. The king donated a sum from his Privy Purse to build the Ananda Mahidol Hospital in Lopburi Province, while his siblings donated toward a health centre in Samut Sakhon Province.
In January 1939, King Ananda Mahidol and his family bade farewell once again to their homeland and returned to Switzerland.
Read more about this topic: Srinagarindra
Famous quotes containing the words return to and/or return:
“Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing—to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The soul establishes itself.
But how far can it swim out through the eyes
And still return safely to its nest?”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)