This photo was taken at a tea plantation in Cameron Highland on 26th last month . A highland resort in the state of Pahang, Malaysia. The photo is to answer my pal, JR's photo taken from his home (pic. below). Should have taken off my shoes...
Today I am not going to talk about the resort but to direct your attention to the darkside of Cameron Highland, the story of the disappearance of the Thai silk king, Jim Thompson.
It was an Easter Sunday on 26 March 1967. Jim Thompson, 61. Tired from a round of business, which included the opening in Bangkok three weeks ago of a new, two-story headquarters for his $1.5 million-a-year silk business, Thompson came to the Highlands as the guest of Dr. and Mrs. T. G. Ling of Singapore.
Thompson settled in Bangkok after World War II and in 1948 started the Thai Silk Company. In doing so Thompson played a pivotal role in reviving the Thai silk industry. He introduced modern dyes, better looms and oversaw production and marketing while allowing his weavers, most of them women, to work from home and share in the company's profits. It made Thompson a millionaire.
At around 3pm on that fateful Sunday Thompson went for an early evening stroll alone without telling anybody. Dr Ling from his room adjacent to the hall, could hear footsteps and he took it that it was Thompson's footsteps and that he went out for a walk.
He was expected to return for tea but when he failed to show up by dark, Dr Ling went to the police station at the nearby town of Tanah Rata that evening and reported Thompson missing.
The police launched the most massive manhunt ever seen in the Malayan mountains. Some 300 soldiers and police using tracker dogs fanned out through the jungle. The ground search parties were soon joined by search aircraft. Helicopters swooped over the highland treetops for days.
The aboriginal tribesmen of the area were called upon to help in the search. Even with the expert tracking skills of the aborigine natives no trace of Jim Thompson could be located in the dense jungle.
As the search drag on, Brigadier General Edwin F. Black, a long-standing friend of Thompson's and commander of US support forces in Thailand flew in to assist, as did some of his senior colleagues.
Despite there being a manhunt on an unprecedented scale, no trace of Thompson was found.
It was not simply Thompson's fame and wealth that guaranteed his disappearance would become one of South East Asia's greatest modern mysteries - it was his past.
He had spent World War II with the OSS, the US intelligence agency that was the precursor to the CIA. It was rumoured that Thompson at the time of his disappearance still maintained his links with American intelligence.
This was the 1960s in South East Asia. Vietnam was 10 months away from the Tet Offensive and while the Communist Party of Malaya had been driven north over the Thai border its reach still extended to the Cameron Highlands. Enemy agents may have tracked him down, kidnapped him. Or perhaps he was aware of his life was in grave danger, he had staged his disappearance so as to make it looked like he died in the dense Cameron jungle.
Forty years on and the mystery of Thompson's disappearance seems no closer to being solved than it ever was. Perhaps he was just simply eaten by a tiger.
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