If anyone had a life filled with adventure, beauty, and a touch a mystery, Jim Thompson was he. An architect, turned soldier, turned spy, turned businessman. He is remembered as the man who almost singlehandedly saved Thailand’s silk industry from extinction, raising thousands of Thailand’s poorest from poverty after the Second World War.
In 1967 Mr. Thompson visited Malaysia with an old friend. He stepped out of the bungalow he was staying at for a smoke and never came back, eliciting the largest manhunt Malaysia has ever seen. They found no trace of him, and to this day no one knows what happened to him.
I had the opportunity to visit his old house in Bangkok. The house, which he designed and built, was turned into a museum after his disappearance. It was the pinnacle of his architectural career. He succeeded in constructing his masterpiece with delicate authenticity, filling it will treasures he had collected over his lifetime.
Make Pretty Speechless 