NewsTracker Answers for week of May 06, 2019

Q: Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn was officially crowned Saturday, taking the formal title King Rama X, the 10th king in a dynasty that goes back to 1782. Where is the Southeast Asian nation of Thailand?

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Q: The king’s ancestor, King Rama I, founded the country of Thailand. What is the capital?

A. Bangkok

B. Hanoi

C. Phnom Penh

D. Vientiane

A. Bangkok is the capital and most populous city with more than 14 million people in its metropolitan area. That is about a fifth of Thailand’s more than 68 million people.

Q: Vajiralongkorn was officially crowned in an elaborate centuries-old royal ceremony that was last held almost seven decades ago for his father who was . . .

A. Dethroned by the military

B. Thailand’s last absolute monarch

C. World’s longest-reigning monarch

D. All of the above

C. At the time of his death in 2016, King Bhumibol Adulyadej was the world's longest-reigning head of state, the longest-reigning monarch in Thai history and the longest-reigning monarch having reigned only as an adult, reigning for 70 years, 126 days. Thailand’s absolute monarchy was ended in 1932, and kings are now constitutional monarchs.

Q: Vajiralongkorn received his crown from the chief Brahmin in a mixed Buddhist-Hindu ceremony. Thailand is part of what is known as Indochina, an area influenced by the cultures of both India and China. Which of these Indochinese nations does NOT border Thailand?

A. Cambodia

B. Laos

C. Myanmar

D. Vietnam

D. Myanmar (Burma) borders Thailand to the north and west. Laos lies north and east, while Cambodia is east and Malaysia is south of Thailand. Vietnam is east of Laos and Cambodia.

Q: Vajiralongkorn’s royal predecessors were successful in keeping the country once called Siam independent as the only nation on the Indochinese Peninsula which was not colonized by Europeans. Which European power colonized the nations east of Thailand?

A. Britain

B. France

C. Netherlands

D. Portugal

B. Thailand succeeded by acting as an independent buffer between the territorial ambitions of France which colonized what is now Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, and the British Empire which colonized what is now Myanmar and Malaysia.