Jennifer Malott Kotylo - The Everything Thai Cookbook: From Pad Thai to Lemongrass Chicken Skewers--300 Tasty, Tempting Thai Dishes You Can Make at Home (Everything Series)

THAILAND'S ROOTS can be traced back to the T'ai tribesmen who lived under the shadow of the Chinese in what are now the Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, which lie along important east-west trading routes. The first true Thai kingdom was established in fourteenth century when the T'ai tribesmen created the Kingdom of Sukhothai, or The Dawn of Happiness. During this era, the Thai adopted their first alphabet and the tenets of Buddhism.

According to depictions on the great Cambodian temple, Angor Wat, the Khmers, who have always been known as great warriors, used the Thai as mercenaries. They called the Thai Syams, meaning golden skin color. It is believed that the Kingdom of Siam, as Thailand was known until 1939, derived its name from this word.

The thriving seaport city of Ayutthaya became the capital of Siam in 1350 and a monarchy was established. Portugal set up the first embassy there in 1511. By 1662, Holland, Denmark, England, and France all had embassies in the city.

The French began amassing troops in Siam beginning in 1675, intent on colonizing the area. But in 1688, the Siamese forcibly removed the farang (slang for French at the time, the word now means foreigner) from the country and sealed its borders for 150 years. Strikingly, Thailand is the only Asian country never to have been colonized by a European power, although it has been occupied by the Khmer, the Burmese, and the Japanese.

During his reign from 1824 to 1851, King P'ra Nang Klao began developing trade with China and reopening the borders of the kingdom. The 1930s saw a wave of democracy surge over the country, and in 1932 a constitutional monarchy was formed. Soon after, the country was officially renamed Thailand, meaning Land of the Free. Today, 75 percent of the population are ethnic Thais, roughly 11 percent are Chinese, and 3.5 percent are Malays. The rest is a combination of Vietnamese, Khmer, and various others. There are only a very small number of non-Asian permanent immigrants.

The landmass of Thailand is approximately 197,400 square miles (a bit larger than the state of California) and is shaped like the head of an elephant. The trunk of the elephant extends southward down the Malay Peninsula to Singapore and is sandwiched between the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Thailand. The head is bordered by Burma and Laos to the north, Cambodia and Laos to the east, Burma to the west, and the Gulf of Thailand to the south.

Thailand is mountainous in its northernmost and southernmost regions, with the center of the country forming a delta that drains into the Gulf of Thailand. Thailand has over 1,600 miles of coastline and is rich with internal waterways, ponds, lakes, and rice paddies.

Thailand has a monsoon climate. The peninsula has two seasons: wet from November through July, and dry from August through October. The mainland experiences three seasons: wet from May through November, dry and cool from November through February, and dry and hot from March through April. Yet, these definitions are deceiving. From a Western perspective, Thailand is hot and humid all year round; it just varies in degrees. The only real escape from the heat is heading to the mountains.