My Later Years in Thailand 2008-2024
My Later Years in Thailand
Starting in 2002 and evolving in stages over the years, I started numerous Thai-registered companies that invested in real estate, construction, and human resources in the kingdom. Over time the investments and companies grew, becoming more demanding and time-consuming.
From 2008 onward, the investments took over much more of my time and life, relegating the touristic life to the passenger seat. In retrospect, the prize, the end result of years of hard toil and perseverance, blessedly accompanied by good luck combined with external assistance was worthwhile! 2020 was the year my life’s labour came to fruition.
Later Years Photo Gallery
Norwegian renowned Polar explorer Ragnar Thorseth, sailor, journalist, author, explorer and Odd Lund, renowned war photographer, documentarian, journalist and adventurer in Thailand during January 2018 prior to their sail expedition around Greenland.
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Pol. Col. Wytayawat Boonchuwit aka (call sign) ACE PARU
Wytayawat Boonchuwit (Ace) was born in Ubon Ratchathani on 10 November 1952; his father, Seri Boonchuwit, was a Thai soldier and a hardened man who was born on 07 January 1925. Seri joined the Thai Army during WWII in 1943. He enrolled in a competitive three-year Army medic school at military facilities close to Korat, the capital city of Nakhon Ratchasima, a province in Northeast Thailand. His three years there were spent in 1943/44, the Army Medic Student Class I, 1944/45, the Army Medic Student Class II, and 1945/46, the Army Medic Student Class III, graduating in Lopburi on 01 April 1946. He was promoted to corporal.
He was appointed for duty in Ubon Ratchathani Province in Northeast Thailand’s Isan region as a medic for the Sixth Artillery Battalion, Third Infantry Regiment and was promoted to sergeant, serving in that regiment until 1954, when the First Airborne Battalion was established at Ban Pawai Tambon Patan Camp, Lopburi (later, this camp was renamed Vajiralongkorn Camp in honour of King Rama X).
The first US Army advisors arrived in Thailand in 1953 to assist the Royal Thai Army with setting up an airborne formation. That year, before Ace was one year old, his father was selected to be a part of the Thai Army’s First Parachute Infantry Battalion. The family moved to the Ban Pawai Tambon Patan military camp, where the Army Airborne Battalion was officially consecrated on 04 June 1954. The first course was held between 01 April and 17 August 1953 with sixty-five graduates, the second between 08 July and 23 December 1953 with 60 graduates, and the third between 02 November 1953 and 19 April 1954, with 65 graduates.
Seri Boonchuwit completed the fourth Airborne and Ranger Course held between 25 May and 05 October 1954, with 116 male graduates. The gruelling training was based on the American Green Berets’ selection process. S Boonchuwit remained enlisted and spent his entire adult life in the Parachute Infantry Battalion; he was among the Thai airborne who performed the first freefall jumps in 1961 & 1962, having previously jumped static line jumps since 1954. In 1965, S Boonchuwit was stationed at Pitsanulok camp and achieved the rank of captain; he had a personal friendship with Col. Pranate Ritruechai, who was equally a close friend of Lt. Col. Bill Lair. The three men were about the same age, born just months apart. Lair and S Boonchuwit died just months apart, both aged ninety. Ritruechai passed away thirteen years earlier, aged seventy-six.
The airborne battalion was enlarged between 1963 and 1966 and re-designated as the Thai Special Warfare Forces Airborne (regiment); Seri remained in the regiment until retiring with an honourable discharge at age sixty, having risen from corporal to lieutenant colonel. Seri passed away surrounded by his family on 20 October 2015.
Ace’s infancy and adolescence were spent in family accommodations at army camps. Like his father, he would spend nearly his entire adult life in airborne military camps in the Kingdom of Thailand.
“My father gave me the name Ace. My mother told me the story of my name. When my mother gave birth to me, she was alone. My father didn’t take care. My dad was gambling (playing cards). He left my mother alone to give birth. When he returned home and saw me for the first time, he called me Ace (from the ace of spades playing card). I think he lost gambling with cards. That is a story of my name!”
Ace was a wild child who got into trouble as a teenager. He is intelligent but lost interest in education while attending high school and used five years to complete a two-year study. Ace returned home from schooling and lived with his father between 1971 and 1973 at Pitsanulok camp.
During the height of the secret war in Laos, his father Seri had been active in the Royal Thai Special Forces (RTSF) Battalion based at Saritsena Camp at Pitsanulok since 1965—the same camp where Thai, Hmong, Meo, Shan, Kachin, Karen, Yao, and Lao combat guerrilla soldiers as well as units of the Cambodian military Khmer Special Forces received training for the fight against the communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese forces in Lao. The RTSF Battalion was a unique force formed in 1963, composed of the Thai Army SF (fifty per cent) and the Thai PARU (fifty per cent). The Army recruits came from Ban Pawai Tambon Patan Camp, Lopburi, and the PARU recruits came from Naresuan Camp, Hua Hin.
In 1973, Ace enrolled in the Thai Army. That year, he applied for, graduated and enlisted into the Thai Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP), an elite ranger unit of the Royal Thai Army Special Warfare Command founded on 04 June 1954. Following that, with assistance from the Army, he attended further schooling and university, studying political science and law. During this period, Ace also spent a year at the national police academy; the four years of intense education were gruelling, a hard struggle when laden with minimal prior education.
After graduating in 1978, he joined the Border Patrol Police (Parachute Aerial Resupply Unit), officially named the Police Aerial Reinforcement Unit (BPP/PARU). As mentioned, the PARU was a compact team deployed on covert operations outside Thailand during the late 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. After the end of the hostilities and that extensive troubled period, PARU today conducts training for unconventional warfare, counter-terrorism, and parachute training of the Royal Thai Police, as well as disaster and accident rescue on land and water, including air-sea rescue.
In 1979, Ace was a police sub-lieutenant; in 1990, he was a police major and later became the force’s designated Aerial Supply Company Commander and Superintendent of the BPP Police Headquarters. He was also active at the Thai Police Airborne Training School. Between 1978 and 2014, Ace spent thirty-six years on active duty in that unit and was promoted, rising through the ranks from police sub-lieutenant, police lieutenant, police captain, police major, police lieutenant colonel to police colonel.
Before 2002, Thailand had no civilian skydiving; the first civilian drop zone was Siam Air Sports (SAS) in Sriracha, Chonburi. All jumping was organised and approved by the Police, Army, Navy or Air Force Airborne commands. After first performing static line jumps in 1978, Ace became an extremely active skydiver. He travelled worldwide to military and civilian jump sites with the Thai military and police jump teams. By 2024, Ace had accumulated around seven thousand logged jumps, static, freefall, formation, water, and High Altitude Low Opening (HALO). He has survived three close calls, having three cutaways. The first was a B-12 military parachute system, but landing in water and mud in a klong (water channel) saved his life. Two other close calls resulted in broken bones and severe bruising.
Upon retiring with an honourable discharge in 2014 after serving forty-one years in the Thai forces, Ace established a permanent home in Hua Hin, Thailand. He still skydives, is an accomplished guitarist, and plays in a band. I see Ace and Patrick as reborn brothers after we survived the plane crash on 14 January 2003; they are both dear, highly respected friends.
Ace, who has written a comprehensive history of PARU and Thai airborne forces, kindly assisted with writing and revising these paragraphs in May 2024 during a visit to his home in Cha-am. He took me to visit the PARU bases and cross-checked the translation of related Thai documents. He was also the last Thai/PARU officer who spoke with Lair at length by telephone in 2014, shortly before Lair’s passing. Ace gave his valuable time and helped ensure the information above was factually correct. As an avid historian throughout his life, he and his father meticulously gathered and recorded historical data related to the Thai Police Force and the Thai Army’s Special Airborne Forces.
Rits Eric Constant G.
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