While in Bangkok, Thailand, I investigated the Jewish presence in this beautiful Buddhist nation. I looked up Rabbi Kantor and his family, where they live above the Beth Elisheva Synagogue (66-2-258-2195), a shul and mikveh which serve 180 families: "Half are from Israel, about a third from the U.S., and the rest from Australia and Europe," Rabbi Kantor said. Beth Elisheva is housed in a simple building that was donated by the owners Elizabeth and Winhalm Zerner. It stands in stark contrast to the elaborate wats with gilded peaks and mosaics of vividly colored mirror and ceramics.

Bangkok also is home to another synagogue, one with a kosher restaurant, Ohr Menachem-Chabad House (66-2-282-6388) near the Grand Palace. It's presided over by Chabad's Rabbi Nechemia Wilhelm and caters to Israeli backpackers; about 40,000 come through annually, Rabbi Kantor said.

"Every Shabbat 100 people daven, or pray, there," Mrs. Kantor said. "They're good kids, although many have long hair, earrings and tatoos. They come here exposed to Buddhism, but they get to Chabad House by word of mouth." An annual Passover seder hosts over 500 people.

And a third Jewish temple, the Even Chen Synagogue, meets in the Bossotel Inn (66-2-630-6120), holding a minyan every Shabbat, for travelers and businesspeople. Some of the Jewish businesses with a presence include Marks & Spencer and Bata Shoes.

The Israeli ambassador to Thailand, David Matni, said that Israel has fewer than 500 ambassadors throughout the world, yet has had a 40-year relationship with Thailand. "It was among the first countries to recognize Israel, although there were few Jews here," he said.

Currently, he said, "50,000 students came to Israel from Thailand and 21,000 Thais are working in Israel with farmers, learning their systems of agriculture and irrigation, while many Israeli professors come here."

"The biggest problem that confronted the Jewish community was the lack of a consecrated Jewish cemetery," said Rabbi Yosef Kantor, originally from Crown Heights, Brooklyn. "The Jews were buried in a Protestant cemetery; they didn't want to stick out and the Thai government didn't recognize other religions as of 30 or 40 years ago."

But last year the cemetery problem improved when the Jewish community bought a separate plot of land at that cemetery and fenced it off. "Just a few weeks after it opened," Rabbi Kantor said, "Mark Rossenberg from the U.S. Embassy died. Although we hadn't heard from him for years, his family said he wanted to be buried as a Jew. The whole community came together, buried him and took care of his son."

Following an enlightening lecture by Prince Subhadradis Diskul, a trained art historian and the last living grandson of King Rama IV, on whom the story Anna and the King was based, I sailed on the Chao Praya River aboard the deluxe Shangri-La Hotel's Horizon. The hotel, located roght on the famed river, offers every amenity amid marble and silk splendor; its teak Thai restaurant Salathip as beautiful and exotic as visitors would expect.

We visited Ayutthaya, Siam's ancient capital about 50 miles north of Bangkok. Remains of brick and stuccoed stupas or pagodas, where 150 gilded Buddhas originally were housed. The museum includes a 15th century Buddha and a 14th-century bronze Buddha head, regal regalia including gold necklaces. One of the historians who brought that civilization to life was.

In Bangkok I met Ruth Gerson, coordinator of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Bangkok Project Center (66-2-252-7-209), who related some early Jewish Thai history. It was Ruth's father-in-law, her husband Michael's father, who was the first Jew to settle here. An Ashkenazic Jew from Odessa, he had been imprisoned and sought a way to stay alive, she said. "He traveled to Turkey and Italy, then learned that a British company was hiring people to work in Argentina or Siam. He had never heard of Siam (the former name for Thailand), so took a two-year contract in 1920 and stayed. He began as a carpenter, then became a furniture maker. It became a status thing for young couples to buy their bedroom set from Gerson," she said.

In 1928, he wrote his brother to find him a Jewish girl. His choice was a blond, blue-eyed Jewess who wanted to get out of Russia. They corresponded and married. (Although rumors persist about a Sephardic group at the turn of the century, little fact verifies this.)

Ruth, who was educated at Tufts University, met her Yale-educated husband in New York. He was a civil engineer who helped build the road up the mountain to Chiang Mai in the north.

She said that most of the Jewish families--primarily gem dealers and professionals--formerly lived near the synagogue. However, since the American School moved to Nonthabure in the suburbs, they relocated.

A major sightseeing attraction in Bangkok is The Grand Palace, a spectacular complex of primarily white stucco buildings crowned by red- or green-glazed tile roofs and outdoor seven- and nine-tiered gold umbrellas. Built in 1782, the palace was home to kings Rama I, II, III and IV. At the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, the small, Emerald Buddha is really made of jaspar, surrounded by multitudes of gold figures. Other chapels boast elaborate gold decorations. A gleaming golden chedi, like an upturned ice cream cone, houses a religious reliquary.

A friend and I hired a "long-tail" water taxi to go up the Chao Phraya River, a long, narrow boat with an aft engine that shoots water up in the air like a tail.

The Temple of the Reclining Buddha contains a gigantic 151-foot-long gilded statue of Wat Po and a spectacular 151-foot-long gold-plated Reclining Buddha and four corn-shaped chedis painted green, yellow, orange and royal blue, and studded with glazed ceramic flower-shaped tiles.

The Hill Country

This region boasts hundreds of wats or Buddhist temples, dating from the 13th century, many with gorgeous Buddhas decorated with mosaics of sparkling mirror in reds, greens, blues. Buildings often have upturned roofs ending in golden dragon tails. Saffron-robed monks of varied ages "make merit." Ruth Gerber said, "All Thai males are required to serve a period of time as monks, starting at age 20; the younger ones you see are really helpers."

Most impressive is Wat Pra Thad Doi Suthep, located 3,500 feet above sea level on Doi Suthep (mountain), a complex of stunnung red and gold stupas and gold-filigreed "umbrellas." Rows of gold-leafed Buddhas and elaborately decorated columns provide one jaw-dropping sight after another.

At a Mong village, the one-room homes were more substantial with windowless planked walls, dirt floors, hammocks strung inside for sleeping and fireplaces on the floors. The older women walked around embroidering on cloth, while shoeless babies, their noses running, played in the dirt.

Farms and greenhouses dot the hills; the government's Crop Substitution Program is teaching these people to grow legitimate flowers and produce--including coffee--rather than the opium poppies that have been a staple in the Golden Triangle (where opium growth remains considerably higher in Burma and Laos).

I didn't see any long-necked women. These begin life as young girls who have bronze rings placed around their necks starting at age five, with additional ones--up to 24--added as they grow older. Legend has it that this is to prevent their being raped by other tribesmen, but in truth it's a painful process and, if the women commit some offense, the rings are removed and they quickly strangle.

We passed water buffalo in emerald-green rice paddy on the way to the government-owned Thai Elephant Conservation Centre elephant school, where 48 elephants (each weighing about four tons) put on a show pulling logs. Each has a mahout (trainer), I sat on a howdah (seat) on 47-year-old Mee--prompting me to burst into "Just Molly and Mee" for one-hour ride through a rainforest under tall teak and bamboo trees, orange cosmos and purple trillium blooming.

One evening I visited the Old Chiangmai Cultural Center. Admittedly a tourist attraction, this dinner theater drew more Thai families than farangs, or foreigners. We sat on carpeted platforms leaning against embroidered pillows as we were served course after course of native delicacies on round trays, such as sticky rice and mee krob (sweetened rice noodles) and were entertained by a lovely troupe of young women performing graceful national dances such as the famed fingernail dance and white elephant dance. In a separate dirt-floored building, other groups performed dances of the hill tribes, with their embroidered shirts and headresses bedecked with swinging cloth balls, accompanied by bamboo pipes and cymbals.

On the AIDS question: United Nations studies show that Asia will surpass Africa as the highest-hit region, predicting at least 14 million cases by the year 2000. Experts in Thailand say that it's been seen in horrendous proportions because a longtime tradition among poor Thais has been to sell their children into prostitution.

Thailand is an intriguing and beautiful country that is well worth a visit.