Thailand’s controversial and divisive King Vajiralongkorn hit the global news headlines last month after BILD newspaper revealed that the Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl in Germany had obtained a special permit from the Bavarian authorities to continue hosting him when all other hotels in the region had to close to try to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Vajiralongkorn has been spending most of his time at Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl in the Alpine resort town of Garmish-Partenkirchen since early 2016. He has paid cash up front to rent the hotel for several years. Ordinary guests are not allowed, and security guards turn away anyone who approaches.
The hotel has become Vajiralongkorn’s main pleasure palace, where he lives with a harem of around 20 women, and a large entourage of Thai staff, many of whom are prisoners, trapped in Germany and separated from their families in Thailand for most of the time.
Vajiralongkorn has a fetish for military ranks and clothing, and he has organised the women in his harem as a military regiment, which he calls the SAS, or Special Air Service, like the British air force special forces corps which is among the most elite units in the UK military.
The harem has the same motto as the British SAS too: “Who Dares Wins”.
Most of the time, the women are based at the Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl, and the entire fourth floor of the hotel is reserved for Vajiralongkorn and his concubines.
Hotel staff, and most palace servants, are not allowed on the fourth floor. Vajiralongkorn’s living quarters are there, along with a special suite for group sex with his harem, which he calls “ห้องสุขสำราญ” — “the pleasure room”. The fourth floor is also full of Thai antiquities and treasures, brought from Bangkok.
Women in the harem are usually recruited after they join the King’s Guard units that now dominate the Thai military. Some of the women join willingly, hoping that becoming a concubine of the king can bring them and their families wealth and success. Others are pressured to join, and are afraid of the consequences if they refuse.
The women are given a number, from SAS01 upwards, to show their seniority and rank in the harem. They are also given a military rank, and bestowed with a special royal surname — Sirivajirabhakdi.
In 2017, Somsak Jeamteerasakul identified 11 women with this surname who had been given military promotions.
Since then, more women have been identified, and there are at least 15 who have been given a military rank and a special surname, not including his wife Queen Suthida who was appointed a general in the King’s Guard, and until her downfall last year his concubine Niramon “Koi” Ounprom who was given the rank of major general and given the name Sineenat Wongvajirapakdi.
Among the Sirivajirabhakdi women who can be identified via their military promotions are:
• Major Prapassorn Sirivajirabhakdi
• Major Pornthip Sirivajirabhakdi
• Major Sangwan Sirivajirabhakdi
• Captain Waraporn Sirivajirabhakdi
• Captain Pattriya Sirivajirabhakdi
• Captain Prangwan Sirivajirabhakdi
• Captain Sureerat Sirivajirabhakdi
• Captain Sasathorn Sirivajirabhakdi
• Captain Nattasiri Sirivajirabhakdi
• Lieutenant Krongthong Sirivajirabhakdi
• Lieutenant Chayutara Sirivajirabhakdi
• Lieutenant Anusara Sirivajirabhakdi
• Lieutenant Onanong Sirivajirabhakdi
Two women have been expelled from the harem, sources say.
Major Thanida Sirivajirabhakdi was thrown out after being accused of siding with Koi after the purge, and Major Nawawan Sirivajirabhakdi was accused of drug use. Allegedly she needed to take methamphetamine to bring herself to have sex with Vajiralongkorn.
Following the downfall of Koi, the most senior woman in the harem and Vajiralongorn’s favourite concubine is Major Prapassorn Sirivajirabhakdi. She is currently SAS01, and she has been photographed several times with Vajiralongkorn’s daughter Princess Bajrakitiyabha.
Several of the women previously had profiles on social media, and most of them had short, cropped hair and identical heart shaped pendants, more signifiers that they are members of Vajiralongkorn’s harem. The profiles have since been removed.
Vajiralongkorn has spent most of his time in Germany since 2007. He originally moved there for health treatment for himself and his son.
Vajiralongkorn has HIV, and his son Prince Dipangkorn has autism. A dubious Thai-owned clinic in Germany called Villa Medica claims to be able to cure both HIV and autism, and also claims it can keep elderly people young by injecting them with stem cells from sheep foetuses. Many wealthy old Asian men have been treated there.
Villa Medica is owned by Niwat "Bobby" Kittichaiwong, although he is probably a nominee for the real owner.
https://www.nationthailand.com/business/30206948
Its website is here:
http://villa-medica.com/
An article on the discredited sheep foetus treatment is here:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/the-science-of-the-lambs-how-the-global-elite-have-spent-80
The main doctor at Villa Medica, Burkhard Aschhoff, has touted a discredited HIV treatment using a substance called Ukrain. Some details are here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrain and here
https://www.psiram.com/de/index.php/Burkhard_Aschhoff
His colleague Geoffrey Huertgen also claims to treat autism using stem cells from sheep foetuses. There is no scientific backing for this claim, which is comprehensively debunked in this article:
https://scienceblogs.com/insolence/...erapy-quackery-for-autism-rears-its-ugly-head
Even though the claim that autism can be cured at Villa Medica is bogus, it has been promoted by various Thai celebrities, including talkshow host Vuthithorn "Woody" Milintachinda.
Besides seeking treatment for his HIV and his son’s autism, Vajiralongkorn also moved to Germany so he could avoid his third wife Srirasmi, and spend time with his mistresses, in particular Suthida Tidjai, a former Thai Airways cabin attendant he met on a flight in January 2007. Suthida began living in Germany with Vajiralongkorn a few months later.
In 2009, a secret US diplomatic cable noted that: “Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn has spent most (up to 75%) of the past two years based in Europe (primarily at a villa at a medicinal spa 20km outside of Munich), with his leading mistress and beloved white poodle Fufu. Vajiralongkorn is believed to be suffering from a blood-related medical condition (varying sources claim he is either: HIV positive; has Hepatitis C; is afflicted by a rare form of ‘blood cancer,’ or some combination which leads to regular blood transfusions).”
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09BANGKOK2967_a.html
For several years, Vajiralongkorn’s main residence in Germany was the Kempinski Hotel at Munich Airport. The Kempinski Hotel group was owned by the Thai monarchy via the Crown Property Bureau, and Vajiralongkorn and his entourage rented the entire top floor of one of the two four-storey wings of the hotel.
In late 2014, Vajiralongkorn divorced Srirasmi, put her in house arrest in Rachaburi, and jailed most of her relatives including her parents, her uncle, her three brothers and a sister.
In January 2015 the Kempinski Hotel in Munich was taken over by Hilton and rebranded. Vajiralongkorn continued to live there.
During the same year he bought two large villas in exclusive areas near Munich — Villa Stolberg, on Lake Starnberg in Tutzing, for an estimated 12 million euros, and a villa in nearby Feldafing for an estimated 5.1 million euros.
However, he has never lived in either villa. The large mansion in Tutzing has been mostly unoccupied, while Dipangkorn lives in Feldafing with his carers, rarely seeing either of his parents.
From 2016, Vajiralongkorn began spending most of his time at the Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl. The resort of Garmish-Partenkirchen is in the Alps, about an hour’s drive south of Munich, and close to skiing areas including the Zugspitze and Garmisch Classic.
The vast building was originally built as a residence for the wealthy Bader family nearly 200 years ago, before being turned into a hotel in 1890. During World War Two it was used as a military hospital by the Nazis. Since 1982, it has been owned by Darwish Bin Ismail Al-Balushi, finance minister of Oman.
The Sultan of Oman, who has a residence nearby, sometimes uses the hotel to entertain guests, and the Austrian national ski team stayed there in 2018 during the skiing World Cup, but otherwise Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl is generally closed to the public and reserved for Vajiralongkorn and his entourage. The hotel website says it has “limited room availability”.
Suthida, who became Vajiralongkorn’s fourth wife in May last year, rarely stays at Sonnenbichl. She spends most of her time in Switzerland at Hotel Waldegg in the town of Engelberg.
By the time Vajiralongkorn married Suthida he was already growing bored of her. His favourite mistress was Koi, who lived with him and the rest of his harem at Sonnenbichl. Koi was appointed the king’s “noble consort” in July last year, but was dramatically purged and jailed a few months later in October.
When Vajiralongkorn stays at Hotel Waldegg with Suthida, the harem comes too. But most of the time Suthida is left alone in Switzerland, and the king enjoys himself with his SAS in Germany.
The cost of renting the whole of Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl, plus much of Hotel Waldegg and the Hilton Munich Airport, is immense. Vajiralongkorn has become an absentee monarch, only returning to Thailand briefly for royal rituals and ceremonies, while spending the rest of his time on an extended holiday abroad — paid for by Thai taxpayers.