3 
In the spring of 1819, just as Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, governor general of Bencoolenand and representative of the British East India Company, had finished clearing out mangrove swamps in Singapore and had turned the island into an entrepôt, a virulent strain of cholera hit Siam. An acute diarrheal disease caused by food or water contamination, cholera had long been a scourge of South and Southeast Asia due to the region’s humid climate, poor sanitation, and dense population. An epidemic had first started in India in 1817 and then reached Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) the following year, before spreading in all directions via trading vessels. It arrived in Siam that April, when the twins were about to turn eight.
The death toll was staggeringly high. Dead bodies arrived so fast and in such shocking numbers that the monasteries could not keep up with the cremations. Many corpses were just thrown in the river, further polluting the water and exacerbating the epidemic. In the dark hours, fear and rumor ran rampant. Some thought that the cholera was caused by the recent construction activities in the palace, where Rama II had been busy building his pleasure gardens. Large rocks had been taken from the sea to build a mound in the gardens, a move that might have angered the guardian spirits of the ocean. Prone to supernatural interpretation of human events, the Poet King held a special exorcism ceremony: “Sacred stanzas were chanted, all around the city large guns were fired, and a procession was held with the nation’s most sacred objects,” wrote historian B. J. Terwiel. “The king temporarily relieved all people of their duties and exhorted all to make merit, chant sacred mantras, and practice munificence. Even those on palace duty were requested to remain home and look after their families. . . . The king advised people to let the animals roam around freely in the markets, and prisoners were freed. The populace was asked not to kill any living being, thus avoiding harmful acts.”1
And, miraculously, the epidemic subsided.
In the following years, every time the spasmodic cholera returned, or when it raged in neighboring countries, the king would again resort to neoromantic rituals, using potent spells to ward off the danger. John Crawfurd, who visited Bangkok during one of these epidemic episodes, duly noted in his journals:
The re-appearance of the epidemic cholera spread great alarm amongst the people, a matter which was apparent enough from the precautions which they took against its attacks. The King, under some superstitious imagination, which I am unable to explain, directed the people to keep at home, and abstain from all work for seven days. . . . The secular superintendent of the great temple, which was the first we visited, called upon us in the course of the day, and said that he had no fear of the cholera morbus, as he made frequent prostrations before the idols, and wore a skein of cotton thread round his neck as a charm. As he spoke, he pointed at this potent amulet!2
British condescension notwithstanding, Crawfurd might have had good reason to sneer at what he regarded as unscientific, superstitious practices, for they were ineffective; and he was informed by the Phra Khlang (principal minister) that the cholera had killed one-fifth of the Siamese population within only a few years.
Among these victims, six were from the twins’ family. Three of their younger siblings had been the first to succumb to the epidemic, followed by their father, who fought a prolonged battle against what he regarded as the evil spirits, struggling in vomit, diarrhea, and pain till the tragic end. Soon thereafter, the Scourge of Southeastern Asia took the lives of two more siblings, leaving only an older brother named Noy, a sister, their mother, and the twins themselves.3
Widowed in her thirties, Nok now had to pick up the pieces and raise four young children on her own. According to Judge Jesse Franklin Graves of North Carolina, who in the 1870s wrote a biographical sketch based on the twins’ recollections of their early life in Siam, Nok had at first tried to make oil from cocoa nuts, but the labor in that process was too hard for her and her children, who had to assist her in earning a living: “By very great industry and economy she finally collected a little stock of various notions with which she spread her table and again began to trade.” A smart merchant, she soon made enough money to start a small business of raising ducks and selling eggs.4
At their tender age, the twins grew very fond of raising ducks. Harvesting eggs with bare hands, watching the eggs hatch into fuzzy ducklings, holding a fledgling whose feathers weren’t yet dry—all these activities certainly delighted two curious boys. It was even said they had a pet duck with whom they could talk.5 But this was, after all, a way of making a living, not a sidewalk sale of Girl Scout cookies. Every day, the twins got up at the crack of dawn, drove the ducks waddling out of the enclosure and onto the muddy bank, and let them paddle and feed in the river, while the two duck “fanciers” rowed their dinghy and kept close watch. To get more nutritious food for their ever-increasing brood, the boys would row down the river to the gulf to catch shellfish. Other lucky catches on those trips, such as platoo, a kind of sardine, a common dish after salting, would either bring a few more cowries to their mother or add more flavor to their bowls of rice. But it was preserved duck eggs that constituted the main source of their income, and they were quick to learn the ancient recipes.
For centuries, the Chinese have honed their skills for making preserved duck eggs, which are of two kinds: One is called Century Egg (pidan), and the other is just plain pickled egg (xian yadan). For the former, eggs are dipped into a pasty mix of salt, ashes, lime, and rice chaff. The mixture will harden and preserve the eggs for as long as needed. When the coating is peeled off and served on a dish, the egg looks blackened like an aged mummy, giving out a pungent smell—hence the moniker Century Egg, or even Thousand-Year Egg.6 For the plain pickled eggs, one simply dips eggs into a mix of salt and wet clay. Both methods can preserve eggs for a very long time, providing two reliable, delicious items for a Chinese dinner table.
In addition to preserved eggs, the sale of ducks also brought in considerable profit, for duck meat was another delicacy for Chinese and Siamese alike. Even at their young age, the twins were said to be shrewd hawkers who knew how to take advantage of their customers’ curiosity about two conjoined boys plying their trade. It was not necessarily a confidence game, but it was a skill that would come in handy later, when their trade would be their own bodies.
While the twins prospered as small merchants, the ancient kingdom of Siam went through transformations under the peaceful reign of Rama II, whom John Crawfurd had characterized as “one of the mildest sovereigns that had ruled Siam for at least a century and a half.” Crawfurd’s time frame, “a century and a half,” was significant because it referred to the length of time when Siam had remained in self-imposed isolation after the famous Ayudhya Revolution of 1688. Right at the center of that dramatic event was an enigmatic adventurer named Constant Phaulkon. Born Constantine Yeraki to Greek Orthodox parents in 1647, Phaulkon spent a wanderlust youth on English merchant ships and arrived in Ayudhya, the ancient capital of Siam, in 1678. His Greek name, “Yeraki,” means a bird of prey, so he changed it to “Phaulkon” (falcon). And, true to that name, Phaulkon soared high as soon as he landed in the court of King Narai. He learned to speak fluent Siamese within two years, ingratiated himself into the service of the king, and rose rapidly from a humble position as interpreter and accountant to become the king’s principal minister. A recent convert to Catholicism, Phaulkon used his influence to assist, openly as well as clandestinely, French Jesuit missionaries in their attempts to convert the king and his subjects, who were all considered Buddhist “idolaters.” With Phaulkon’s aid, the padres played such a deep game of conversion that two of them even shaved their heads, donned the robes of Siamese talapoys (monks), and infiltrated the Buddhist temples. The ruse backfired. When King Narai lay in his deathbed in 1688, the soaring falcon experienced not just a fall from grace but a final plunge—Phaulkon was arrested by his political enemies, charged with treason, and promptly executed. The French were expelled, and Siam shut its door to Europe.
For well over a century, except for maintaining her traditional ties to China and neighboring states, Siam survived in isolation. But things began to change, especially after 1785, when the British took possession of the island of Penang, followed by more territorial acquisitions in the region. When international trade was revived after the Napoleonic Wars, European powers began to mount pressure on Siam for improved commercial relations. Portugal, its empire already in decline, was the first to crack open the long-bolted door, procuring contracts from the Siamese in 1818 and then establishing a consulate two years later. An ascending Great Britain followed suit, first sending John Crawfurd on a failed mission in 1822, followed by Captain Henry Burney, who succeeded in obtaining a treaty from Bangkok in 1826. The United States also dispatched an envoy led by Edmund Roberts, who secured favorable terms from the Siamese in 1833.7
Siam was finally opening up—slowly at first, but steadily nonetheless.
This time, the global tides would wash ashore not a falcon but a hunter—Robert Hunter, who would scout the coast of the Andaman Sea, searching for opportunities and profits. He would soon be dubbed the Second Constant Phaulkon. In fact, Tan Puying Sap, the Siamese woman Hunter married, was a descendant of Phaulkon and his Japanese wife. Inevitably, Sap became a great asset to her husband—unlike Phaulkon, Hunter spoke very little Siamese. Through his wife and other assistants, Hunter would exert as much influence on Siam as he would on the conjoined twins, whom he would espy on a late summer day in August 1824. The twins had just wrapped up another day’s duck business, and were dipping in the river to cool off after a monsoon storm, when the Scotsman burst into their world.