Foreign dignitaries were amazed by the 17th-century Siamese court. Though the general population seemed, as one diplomat wrote, "rich in a general poverty," the court itself appeared wealthy to an extreme. Cloth of gold was worn daily, gems adorned both the sexes, and as for the elephants, "each one had its silk cushion and they slept on it as if they were small dogs. They were fastened with chains as heavy as door-chains, plated with gold, and each one of them had six very large bowls of gold."
Other exoticisms included culprits being beaten to death with sandalwood clubs and a royal consort being fed to tigers because of her unfaithfulness. There were great processions, by water and by land, with hundreds of elephants and thousands of men, with the king himself high on a gilded throne carried by pachyderms or on the shoulders of his men.
Then there were the audiences with his majesty. Everyone "must crawl on their hands and feet, all of which is done in an unbelievable silence, for no one dared make a noise, even exhale, so that in this gathering that sometimes comprises 10,000 people in close proximity there is such stillness that one can hear the song and wing-beat of little birds."