Thailand's royal family collected the ashes of the king's sister on Sunday, ending the main phase of an elaborate six-day funeral that has briefly calmed the country's turbulent political waters.
As monks in saffron robes intoned Buddhist chants, the Thai crown prince and princess received a lacquered, diamond-encrusted urn containing the remains of Princess Galyani, who died of cancer in January at the age of 84. A solemn procession of more than 800 soldiers dressed in red and dignitaries clad in white then accompanied the urn from the specially built crematorium at a parade ground to the Royal Palace in old Bangkok.
Thousands of mourners turned out to watch the ceremony, which came a day after more than 100,000 Thais attended the lavish 8.9-million-dollar cremation of the princess, the elder sister of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. "I haven't slept. Meditation all night long," said Smarn Chringarm, 52, a member of a protest group that he said was trying to encourage the king to remove the elected government from power.
With the world's longest reigning monarch and his family treated by Thais as semi-divine but also non-political, the funeral has been a temporary unifying influence amid the three-month-old political crisis. Anti-government protesters occupied the main official buildings in Bangkok in August in a bid to force out the government of Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, whom they say is a proxy for ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra.