Thailand was the first nation that recognized the US as a country. Thailand has always been pretty western aligned, no matter how much the West fucks us.

The perception being the way it is of the king has a lot of historical reasons, Thailand never really shook off the shackles of monarchy and therefore monarchic ideology and divine right stuff is really still big, but actually the current King's status was one where the monarchy was heavily weakened by a socialist and populist movement in the 30s and was almost overthrown in 1932. However, the fascist military (literally, these were Axis aligned people and Franco's buddies and shit) had ambitions to rule (actually, there were 4 factions in Thailand at the time, three of which controlled different parts of the military, and eventually there was a series of coups from each branch of the military before resulting in a consolidation under the army. But we don't have to get into that) but couldn't get the people down for Fascism because there was a populist and socialist movement at the time. So, the King was carefully propped up through massive propaganda over 70 years. Rama 8, this king's brother, was assassinated when the King was younger and the monarchy nearly fell apart entirely. But as an ideological device, the monarchy was used by the military and aristocrats as literally the basis to rule or legitimize things they do. You'd see, for example, photos of the top military generals still bowing down to the King when asking for his approval to start a coup and overthrow elected representatives for example. And the King always approves (in fact, he's approved at least 15 coups during his reign). The most commonly accepted theory among leftists in Thailand is the king is actually not powerful and pretty weak and controlled by the privy council and aristocrats.