ASIA LETTER/Miram Donohoe: The bespectacled, elderly figure who greeted the President, Mrs McAleese, in the splendid surroundings of the royal Summer Palace in Hua Hin in Thailand last Friday could have passed for a retired university lecturer or bookkeeper. But the serene, quiet spoken, man was one of the most revered people in this gentle "land of smiles", Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
The 74-year-old royal is the world's longest-serving monarch with 53 years on the throne. Despite his age and ailing health, he regaled Mrs McAleese during her official visit to this gentle country, impressing with his knowledge of Ireland and Irish affairs and his ideas for environmental reform in his beloved homeland.
It is rare to be granted an audience with the king. Last month the German President was received by one of the royal princesses instead.
When he does meet a visiting dignitary, King Bhumibol Adulyadej does his homework. He was certainly thorough when it came to Ireland. "Are Irish eyes still smiling?" he asked Mrs McAleese when he welcomed her and her husband, Dr Martin McAleese, in a wood-panelled reception room.
The royal setting for the meeting, with a stunning sea backdrop, could have come straight from the set of the famous 1950s Yul Brynner movie The King and I, which was based in Thailand. The film seduced western audiences with its haunting images of the glamorous and mysterious orient.
However that film, and the Hollywood remake starring Jodie Foster and Chow Yun Fat released two years ago, dare not be mentioned in Thailand, especially in royal company. They are considered by the authorities to contain historical inaccuracies and to be offensive to the image of Thailand and the royal family.
The reverence in which the king is held by his 64 million subjects is unsurpassed. Thais have nothing but good things to say about their monarch who has travelled every corner of the country in his half century as ruler. People treasure the day when he comes to visit their village or town and sometimes are too overawed even to look at him. Instead they put out handkerchiefs for him to walk on and save the scraps of cloth with his footprint in shrines at home.
Everywhere you go his presence in felt. TV channels run footage of royal family members attending official functions nightly and his portrait hangs in virtually every home and office in the land, like a kind benevolent father watching over his children.
The enduring image is of a kindly man. He has intervened in politics only during times of crisis, most notably during the violent demonstrations and bloodshed of the May 1992 democracy uprising.
More recently he publicly ticked off the controversial Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, who came to power in February 2001 on a promise of returning the country to prosperity. The king used his birthday celebration to warn that Thailand was heading for catastrophe, lambasting its political class for their arrogance, intolerance and double standards.
"The prime minister has a long face now after I mentioned catastrophe," the king said, "but I'm telling the truth. I think we all know that our country is not developing, that everything seems to be in decline." By the time the king was done, Thaksin's face was red.
Proof of how revered the king is came earlier this year when two Bangkok-based journalists working for the the Far Eastern Economic Review were nearly thrown out of the country for allegedly offending the monarchy in an article. Only a letter of apology issued to the Thai people expressing the magazine's "highest esteem" for their monarch helped help lift the deportation orders.
The king's long-held passions are photography and jazz. Long before his health deteriorated, there were recorded sessions of his band on weekends that went out over the radio. Any famous jazz musician visiting Thailand invariably received an invitation to play with the king.
Thailand has come a long way during his reign, shedding communism and much of the right-wing militarism that sprang up to oppose it. While coups seem barely conceivable in this country today, Thailand still has its problems.
In recent years, the king has spoken out about the dangers of graft, environmental degradation, over-reliance on foreign investment and even the chronically gridlocked traffic in Bangkok, all issues which successive governments have been slow to address.
The World Bank says Thailand has the biggest gap between rich and poor in Asia.
Many of the king's subjects are uneasy at the thought that they may be living in the twilight of their beloved ruler's reign. Even as the nation prepares to celebrate his 75th birthday at the end of the year, thoughts of the future are tinged with concern.
His son and heir, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, has yet to achieve the same level of devotion among Thais that his father enjoys.
The king has set an impossibly high standard to be followed.