Late last year Thailand's 76-year-old former premier Chatichai Choonhavan, now a cabinet-rank adviser to the government, announced that India was to be the target of his latest campaign to open up new markets and investment opportunities for Thailand.
This made headlines because it reminded Thais of his now famous 'war zones to trade zones' policy, made a decade ago, that helped open up Indochina, and later, Myanmar to Thai-based businesses.
If Chatichai - now in his most powerful political post since being ousted by a military coup in February 1991 - has been looking recently to India's 200-million-strong middle class for new opportunities then it may be a measure of the success of his earlier ground-breaking policy.
Nine years ago, as prime minister, Chatichai surprised, delighted and alarmed Thais by declaring that Indochina should be open for business. The bold policy thrust raised eyebrows because, just a decade before, Vietnamese troops bristled on the Thai border.
Relations between Thailand's traditional enemy, Vietnam, and Indochina's other two Communist countries, Cambodia and Laos, were equally prickly.
But Chatichai - with one of the flamboyant gestures that he still loves to make - cut through years of hostility and suspicion by making high-profile visits to Indochina intended as path-finding forays for Thai entrepreneurs.
The argument then, as now, was that since Indochina (Myanmar would soon be added) was inexorably opening up, many of the plumb business opportunities should by geographic right go to Thailand.
Today Thailand's Board of Investment openly encourages investment by Thais in neighbouring countries which until very recently were cold war rivals.
'The increased Thai involvement with our neighbours will expand their export markets, provide them with increased access to raw materials and boost Thailand's status as a regional business centre,' according to Chakramon Pasukvanich, the BoI's deputy chief said recently.
Thailand is now the biggest investor in Laos with 254 projects worth around US$2.06 billion, mainly in mining, hotels, agro-industry, telecommunications, textiles and energy.
Laos and Thailand signed a landmark agreement in March for the first railway link between the two countries. A Thai firm, Sahaviriya, will build the 27-km line to the halfway point on a bridge across the Mekong River, and Laos will handle the rest.
This is intended as the first stage of a high-speed trade route to southern China - once the complex funding and political negotiations have been sorted out.
The state-owned Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand has signed a memorandum of understanding committing it to buy up to 3,000 megawatts a year from Laos in the future.
Thailand is the ninth largest investor in Vietnam, with US$1 billion going into industrial estates, hotels, real estate, agro-industry and food processing. Cambodia will remain an important target for Thailand, though the country's mixed success in establishing a stable environment for business is reflected in Thailand's relatively modest investments there - US$34 million between 1994 and 1996, mainly in telecoms, mining and energy.
It has been the opening up of Myanmar since the beginning of the 1990s that may offer Thailand its most interesting near-term opportunities. Thailand is the third-largest investor in Myanmar - from 1988 to this year a total of 34 projects worth US$960 million have been agreed upon.
But there is potential for much more. Current Thai premier Chavalit Yongchaiyudh has vowed to instigate a new era of economic cooperation along the 846-kilometre common border. 'We are neighbours who should work together for our mutual prosperity,' he declared recently.
Thailand's most important involvement in Myanmar's future to date has been its investment in the US$1.2 billion Yadana Gas pipeline that will supply Thailand with natural gas and Rangoon with much-needed hard currency. The other foreign partners are Total of France and Unocal of California.
More recently state-owned Petroleum Authority of Thailand said it would also take part in the Yetagun natural gas project - Myanmar's second natural gas scheme - along with Texaco of the US, Japan's Nippon Oil Exploration and Britain's Premier Petroleum.
But Chavalit's vision includes not only oil and gas projects, and major new road links through to Western China, but also two deep-sea ports for the transshipment of Thai exports.
There seems little doubt now that the mutual suspicion of years, with border disputes, rows about the use of natural resources and warlike posturing on both sides, has eased dramatically.
'The quality of our friendship is improving daily. The test of this has been Myanmar's concessions to give us deep-sea ports at Tavoy and Ban Saphan' said Chavalit recently.
These ports will sharpen Thailand's competitive edge by giving its manufacturers faster access to the Andaman Sea; avoiding the long route through the Straits of Malacca, around Singapore.
Government officials reckon this could save seven or eight days' travel time -- an important advantage when global markets demand fast reaction times from manufacturers.
It is important to recognise that these projects are not just government approved pie-in-the-sky.
Thailand's Sahaviriya Group has signed a memorandum of understanding to study construction of a port at Bokpyin in Myanmar connected by a 'land bridge' to Ban Saphan on the Gulf of Thailand.
Late last year construction giant Ital-Thai signed a memorandum of understanding to study development of Myanmar's Tavoy deep sea port.
Recently Thailand's Rojama Group agreed to develop a new industrial zone in partnership with Myanmar's Ministry of Construction.
The project, Hlaingthayar Industrial Zone, is designed to develop the Myanmar capital's manufacturing potential by using high quality facilities within the zone.
Rojana said it would be investing US$14 million in the project, with the Myanmar government contributing land use rights, reportedly on a 50-year lease with facilities ready in two years' time. Rojana is to hold 60% of the joint company.
Myanmar's Minister for Construction, Major General Saw Tun, said 'The new industrial zone will definitely have a mutual benefit with already existing domestic industrial zones.
'As investments from Thailand, our neighbouring country, start flowing in, we are confident that not only Thai industrialists but from other countries will also take the initiative to invest here,' he added.
Chavalit promised to free up land occupied by the Thai military in Kanchanaburi, near the Myanmar border. This is a measure of how rapidly attitudes are changing: historically the powerful military establishment has jealously guarded its role as 'defender of the border'; especially against Myanmar, the traditional enemy. The military siezed 80% of Kanchanaburi province for reasons of national security 60 years ago.
Welcoming the move, provincial governor Sucharn Pongneua said: 'The economy of our [border] province has grown only 2% in the last three years because there was not enough land available for investors.'
Thai entrepreneurs have started acquiring land, expecting a Myanmar-inspired boom along Thailand's Western Seaboard.
A prominent local businessman, Singh Tangcharoenchaichana, is already creating an industrial park in Thailand's Kanchanaburi. 'There are many business opportunities now - without any real downside,' he says.
To build up trade, Chavalit has promised that infrastructure will be improved in the Western Seaboard region. There is the possibility of a railway being built to follow - roughly - the 'Death Railway' across the River Kwae that was built by prisoners of war of the Japanese half a century ago. This will be discussed by ASEAN soon.
Further north, Rangoon has agreed with China that, in principle, good roads should link Eastern China to the northern capital Mandalay. This opens up whole new investment possibilities, with the countries bordering the upper reaches of the Mekong river gaining access to China's huge and massively populated hinterland.
Thailand already has its finger in this pie. A Bangkok government loan of nearly US$160 million was granted last year to help the construction of a new airport in Mandalay.
Chavalit has already vowed: 'This will not be the last - we are going to grant more.'