About 800,000 Aussies make the trek to visit our northern neighbour each year, making it our fourth most popular destination after New Zealand, Indonesia, and the UK.

Defence and police co-operation on issues such as counter-terrorism and human trafficking is strong, and the Thai-Australian free trade deal signed in 2005 gave a significant boost to economic relations between the two countries.

The ins and outs of Thailand's political system are probably not high on Australians' "need to know" list when they set out for a week's holiday at a resort in Phuket, or to explore the back streets of Bangkok in the quest for the perfect som tam.

But Thailand's election – its first in nearly eight years, which was held on Sunday and which has produced no clear result – matters enormously for Australia, and for the region.

We live in an age when trust and faith in governments and institutions in the west is, broadly, in decline. Certainly this is true in Australia, and in two of our closest allies – the United States and the United Kingdom.

In our region, in May 2018, democrats in Malaysia achieved a breakthrough victory when the country saw the first change of government for the first time since independence, 61 years earlier.

Similarly Indonesia's next presidential and parliamentary elections, which will be held on April 17, promise to (mostly) be an exercise in free and fair democratic choice.

But those are only two examples of democratic progress and the obverse side of the coin is far less encouraging.

Singapore's 'elections' continue to be neither truly free nor fair.

Philippines' president Rodrigo Duterte was democratically elected, but has gone out of his way to undermine faith in institutions such as the police and a free and independent media since taking power.

Cambodia's Hun Sen won all 125 seats in an 'election' that extended his 33 year rule last July, while Vietnam and Laos have long been single-party states.

Which brings us back to Thailand – the second largest country in ASEAN (and our second largest trade partner in the bloc), with a strong-ish economy, relatively high standard of living, strong country-to-country relations with Australia – but a chequered democratic record.

Thailand is at an inflexion point following the inconclusive election result, which may not be resolved until the declaration of official results on May 9.

Both the main opposition parties and the ruling military junta, which came to power in 2014, are asserting their right to form government – the former because it has the highest number of seats (but not a majority), the latter because it won the highest number of votes overall.

The next prime minister is supposed to be selected by a combined majority of 376 votes from the 500 member lower house and the 250 member senate, but the new electoral system introduced by the junta in 2017 heavily favours the regime, which gets to hand pick those senators.

Elections monitors warned a few days before the poll that vote buying was taking place in some parts of the country, though they were careful not to point the finger at any one party.

Faith in the Electoral Commission of Thailand has been shaken too, with questions still to be answered about why an indicative count due on Sunday night was delayed, as well as why nearly 2 million ballots were ruled invalid.

A Change.org petition to impeach the Electoral Commission now has nearly 600,000 signatures.

It is far from clear who will end up as prime minister in Thailand's next government, though junta leader and former general Prayut Chan-o-cha is probably in the box seat.

If this occurs it is to be hoped that Thailand's main opposition parties, including Pheu Thai and the new Future Forward, are allowed to fulfil their role of holding the next government of the day to account. That isn't guaranteed at this stage.

Australians who care about the political stability of like-minded allies in our region, and who wish to see democracy grow – not retreat in south-east Asia – should care deeply about what happens in the weeks ahead in Bangkok.