Making a rich, cinnamony, elegant Asian soup base? (Bones in oven now.)

I've had a duck noodle soup at Thai place in L.A. called Chan Dara that was just gorgeous... rife with spices that pooled in some dark liquid at the bottom and it got progressively lighter higher in the bowl. These were the kinds of spices you could put in pies, not "spicy" spices.

So I'm interested in replicating that at home - just the soup base for now - and am currently playing with a recipe that sounds like it has the requisite flavors. It's the Vietnamese Spiced Beef Stock (Nuoc Dung Bo) at this site:
http://www.soupsong.com/bstock.html

Any recommendations or variations? Right now... as I mentioned I'm playing... I put a couple beef knuckles in the oven to roast with shallots, toasted fennel, star anise, a cinnamon stick, a bay leaf, a chunk of ginger and a few cloves. It smells really, really nice.

After some of this browns, I plan to crock-pot it overnight and see what happens.

(I've heard this called a Vietnamese pho base, but have read many far different pho base recipes, so for now I'm not calling it a pho base. I do wonder if there's a particularly Thai version or if my good Thai restaurant is crossing borders.)