It's six o'clock and we leave for the airport at eight. We're packing a few things.
It looks as if a red shirts-government confrontation is coming tomorrow. I just met Joe at Silom, and we watched as troops lined the sky walk with sheets of perforated black plastic and piled sandbags. They apparently expect to have to defend Silom Road, Bangkok's financial center, soon.
It's good we're going. I don't think we would have been tempted to show up over there tomorrow to watch. But I'm not sure.
Good luck, Thailand!
Monday, April 19, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
On our way, almost
It's Monday at one in the afternoon, and we fly out tonight at 10:40. We are ambivalent about going, because things are maybe coming to a head here. The red shirts have threatened to occupy and shut down Bangkok's financial center---in addition to the retail, hotel and entertainment area they already control---and I am now in an internet cafe next to an office tower surrounded by troops out on Silom Road. Joe is out there with his camera.
Also out front is a small gathering of "no-color" protestors who just want everyone to get along. They are waving tiny Thai flags and singing patriotic songs. They are admirable, good-hearted people who if things go badly will be chewed up and spit out in a matter of seconds. It's always good to see my fellow liberals out there doing what they can.
Joe is out with the camera crews on the sky walk where Silom meets Ratchadamrie Road, a red shirt stronghold. The troops have blocked the entrance to Silom with heavy planters and razor wire. There is also razor wire rolled across the entrance to C'est Chic---Gay Cut, our barber shop. I don't know what that's about. Over by Rama VI monument, the reds have pried up paving stones and stacked them up. Yesterday when we were over there, Joe photographed reds carving sharp points on the ends of four-foot bamboo sticks the reds say are "flag poles." They smiled at Joe as he took pictures of their country-style arsenal.
Many of the troops we mingled among today looked like scared kids. They carried M-16s, but as they peered over at the hooting, prancing reds across the avenue with their stones and sharp sticks---and god knows what else kept out of sight---the soldiers looked like they'd rather be anywhere else. They wore belts with red and green cartridges---we guessed the red ones were rubber-coated bullets and the green ones blanks. Amazingly, Bangkok Bank, a prime red shirt target, was open for business. I followed four soldiers into the bank office tower lobby and watched as they got on an elevator with high-power rifles and some radio-looking thing and headed for upper floors. I suppose these guys were thought to be trustworthy. Part of the government's dilemma---in addition to wanting to avoid bloodshed---comes from the ethnic make-up of the troops. Most are conscripts from the Isaan North and East, red shirt territory. Many are known to be "watermelons"---green on the outside, red on the inside. They are not overly inclined to shoot at their rural countrymen, even if some of those countrymen are firing grenades at them.
I'm going back out and will send one last report later today. We leave for the airport at eight, and we'll be in Seoul at six in the morning, then fly across the Pacific and the U.S. to JFK later in the day. At Bangkok airport we may have to step over Europeans stranded by the volcanic ash. The Bangkok Post today said Thai Airways is providing several thousand of these luckless travelers with "blankets and refreshments."
Also out front is a small gathering of "no-color" protestors who just want everyone to get along. They are waving tiny Thai flags and singing patriotic songs. They are admirable, good-hearted people who if things go badly will be chewed up and spit out in a matter of seconds. It's always good to see my fellow liberals out there doing what they can.
Joe is out with the camera crews on the sky walk where Silom meets Ratchadamrie Road, a red shirt stronghold. The troops have blocked the entrance to Silom with heavy planters and razor wire. There is also razor wire rolled across the entrance to C'est Chic---Gay Cut, our barber shop. I don't know what that's about. Over by Rama VI monument, the reds have pried up paving stones and stacked them up. Yesterday when we were over there, Joe photographed reds carving sharp points on the ends of four-foot bamboo sticks the reds say are "flag poles." They smiled at Joe as he took pictures of their country-style arsenal.
Many of the troops we mingled among today looked like scared kids. They carried M-16s, but as they peered over at the hooting, prancing reds across the avenue with their stones and sharp sticks---and god knows what else kept out of sight---the soldiers looked like they'd rather be anywhere else. They wore belts with red and green cartridges---we guessed the red ones were rubber-coated bullets and the green ones blanks. Amazingly, Bangkok Bank, a prime red shirt target, was open for business. I followed four soldiers into the bank office tower lobby and watched as they got on an elevator with high-power rifles and some radio-looking thing and headed for upper floors. I suppose these guys were thought to be trustworthy. Part of the government's dilemma---in addition to wanting to avoid bloodshed---comes from the ethnic make-up of the troops. Most are conscripts from the Isaan North and East, red shirt territory. Many are known to be "watermelons"---green on the outside, red on the inside. They are not overly inclined to shoot at their rural countrymen, even if some of those countrymen are firing grenades at them.
I'm going back out and will send one last report later today. We leave for the airport at eight, and we'll be in Seoul at six in the morning, then fly across the Pacific and the U.S. to JFK later in the day. At Bangkok airport we may have to step over Europeans stranded by the volcanic ash. The Bangkok Post today said Thai Airways is providing several thousand of these luckless travelers with "blankets and refreshments."
Becket wants us
It's 6:45 Sunday night, and I just picked up our laundry from the two sisters who run the Om Laundry near our Bangkok hotel. In her broken English and my fractured Thai, one of the sisters and I had this exchange.
"Goodbye. Thank you. Tomorrow we go America. See you next year."
"Ah. America---America okay?" She looked as if she really cared and wanted to know if America was a good place to be returning to.
"America okay. Obama good."
"America equal?" She knew the English word. "Thailand not equal," she said, looking uncharacteristically bitter. She wasn't wearing red, but there it was. This is a woman who works every day from early in the morning until late at night, and she knew who wasn't on her side in her struggle to stay afloat and who was---or claimed to be.
I said, "America equal lek lek"---somewhat, and gestured yes-and-no.
"Thailand...Thailand..." And she just clutched her heart.
It's like that now. Life goes on all over the place---from the sky train today we saw people playing golf---golf!---at a fancy club a few blocks from the red shirts' main encampment. Not far from the upscale urban malls that are shut down because they are surrounded by red shirts are malls open and catering to Buddhist New Year holiday shoppers. You wouldn't know that 24 people were killed in last weekend's riots and that the international commentariate is starting to call Thailand a failed democracy and a banana republic (Time Magazine said mango republic). Or, unless you ask, that working people the red shirts purport to represent are bearing the brunt of the economic damage the reds have caused. Hotels are hurting as tourists cancel by the tens of thousands; one of the maids in our hotel told us on Friday that she had just been laid off, and then she burst into tears.
Last weekend's tragedy has degenerated into farce. A force of crack "commandos" surrounded some red shirt leaders in a hotel on Friday and the government announced that they were under arrest. Well, one red was lowered by rope, his belly hanging out, from a third-floor balcony and whisked away by supporters. Two others walked out the front door while a crowd surrounded the helpless "commandos," two of whose officers were briefly held captive. One of these was a general.
Joe and I ambled around the red-shirt-held Ratchaprasong mall area today. He took pictures of soup lines, speakers, vendors and radicalized monks. People were friendly and flashed V signs at us. The throngs are striking in their get-ups. There are official shirts, but we saw people wearing T-shirts that said Playboy, Fly Emirate, Coca-Cola and West Side Story. I'm not making this up---the West Side Story guy looked like an Isaan Broadway-show queen. Now that is Thailand acting like Thailand.
Vendors at the site were selling garb, and also lurid videos of last week's carnage. Not included were scenes the government claims---credibly, we think---to show radical elements among the reds firing grenades and automatic weapons at the troops, and at their own people. All governments lie, but here the red leaders seem to be even bigger liars than the government.
The red shirts leaders are shrewd and extremely well organized. The camp---mostly made up of people lying under the sky train or tarps on straw mats---has makeshift shower areas and hundreds of porta-potties. One of my favorite red shirt quotes was early in the siege when the sanitation department asked what was going to be done with all the sewage. A red shirt spokesman said, "It is a secret." This morning we were offered and politely declined styrofoam bowls of som tam---Isaan green papaya salad---but the reds were all chowing down. We saw one tent where women were filling great vats with shredded papaya. They also serve who only sit and shred the green papaya.
Gotta go meet Joe for dinner---to be continued.
"Goodbye. Thank you. Tomorrow we go America. See you next year."
"Ah. America---America okay?" She looked as if she really cared and wanted to know if America was a good place to be returning to.
"America okay. Obama good."
"America equal?" She knew the English word. "Thailand not equal," she said, looking uncharacteristically bitter. She wasn't wearing red, but there it was. This is a woman who works every day from early in the morning until late at night, and she knew who wasn't on her side in her struggle to stay afloat and who was---or claimed to be.
I said, "America equal lek lek"---somewhat, and gestured yes-and-no.
"Thailand...Thailand..." And she just clutched her heart.
It's like that now. Life goes on all over the place---from the sky train today we saw people playing golf---golf!---at a fancy club a few blocks from the red shirts' main encampment. Not far from the upscale urban malls that are shut down because they are surrounded by red shirts are malls open and catering to Buddhist New Year holiday shoppers. You wouldn't know that 24 people were killed in last weekend's riots and that the international commentariate is starting to call Thailand a failed democracy and a banana republic (Time Magazine said mango republic). Or, unless you ask, that working people the red shirts purport to represent are bearing the brunt of the economic damage the reds have caused. Hotels are hurting as tourists cancel by the tens of thousands; one of the maids in our hotel told us on Friday that she had just been laid off, and then she burst into tears.
Last weekend's tragedy has degenerated into farce. A force of crack "commandos" surrounded some red shirt leaders in a hotel on Friday and the government announced that they were under arrest. Well, one red was lowered by rope, his belly hanging out, from a third-floor balcony and whisked away by supporters. Two others walked out the front door while a crowd surrounded the helpless "commandos," two of whose officers were briefly held captive. One of these was a general.
Joe and I ambled around the red-shirt-held Ratchaprasong mall area today. He took pictures of soup lines, speakers, vendors and radicalized monks. People were friendly and flashed V signs at us. The throngs are striking in their get-ups. There are official shirts, but we saw people wearing T-shirts that said Playboy, Fly Emirate, Coca-Cola and West Side Story. I'm not making this up---the West Side Story guy looked like an Isaan Broadway-show queen. Now that is Thailand acting like Thailand.
Vendors at the site were selling garb, and also lurid videos of last week's carnage. Not included were scenes the government claims---credibly, we think---to show radical elements among the reds firing grenades and automatic weapons at the troops, and at their own people. All governments lie, but here the red leaders seem to be even bigger liars than the government.
The red shirts leaders are shrewd and extremely well organized. The camp---mostly made up of people lying under the sky train or tarps on straw mats---has makeshift shower areas and hundreds of porta-potties. One of my favorite red shirt quotes was early in the siege when the sanitation department asked what was going to be done with all the sewage. A red shirt spokesman said, "It is a secret." This morning we were offered and politely declined styrofoam bowls of som tam---Isaan green papaya salad---but the reds were all chowing down. We saw one tent where women were filling great vats with shredded papaya. They also serve who only sit and shred the green papaya.
Gotta go meet Joe for dinner---to be continued.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Update
It is Sunday morning, and luckily we are not in Bangkok, where the situation has gone from bad to far, far worse. The red shirt leadership finally provoked the government into a confrontation that so far has left 18 dead and hundreds injured. And it's not over.
It's not clear yet how people died. In their attempts to clear the protestors out of two areas of the city they had occupied, the troops used tear gas and "rubber bullets." They don't sound lethal, but maybe they are. Four of the dead were soldiers and one was a Reuters photographer.
We are in Hua Hin staying until Monday with Simon and Poe. Then we'll go to the nearby seaside condo we rented briefly back in January. On Friday we'll return to Bangkok and leave for home on Monday night the 19th.
We flew south to Surat Thani last Wednesday and then went by car to Our Jungle House, Dick Sandler's jungle hideway tree houses at the edge of Khao Sok National Park. We liked the place a lot, but it was too hot to get up and do anything. April is the hottest month in Southeast Asia. We should have gone in January. Joe did one limestone cave excursion and a short hike. But mostly we sat and perspired. And listened to the jungle sounds: birds, lizards and insects that made noises like police whistles, Asian percussion instruments made of brass, and the shower scene music from "Psycho." Simon came down for a few days, and when he drove back to Hua Hin yesterday---six hours on excellent roads---we came along.
Now we are watching Thai TV and checking the internet for news from Bangkok. It feels unreal. The Buddhist New Year Songkran holidays have begun, and Hua Hin is peaceful. Last night the mood in the restaurant where we all ate was cheery even as the big-screen TV broadcast Bangkok mayhem in the background. Poe just came downstairs and said a friend in Bangkok reports that there are no cars on the road on Rama IV, the neighborhood we all know.
The international TV reports, especially the BBC, are so busy being "even-handed," they are missing the plain evidence that the red leadership provoked this. I am not wearing my red shirt bandana today. More later.
It's not clear yet how people died. In their attempts to clear the protestors out of two areas of the city they had occupied, the troops used tear gas and "rubber bullets." They don't sound lethal, but maybe they are. Four of the dead were soldiers and one was a Reuters photographer.
We are in Hua Hin staying until Monday with Simon and Poe. Then we'll go to the nearby seaside condo we rented briefly back in January. On Friday we'll return to Bangkok and leave for home on Monday night the 19th.
We flew south to Surat Thani last Wednesday and then went by car to Our Jungle House, Dick Sandler's jungle hideway tree houses at the edge of Khao Sok National Park. We liked the place a lot, but it was too hot to get up and do anything. April is the hottest month in Southeast Asia. We should have gone in January. Joe did one limestone cave excursion and a short hike. But mostly we sat and perspired. And listened to the jungle sounds: birds, lizards and insects that made noises like police whistles, Asian percussion instruments made of brass, and the shower scene music from "Psycho." Simon came down for a few days, and when he drove back to Hua Hin yesterday---six hours on excellent roads---we came along.
Now we are watching Thai TV and checking the internet for news from Bangkok. It feels unreal. The Buddhist New Year Songkran holidays have begun, and Hua Hin is peaceful. Last night the mood in the restaurant where we all ate was cheery even as the big-screen TV broadcast Bangkok mayhem in the background. Poe just came downstairs and said a friend in Bangkok reports that there are no cars on the road on Rama IV, the neighborhood we all know.
The international TV reports, especially the BBC, are so busy being "even-handed," they are missing the plain evidence that the red leadership provoked this. I am not wearing my red shirt bandana today. More later.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
April 6th Red shirts
A sympathetic Ronald McDonald
There is always time for durian at a political rally
This man was eating food being handed out from the back of a pickup truck. Someone is paying for the food and it is rumored to be Tahksim
The red shirts took control of three water cannon trucks that the government was to use for crowd control. Once the red shirts had them they let the air out of the tires.
Arriving at Silom
A normally bustling overhead walkway to the sky train was quiet late in the afternoon
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The aftermath as the busses with the riot police leave Silom
"Red in the land"
When the red shirts took over Bangkok's main hotel and shopping area on Saturday, the government said, Now they have gone too far! It's now Tuesday evening and they are still camped out there, all 50,000-plus of them. The upmarket malls are shut down, the streets are ankle-deep in foam plates slick with fish sauce, the few remaining guests at the Grand Hiatt and the Four Seasons are tippy-toe-ing through the debris, and both the porta-potties and porta-monks---elderly monks spraying holy water from the backs of wagons---are getting a workout. Today, according to the Bangkok Post website, the reds seized three fire trucks they said the police were preparing to use to chase them out. As if there weren't more fire trucks where those came from.
I'm writing this at 6:35 pm Tuesday, not having seen Joe since noon. I assume he got good pictures today. We went in different directions, and I THINK I saw him in a photo on the Post website photographing the reds smashing through a riot police barricade under the Ratchadamrie sky train station. And I hope he was somewhere in the vicinity of Silom Road, another major commercial area the reds had been specifically forbidden from entering, when they showed up there at one this afternoon and sent a feeble squad of 40 or 50 cops scurrying. Too late, a thousand or so cops in riot gear arrived and lined Silom Road and watched as the hooting, honking, music-blaring, yelling---"Abbisit, get out!"---tens of thousands of red shirts motor-biked and pranced by.
I happened to be there for the Silom confrontation. Some pro-red spectators encouraged me to buy a red-shirt bandana when a vendor came by. My sometime-journalist instincts said don't do this, but by good-natured popular demand I gave in and bought one, and a man tied it around my neck. I kept it on even after these folks moved on, and a well-groomed farang of a certain age (mine) came over and glared at me.
"Why do you have that thing on you?"
"Some reds put it on me, but I am sympathetic."
"See what happens when YOU want to call a policeman!" he snapped, waving his smoldering Dunhill at me.
The police, of course, were ten feet away, and would have responded, I'm sure, if I had needed their help. But I did not.
I wonder if this guy was Bill F., who wrote a letter to the Post averring that back in Chicago, were he was from, the police would know how to handle the red shirts: "You would have your skull cracked before being taken to the nearest precinct to get a beating you would never forget."
The government here is showing un-Dick Daley-like restraint, and it is admirable. But both nerves and the economy are starting to fray, so maybe this can't go on. Or...maybe it can. Where it all will end knows Buddha.
Joe and I are set to fly south to Khao Sok National Park tomorrow. It will be very hard to leave, but we will do it. The jungle wants us. We return to Bangkok April 16, then fly toward home on the 19th, arriving the 21st. Joe will get some pictures up on the blog of rampaging red shirts in the next day or two---this jungle has internet service---and later of some rampaging---what? Insects? If they come after us, practically natives by now, we will EAT THEM.
I'm writing this at 6:35 pm Tuesday, not having seen Joe since noon. I assume he got good pictures today. We went in different directions, and I THINK I saw him in a photo on the Post website photographing the reds smashing through a riot police barricade under the Ratchadamrie sky train station. And I hope he was somewhere in the vicinity of Silom Road, another major commercial area the reds had been specifically forbidden from entering, when they showed up there at one this afternoon and sent a feeble squad of 40 or 50 cops scurrying. Too late, a thousand or so cops in riot gear arrived and lined Silom Road and watched as the hooting, honking, music-blaring, yelling---"Abbisit, get out!"---tens of thousands of red shirts motor-biked and pranced by.
I happened to be there for the Silom confrontation. Some pro-red spectators encouraged me to buy a red-shirt bandana when a vendor came by. My sometime-journalist instincts said don't do this, but by good-natured popular demand I gave in and bought one, and a man tied it around my neck. I kept it on even after these folks moved on, and a well-groomed farang of a certain age (mine) came over and glared at me.
"Why do you have that thing on you?"
"Some reds put it on me, but I am sympathetic."
"See what happens when YOU want to call a policeman!" he snapped, waving his smoldering Dunhill at me.
The police, of course, were ten feet away, and would have responded, I'm sure, if I had needed their help. But I did not.
I wonder if this guy was Bill F., who wrote a letter to the Post averring that back in Chicago, were he was from, the police would know how to handle the red shirts: "You would have your skull cracked before being taken to the nearest precinct to get a beating you would never forget."
The government here is showing un-Dick Daley-like restraint, and it is admirable. But both nerves and the economy are starting to fray, so maybe this can't go on. Or...maybe it can. Where it all will end knows Buddha.
Joe and I are set to fly south to Khao Sok National Park tomorrow. It will be very hard to leave, but we will do it. The jungle wants us. We return to Bangkok April 16, then fly toward home on the 19th, arriving the 21st. Joe will get some pictures up on the blog of rampaging red shirts in the next day or two---this jungle has internet service---and later of some rampaging---what? Insects? If they come after us, practically natives by now, we will EAT THEM.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Doldrums
It's hot as blazes in Bangkok---it's that time of year---and you'd think the angry red shirts and indignant yellow shirts would give it a rest. But no. The red shirts are still camped out at Democracy Monument and threatening unspecified havoc unless the Abhisit government agrees to new elections. Face-to-face negotiations over the weekend went nowhere. A number of grenades have been hurled at government buildings with little damage and no serious injuries so far. The red shirt leaders say they can't imagine who is doing these bad things. No one knows what will happen next.
Joe's terrific pictures of Burma (below) made me wish I had quit smoking at age 26 instead of 46 so that I could have accompanied him on his treks among the Chin and Shan. What a superb adventure, and what a keen and eager soul taking it all in.
I did my visa run to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and a weekend in K-L, as the locals call it, is about right. The city is San Diego with mosques. There are said to be Islamic secret police keeping an eye on people, but I saw no evidence of that. On the monorail that loops around the city, the young people were voluble and easy-going. A teenaged girl in a Muslim headscarf kidded around with a boy wearing a T-shirt that said Beer for Brains. The Malaysians are often great-looking people. With a history of being on the main trade route from China to Europe, the former Malaya attracted large populations of Indians, Indonesians and Chinese, a real melting pot. At the National Museum, I saw a display extolling Malaysia's harmonious multi-ethnic society. Then my Malay taxi driver spent 15 minutes ranting about the perfidious local Chinese and their "monkey tricks." A highlight of the weekend was the Islamic Arts Museum. It made me want to book early passage to Samarkand, Tashkent, Baku, Cordoba.
Instead, we head home in three weeks. We have one last excursion to make, nine days (April 7-16) at the Jungle House resort that is owned by our friend Dick Sandler. It's in a rainforest near a national park in southern Thailand. We've been receiving reports of tropical rains in New England, so this will be good preparation for coming home.
Joe's terrific pictures of Burma (below) made me wish I had quit smoking at age 26 instead of 46 so that I could have accompanied him on his treks among the Chin and Shan. What a superb adventure, and what a keen and eager soul taking it all in.
I did my visa run to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and a weekend in K-L, as the locals call it, is about right. The city is San Diego with mosques. There are said to be Islamic secret police keeping an eye on people, but I saw no evidence of that. On the monorail that loops around the city, the young people were voluble and easy-going. A teenaged girl in a Muslim headscarf kidded around with a boy wearing a T-shirt that said Beer for Brains. The Malaysians are often great-looking people. With a history of being on the main trade route from China to Europe, the former Malaya attracted large populations of Indians, Indonesians and Chinese, a real melting pot. At the National Museum, I saw a display extolling Malaysia's harmonious multi-ethnic society. Then my Malay taxi driver spent 15 minutes ranting about the perfidious local Chinese and their "monkey tricks." A highlight of the weekend was the Islamic Arts Museum. It made me want to book early passage to Samarkand, Tashkent, Baku, Cordoba.
Instead, we head home in three weeks. We have one last excursion to make, nine days (April 7-16) at the Jungle House resort that is owned by our friend Dick Sandler. It's in a rainforest near a national park in southern Thailand. We've been receiving reports of tropical rains in New England, so this will be good preparation for coming home.
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