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.