Thai travels week 7; Back to Bangkok

I just arrived in Bangkok (48 hours ago) after about a month in what my American friends call the Boonies. I have got very used to being besides lakes and rivers, jungles and temples, the croaking of frogs, the scent of charcoal and jasmine. But now a time for a little change. I didn’t see any of Bangkok in my first visit here (almost seven weeks ago). Jetlag, a demanding conference schedule (and meeting interesting conference people) and a couple of pressing work deadlines that I bought over from Belgium saw to that.

Bangkok is a city in turmoil. The Shutdown Bangkok campaign is in full swing. My first stop (my mini bus from the countryside terminated there) was Victory Monument – the epicentre of the protests. The mood was very laid back. The protestors had taken over the square but the traffic was still circulating. Not so elsewhere. The taxi I took had to drop me about I km from my destination, as the protestors had completely closed the road. The vibe walking through the crowd was good natured. The protestors are friendly, smiling, listening to speeches and music. There are thousands of people camped out under the route of the sky train, many selling T shirts, whistles, snacks etc. They are well organised. Barricades across the streets, security, first aid centres, mobile toilets etc. etc. They’ve taken over ( I think) seven major intersections in central Bangkok, causing some disruption

The police and military are just standing off and letting the protestors protest. I’m struck with the contrast with the Occupy the City and Wall Street movements. In one sense it feels like Thailand is a mature democracy - in that it tolerates peaceful demonstrations that are disrupting the life of (large parts of) the city. But English language Thai papers (who are largely sympathetic to the protests) also see a failure of governance.

I’m not going to try to explain the politics behind it all as I only half understand them. The protestors claim to be pro-democracy and anti-corruption, but will boycott the elections (scheduled for early next month) and have tried to impede the candidate registration process. They know they can’t win an election, which begs the question how pro-democracy they actually are. In recent days there have been a couple of grenades thrown into the crowd, seemingly in an attempt (but no-one knows by whom) to incite violence, but the crowd have remained good natured. Some say the whole place will go up in flames sooner or later, but I‘m hoping a) that won’t happen and b). I will be out of here by the time it does.

I lost my camera in Sangklaburi. I left it on a bench in the middle of a mela – I went back to retrieve it five minutes later but it was already gone. As a small ‘everyone knows everyone’ community I was hoping that it might come back to me with a little local networking. But alas that didn’t happen. I don’t know if I am more pissed off about the cost of replacing the camera (which I did today) or the loss of about a week’s worth of amazing jungle and temple photos. Anyway normal photo-reportage will shortly be resumed. Guess I will have to go to back sometime soon to catch those shots again (and share a banana dacquiri with Jimmy!). 