Bangkok Dangerous

For two weeks prior to our trip to Bangkok to meet out American friend, we had been watching the political unrest that was covered daily on every thai news station.

We were not sure, nor are we sure even after being in the heart of it, what the problem was all about. I had read that the group of protestors dubbed the red shirts because of the red shirts they wear, were pissed off at the kingdom of Thailand for their heavy handed involvement in political matters. I had also heard their beloved leader, Thaksin had been president for some 4 years before he was banished from Thailand.

The majority Chinese heritage of Thailand was very upset with this as he was of Chinese decent. Over the past few years the political situation here with the protestors, who were the Yellow shirts last year and maybe green the year before, has grown more intense. An airport take over a few years ago and the riots just weeks before Maris and I first arrived. But never in our times in Thailand had we ever seen such a spectacle.

Our American friends were staying at ground zero for the some 100 thousand person demonstration on Rajmadamrin road. The shopping mall was shut down because of the masses, Maris was already a red shirt hater from the start with that kind of news.

There were thousands upon thousands of people from the earliest hours of the morning til the sun rose again. Many slept in their cars on the street. A lot slept on the bare pavement. They were all dedicated and seemed to be in good spirits. The sounds of yelling, chanting and some sort of Rhetoric blared from speakers all over the city. These people were EVERYWHERE. The roads were almost all completely shut down. The BTS (Sky train) was closed as they were set up below the stations rendering them pretty much useless to people who were not just their to be there and actually needed to use the system.

At first we were a bit worried, we didn’t know what they were yelling, why they were clacking their litte plastic noisemakers in unison every few minutes. One thing became pretty clear however, everyone was smiling and there was absolutely no signs of distress or violence. It looked like a giant tailgate party. We walked through the masses on several occasions with absolutely zero problems.

Everything seemed hunky dory and we were convinced it was just a big party. However, our second night there we found out that we were wrong.

We met with our friends and cruised around town a bit trying to grab some decent Thai food for their first taste of local delicacies. We found a place that served the most ridiculous food I have ever seen. Maris ordered a casesar salad that came out as ice berg lettuce covered in bacon bits and mustard. Blake ordered a mozzarella and tomatoe salad and it came out as iceberg and 4 slices of processed cheese. It was a joke and it took forever, but we took it in stride and just kind of laughed it off. The big screen TV in the back of the empty restaurant caught our attention as most of the Thai employees were now glued to it. The screen was filled with tear gas, police in full riot gear and shotguns .They were shooting people with rubber bullets and tear gasing huge crowds. We asked where this was taking place. Rajmadamrin. We all looked in surprise at each other, we had been there 30 minutes earlier, walking through without a care in the world. They changed stations on tv and we saw more of the same, red shirts hitting riot gear garbed police and coughing their lungs out surrounded in a mist of tear gas.

We stayed at the restaurant for a while, not really sure what to do. We decided after a while to try and take a taxi back towards Maris and I:s guesthouse a km from the heart of it all. Not taxi would drive there it seemed. Then we found one. He took us as far as he could before the road bottle-necked into the largest traffic jam I:ve ever seen. Everyone abandoning their cars. It still seemed to be in good spirits. We stood on a corner and soaked it all in.

We finally made it back to our place after making the walk on our own. We were safe and began having drinks and catching up. When we decided we wanted to go out for festivities we get a call from our Thai friend Ned. People were fighting on Koh Sahn road, the backpacker hang out and late night bar district we were in the night before. Hours later, we find it has been closed down, people had guns their apparently. We spend our night out having a good time, meeting new people and seeing some crazy underground thai culture. We get to one bar and a guy asks me if we had heard about what happened on Koh Sahn. I told him we had heard their were fights. 19 people were killed that night on Koh Sahn road, a Japanese journalist from Retuers, and several red shirts. It was quite shocking. What seemed like a great party got pretty damn evil when the sun went down. Each side blaming the other, accusing red shirts of using live ammunition and vice versa.

The next morning we found that they had called a temporary truece because of the blood shed. The roads were not as full as they were the past two days. The BTS slowly began opening up a long with other roads. It was a grim feeling about the city. It was a very sad experience that I will never forget. There is absolutely nothing in your life you can experience that can compared to the confusion, excitement, intensity and pure energy that comes from being in the middle of an epic political upheval in a foreign land not knowing what the hell anyone is saying and not knowing or even wanting to know which of them was right, which was good, which was bad- The only thing I was a hundred percent certain of, was that something wasn:t right. These people traveled from all over Thailand because something here has gone wrong. It was a beautiful experience that was draining and exhilarating at the same time. I hope they figure it all out, because no matter whether you are good or bad, you don’t like to see your fellow neighbors gunned down in the street.

Our first experience in Bangkok was not a good one. This one was incredible. The city was alive and even with all the insanity in the streets, it is one of the best cities in the world.