Quiet and Calm, Signifying… I have no idea

A brief followup to the last post.

Today is Protester Shutdown Bangkok Day. According to the news they are doing it in key places around the city and I have to take their word for it because it seems like a normal day in our neighborhood. Traffic might be lighter but it’s one of those things where you look really hard at something you’ve never paid close attention to before and realize you have no idea what it normally looks like and thus have nothing to compare what you’re seeing to. I’m pretty sure there’s a life lesson in there.

There was or is supposed to a march down our street and it might be going on right now. I can hear people over bullhorns/loudspeakers and lots of whistles but if there is a march it doesn’t appear to be blazing a path down the middle of the street because buses, cars, and trucks are moving in both directions. The sounds seem to be getting closer but they’re taking their sweet time and, again, hearing people over bullhorns isn’t unusual here and maybe the whistles are normal too and I’d just never noticed.

Oh, wait, it’s definitely the protest and it’s getting closer and…

I ran to the balcony and caught the heart of the protest march go by. It was a little flatbed truck with speakers and people on it but I didn’t have the camera at the ready so I missed it. And now it’s gone.

To give you a sense of how intense it was here’s a picture of our street from an hour before the march went by:

That's Phahoyothin Road there.

And here’s a picture of the street as the heart of protest went by:

See the protest marchers down there?

Here, let me zoom in a bit for you:

PROTESTERS!

Of course I’m tempted to make a joke here but I won’t because I don’t really know what’s going on or what any of this means. I haven’t seen any reports of notable violence outside of some shots fired at a building that didn’t hit any people. The military released a statement yesterday saying the recent movement of tanks and troops around the city was for “Children’s Day” (the primary gift-receiving holiday for kids here) so the kids get the joy that is seeing heavy military machinery up close. I’d find that statement laughable but I remember that joy as a kid well even though I feel none of it anymore. So, sure, tanks and heavy artillery for Children’s Day, I’ll take them at word until it seems prudent not to.

This is a textbook example of no news being good news and I hope it stays this way. Come what may we’ll have plenty of ramen, peanut butter, tea, instant caramel latte coffee, and water. All of it will be consumed in time.

On a tangentially related note, life here is different in ways so surreal and quotidian that I’m not sure I’ll be able to take stock of it all. I think this photo sums it up pretty well:

Sawyer Blur, US Citizen, raised in Eden Prairie, doing dishes in the bathtub.