Bangkok, Thailand 3-20-2010

Breakfast in Cambodia, lunch in Bangkok. Nice. It was only an hour by air to Bangkok. Upon our arrival we were met by a guide to get us safely to our hotel. He did. Along the way we saw many police barricades for the protesters in the famous now red shirts. One year ago when we were here there were maybe a few hundred of red shirt people at the very most. This time, there were THOUSANDS. Not even exaggerating this time! We had gone across town by Tuk-Tuk exploring and when we were ready to come back to the hotel, we needed to cross the bust street. There was a cross-over, so we walked up the stairs and started walking over the bridge to the other side. In the distance we could see and hear the red shirts. They were headed our way by the thousands and they would be passing underneath us. These people have been unhappy with the election results for over 3 years and they may have finally gotten to a point where they are being heard. THOUSANDS of people obviously make a large sound. They had horns, bull horns, speakers, truck loads of people, old people, children, adults...all in red shirts. They were not rioting, they were just protesting and making a statement. We were safe. We stood on that bridge and watched the red shirts ride underneath us and literally at one point it was as far as you could see in one direction, red shirts and as far as you could see in the other direction red shirts. Quite the sea of red! We were able to enjoy the peaceable protest from a high perch and sort of enjoy the experience. Not that we are taking sides of the politics here in Bangkok, but it was nice to see first hand what was on the TV and it really was not the same. We did not see any violence, there could have been in other parts of town and we never saw any police officers. It was more like a parade. People that supported them were coming out of their homes and waving red rags in support of the red party, I guess and hollering out. The local cab drivers keep red rags in their cabs to wave out their windows just in case they get in the middle of a protest and the red shirts will leave them alone if they think they are part of their efforts! Today, Sunday, many people have the day off. There will most likely be a huge splash on CNN about it. We leave Bangkok in about one hour, or at least our group of four does. We may see some things heating up on our way out of town but we were able to see it all and enjoy the Bangkok experience, in a much different way. Today's headlines in the paper said "Tens of Thousands Join Red Shirt Convoy". Then there was a huge photo of them. 7,000 vehicles and 65,000 thousand people is what the paper said. We saw at least that many just where we stood. The government may have down played the number a bit!