Protest Thai Style

So far we have wandered around: 1. the garrison of protesters taking over the government building, 2. the euro travel street (now named Bourbon Street Thailand by Nat) and 3. the Patpong sex district. Only the first one was worth seeing.

Natalie already did a good job describing the kindness of the protesters but I wanted to add a couple of things.

First, they are insanely clean. Everywhere we walked there were people eating and drinking water, but you would be hard pressed to find an empty bottle or styrofoam food container laying around the ground. In the middle of one of the speeched that everyone seemed to be paying attention to. there were still 4 or 5 people in one area sweeping the dirt off of the main walk.

Second, they were a pretty mixed bunch. Old and young seemed mixed together relatively well and if there were divisions a la Move On and ANSWER during the gulf war you couldn't tell from looking at the signs.

Finally, it's sort of a weird mix between the actions of the protesters and the opions of the folks around them. It's not a bunch of long haired hippy types protesting and the establishment folks having at best a muted response and at worst Bill O'Reily type anger. Yesterday a group of doctors refused to treat the policeman injured in the tear gas incident because of the thuggish tactics. The day before two pilots for Thai Airlines refused to fly with members of parliament on board their plane. I keep trying to imagine what would have happened if people had taken over Capitol Hill and then there was a mini-scale riot just trying to push them back to the grounds they had already been holding for a month. Hard to see public opinion (much less doctors and pilots putting their jobs on the line) on the side of the protesters.