Bangkok airport

Looking back over my first post I see now I was both optimistic and a bit cavalier about the whole Bangkok airport thing. It is now only a week today before we fly out and, having seen the film on the weekend news I’ve gone from cheerfully optimistic to quite the opposite. I think the sight of thousands yellow-daubed men, women and children camping out in the airport foyer (yellow being the pro-monarchy’s colour) brought it home that this was serious. Indeed, the Thai protesters are calling it “the final battle” to get the Government sacked and one chap interviewed said “this is better than having a civil war”. Since the same protestors have been camping out in the government buildings for three months, forcing the Government to re-convene in Chiang Mai, it is fairly clear that the Thais are not the sort of people to give up easily. Don’t think “protestor” or even “rioter”. It’s more like civil disobedience a la Mahatma Ghandi. Or it would be if the pro-government supporters hadn’t started lobbing grenades at the protesters . . .

Okay, so at the time of writing the Thai courts have acted with, as the Press say, with “uncharacteristic haste” in ruling that the PM must step down over election fraud and, even more surprising, that the PM has accepted the ruling after categorically stating a couple of days ago that he would not step down. Also encouraging was the news that cargo flights would resume today. However, the anti-government protesters believe that the disbanded parties may well re-form under another name and another coalition so, “what’s changed?” they say. They do not seem in a great hurry to leave at the moment. And on top of that, airport officials say that, even if the protesters leave today, Bangkok’s airports will take at least a week to open because computer and security systems have been compromised.

So we have the situation where over 100,000 people, mostly tourists, are trying to leave Thailand and two trying to get in. I think its time to devise a Plan B . . .