Week 22, Thailand
OH BOY: things are getting strange. It was last Friday, as I was leaving my last class, that I heard a low whining sound, like a long "Eeeeeeeeeee".
Hmmm, I thought.
I rounded the corner, still with the "Eeeeeee" buzzing in my head, and saw down the other end of the corridor one of the Thai teachers running toward me at full pelt. She was making the low droning sound, and, with a look of panic in her eyes, spat one word at me as she passed:
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemergenceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...."
Hmmm, I thought.
I continued down the corridor, walked into the staffroom, which was mysteriously empty and looked like it had been deserted hastily. I slumped behind my desk and looked out the window at an empty playground. I heard a stamping of feet, and a Thai teacher racing down the stairs spotted me through the doorway. She rushed in.
"We must go home!" she cried, "School is being evacuated!"
"What? Why?"
"There is a mop!" she cried.
"A mop?" I asked, confused. She took my repetition as evidence that I had understood.
"Yes! A mop is coming toward the school! We must go!"
"A mop?" I asked again.
"Yes, an angry mop!"
And with that she fled. I sat, shuffled some papers, thought about going home and then what the teacher had been saying finally hit me: Oh, an angry mob. Oh. I grabbed my things and ran full pelt toward the front gates, pushing children out of my way and making a low "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" sound.
In the end that turned out to be a false alarm; there was rioting and a lot of injuries but it didn't come within 500m of my school. But things were obviously on the slide so Edie and I decided to bust out of Bangkok for the weekend, trying to flee the angry mops, head down to the beach for some much needed R & R. But the PAD, in its protests, shut down the trains, the buses, and the planes, and we found ourselves trapped inside the city.
If you can't beat them, join them. The next day Aaron and I headed straight into the mouth of the beast, heading out to Government House to hang with the protesters behind their crudely built barricades of car tyres and old bicycles, their tinny loudspeakers and their ratty tents and sweaty headscarves. It was exciting, though we felt a bit like outsiders having made the ill-informed decision to come wearing black (the protesters are almost exclusively decked out in yellow, which isn't the greatest fashion statement but is quite a thing to behold). We made it all the way into Government House itself, allowed through a small breach in the gates by a couple of smiling protesters, to where hundreds more people of all stripes are permanently camped out in a bid to bring down the government. It was there I got a phone call from my mother.
"Uh...Hi mum."
"I'm just calling to make sure you're safely away from all this unrest that's going on."
"Ah, actually..."
"Actually?"
"Actually, I'm at the protest now."
"No you're not."
"Yes I am."
"No you're not."
"Yes I-"
"No, you're not, because you're not that stupid. And even if you were that stupid, you're definitely not stupid enough to tell your poor mother that that's where you are..."
Some of the protesters were obviously a bit suspicious that we were reporters; some asked us bluntly and others fled with a nervous laugh if we asked too many questions. But on the whole they were very friendly, wanting to involve Aaron and I in the story of what was going on, showing Aaron photos of the riots, shaking our hands and just generally being pretty cool guys and girls.
Since then, of course, things have progressed downhill. The police, who have maintained a permanent presence near the protest since it began in May, mysteriously disappeared on Monday night, just in time for an angry pro-government mob to clash with the PAD, in the course of which fighting several guns were fired, fifty-odd people were wounded, and one man died. The PM announced a state of emergency several hours later; the PAD announced a civil war (later retracted); the army general was placed in control of the city; our schools were closed down; and we are now banned from having public gatherings of more than five people. Good times.
In the meantime, in a bid to end our boredom, Edie and I have been catching buses all around Bangkok. The buses - crusty, ancient clattering machines with wooden floorboards and large open windows - were always a bit of a mystery to us, their destinations in Thai script whizzing by us before I could decipher them ("Uh...that says Pa-ra...Is that a G or a D? Um... Pa-ra-ga- Oh shit it's gone...") but in the last couple of weeks they've opened up a new world to us, taking us to places almost impossible to get to without a stiff taxi fare otherwise. We catch them to places we don't know, to buzzing night markets and streets filled with cut flowers, to bridges filled with giggling high school students hanging with their friends, to Chinatown and Little India, where we eat sickeningly sweet Punjabi lollies and stuff ourselves on chapati. It's a whole new side of Bangkok, and I find myself falling back in love with the city, almost in spite of myself.
I'm pretty sure things will settle in the next week, though I've been saying that for more than a week and it hasn't happened yet. But the army's in control now, and once they decide on which side of the fence they fall, it'll come to a head fairly quickly, for better or worse, I think. Until then, we have only to avoid the angry mops and pray that our schools remain closed. And practice lying to our mothers.
Lachie
