Bangkok Burning

About three weeks ago, I went on the Rotary District 3360 trip in Central Thailand. It was a truly incredible week; the exchange students I was with are all marvelous people who have enriched my life by knowing them. It was also far too large of an experience to try and capture fully on this blog. I think it’s something I may reference and if I have opportunities to bring it up in other blog posts, I will. In short though, it was just damn solid trip with some excellent folks.

One of our destinations was Bangkok. Bangkok has been caught up in the heat of anti-government protests, which I’ve been alluding to without properly explaining.

I could make this post about the issues, but I would rather focus on the experience of the rallies. The only background you need is this: The current government is pretty corrupt, led by a wealthy political aristocrat. The protestors are also quite corrupt, and also led by a wealthy political aristocrat. If I had to pick a side, it would be with the government, since it supports democracy (albeit, an extremely sleazy one), while the protestors are advocating for an “unelected people’s council” (standard Orwellian doublethink).

The protestors are based in Bangkok and have a tight lock on the city. Traffic is at a standstill, and many of the government offices have been “occupied”. The streets are filled with people, and there was no way our bus could get through. Just to get to our hotel, we would need to walk past the protests.

The 3360 Rotary exchange coordinator and leader of the trip supports the protests, and decided that we should as well. Avoiding the protests would be impossible; I understand that, there isn’t a street that doesn’t have at least someone there. Buying us all flags and whistles and having us march with the protestors? That might have been avoided. Prudent or not, we were in the protests.

The first thing you notice about the protests is that there are tons of people selling random junk. Some of it applies to the situation (whistles with a Thai-flag pattern lanyard are the fashion item of the protestors), but plenty of it is just random. Clothes, toys, and nonpolitical accessories are available about from someone every twenty feet or so.

The protests are also oppressively loud. Remember the whistles I mentioned earlier? Imagine a few hundred people blowing on them. And we were far from the thick of the protests, where thousands are gathered. That said, aside from whistling, most people simply walk quietly. Slogans aren’t yelled and people aren’t discussing the issues. They just whistle.

I’ve been to one other protest in my life, Occupy MN in Minneapolis. That protest suffered from lack of unity. It was less of a protest than a place where people met to discuss politics, like some kind of radicals’ coffee shop set up in front of city hall.

The Thai anti-government protests are pretty much the opposite of that. It’s a mob. A well behaved, mostly non-violent mob, but a mob nonetheless.

The whistle makes the perfect symbol for the protestors. A whistle makes a single pitch. There is no room for subtlety, for compromise, or for discussion. There is only the shriek, then the moment of thoughtless silence encompassing it.