With just 2 more days to go for my trip, friends are asking to change plans due to the rally against the prime minister. I am not really bothered but is it really safe or any precaution to take?
With just 2 more days to go for my trip, friends are asking to change plans due to the rally against the prime minister. I am not really bothered but is it really safe or any precaution to take?
Rustee, although your friends probably mean well, they are idiots.
Some people buy into fear and use that excuse to remain uneducated and untraveled. Pattaya during Songkran would likely be more frightening that Bangkok during an anti-Thaksin rally. Hell I'd probably carry a sign too if I were there:-) Go, and have fun,
Dboy
I think there is little probability that you would actually get caught in the crossfire or run over by a tank. Just heed the embassy warnings and stay away from the rallies if you want to minimize your chances of getting hurt ;-)Originally Posted by rustee
In my lifetime, I have known two bloody coup d'etats in Thailand. Both events come at the end of fairly long periods of serious widespread discontent. I doubt if that kind of atmosphere has developed since I last visited Bangkok. It is only a few months since the last election after all.
I was on a beach at Puerto Gallera during the rally that toppled Marcos and have personally witnessed the beginnings of (well taken the bus home from on some occassions, actually) five riots, two in the UK, one in Greece, two in the Far East. Often there is no need to be near brewing trouble but it's a good idea to know how you might get back to a stable jurisdiction if things really did blow up. In Greece only two years ago the windows of my hotel lobby were smashed and I took some tear gas through watching the event from my balcony.
Whatever you do, pay scant heed to blogs and other web resources run by drama queens. :bom:
I happened to catch both the Rodney King riots and, a couple weeks later, the May '92 uprising. The Los Angeles mayhem was certainly much more extensive in terms of property damage/loss and injury. They could have been equal in other terms.
Northstar, do your friends refuse to travel with you these days? :geek:
The adage "With friends like those ... " comes to mind. A friend of mine in Australia says he regularly fields phone calls from acquaintances in Europe who see bushfires on televison and call him up to see if he is OK - and the fires are hundreds of miles away
Don't understand the phrase "those days". Seriously though, apart from the incident prior to the Thessoloniki Summit the riots were all in jurisdictions I was living in. One was on my campus of the time and more event leading up to a sit-in removed by 300 bobbies. We kept going along to the SU to vote the sitters-in to remain. The later event was when the LIFFE exchange was attacked. I walked past the end of the street wondering what was going on. I had walked a few hundred yards from my home to get some stationery supplies and the "undercurrent" had hijacked some ecofriendly carnival.Northstar, do your friends refuse to travel with you these days?
Without telling endless anecdotes from a life in interesting times, suffice to say that my nose seems to be able to detect brittle social atmosphere and to lead me away from it.
Rustee your position is rather like saying you will not cross the Pacific because you heard there is a shark in it.
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