Blood in the Streets

Red-shirt activity picked up over the last couple days. The protesters scored a big PR victory this morning by pouring a few liters of a blood-like liquid into the prime minister’s driveway. Last night they did the same thing outside his office.

There’s lots left over—some reports suggested that as many as 50,000 people stood in line under a hot sun in order to donate 10cc each. No matter whether it gets used for anything else (somebody said an artwork is planned), the stunt made a big splash.

It worked on several levels. Blood’s color matches the protesters’ shirts. It symbolizes sacrifice. The spilling managed to recall countless previous struggles in which people gave up their lives, but it did so nonviolently. Newspapers all around the globe put the story on page 1.

Most likely this drama was dreamt up by well-paid image consultants. If so, they know their audience. The photo op began with a ceremony conducted by a white-shirted Brahmin priest, whose black-magic incantations I’m told appeal to the red shirts’ rural base. (The photo at right was stolen from a news website—I wasn’t there.)

Yesterday’s blood, which had been mixed with anticoagulants and plenty of disinfectant, was quickly mopped up by dozens of workers who were standing by, dressed for the party in biohazard gear. Today, buckets of rain happened to fall just as the protesters were emptying their liter bottles on the prime minister’s fence.

Health professionals were dismayed by the waste. Others said the displays would ultimately hurt the red shirts’ chances of achieving the power shift they say they want. To me the whole performance seemed like a big win.

Million Man March?

Things have been pretty quiet politically in Thailand, at least on the surface. No big protests, no elections to serve as flash points, no sign that the king’s health is any better or worse (he’s been in the hospital for nearly six months straight, suffering from what are always referred to in the press as respiratory ailments).

A couple weeks back the high court handed down a long-awaited decision on the seizure of Thaksin’s assets, many of which have been frozen in Thai banks ever since the coup that ousted him as prime minister. We’re not talking about chump change here—the sum under consideration was in the neighborhood of $2.3 billion.

The court’s judgment was very Thai. It split the difference. In essence the verdict was to let Thaksin keep his pre-prime-minister money and let Thailand keep his post-prime-minister money. What this does is make the country a tiny bit richer and Thaksin a tiny bit poorer. What it doesn’t do is heal the political divide in Thailand. No matter which side you fell on before the decision, you still have basically the same complaints after the decision.

Hence this weekend’s latest in a series of “final showdowns,” attempts to rally wearers of one shirt color or another in support of a new government. One such showdown by the yellow shirts, at the airport 15 months ago, achieved the desired result. Now it’s the opposition red shirts’ turn. They threatened to tie up traffic at several points around the city. People took them seriously: everyone worried enough on Friday about clogged roads that many offices, including mine, urged everyone to go home at noon.

The next day, the streets and sky train seemed eerily empty, as if people thought they might get caught in some kind of crossfire if they went out. At the restaurants where I ate lunch and dinner, the staff were delighted to finally see customers. The rallies, which were held far from where we live, reportedly attracted nowhere near the million people that organizers hoped for. Maybe a million people were scared into staying home and off the streets?

Trust in Allah But Tie Up Your Camel

This is a story about suspicion.

It takes place on a Saturday morning in Bangkok. Thai post offices close at noon on Saturdays. I show up with five minutes to spare. My fat manila envelope is addressed to a nice couple in Seattle. These folks have told me in past letters that they’re stamp collectors.

I ask the guy at the window not to use the postage meter like they usually do these days. “My friends like to see the Thai stamps,” I say. He weighs the envelope and lets me know how much. His colleague stands near the door, waiting to lock up.

“All set,” he says, handing me my change. Only problem is, he hasn’t put on the stamps yet. Paying for stamps in Thailand isn’t a guarantee of getting stamps. Somebody told me once that you shouldn’t leave the counter until you see the postmark applied.

I’m thinking: should I stall?... nobody is behind me in line… I’m the last customer… If I hang around, it’s going to look pretty obvious that I don’t believe this guy is honest… yet I should verify... I want my friends to get this package, which took a while to put together… and the price wasn’t cheap.

I bend down and reach into my backpack, pretending to look for something, hoping he’ll start reaching in his drawer for the stamps. Instead he gets up, walks over to another window, and starts talking to the guy who’s totaling up that till. Now I’m sure I’m being cheated. They’re probably all in on the scam. The one near the door signals that the office is getting ready to close.

Next I fumble with my reading glasses, as if I need to get them sorted out before I move along. The stamp seller returns to his window and fumbles with something I can’t see, as if he needs to tidy up his desk before he moves along. Nobody says anything. I feel like all eyes are on me. The word in Thai for “postmark” escapes me, so I don’t ask.

Just as I’m about to stand up and demand to see my package, he holds it up. Every square inch, except the places where I wrote the addresses, is covered with stamps. All of the denominations are different. There are no duplicates. It suddenly hits me that the guy had gone over to his buddy’s window to get a few different issues to add to the diversity.

I’m standing there feeling like dog crap as I look at his artwork. It’s a beautiful gift from a Thai civil servant to a couple he has never met on the other side of the planet. We both smile really wide. No hard feelings.