The Red March

Yesterday was the start of the Redshirt influx. The police in military were out in force, standing guard on bridges and there were officers in riot gear in front of almost every bank. There was an noticeable increase in people wearing the color red, but there didnt seem to be anything big going on.

At 5pm I got in a Workpoint studio van to go film a reality show for the weekend. We were originally going to fly to the south of thailand, but because of the redshirts they decided to avoid the airport and drive. Its a long drive, but the Workpoint people took good care of us. They had soda and water in the back of the van and we stopped every couple hours to eat and/or use the bathroom (all food purchased by them) it was becoming pretty fun. At Hua Hin we stopped at a night market, and i could tell that the producers were stalling for something. Soon we found out the bad news. The support van, carrying the cameras and crew, broke down and there was no way to find a replacement van or a mechanic. We had to turn around and head back to Bangkok.
They hope to try to film again in another 2 weeks or so. It was a major bummer, but on the bright side i did get my headshot and resume infront of a few different people at the studio, which never hurts.
The producers of the show felt really bad that they had to cancel on us, and durring the ride back Tong, the producer, discussed the different credits on my resume, so hopefully it worked to my advantage since i got a free interview out of it.
Comming back into bangkok there were police checkpoints to check vehicles for anything suspicious with the rally starting. Out of the three checkpoints I saw, we got stopped at all three. When the van got flagged to the side about 20 security workers surrounded the van and had us open the doors and roll down the windows. Once they saw farang in the back they quickly waved us on and even joked about it saying "oh you can put your red on now".

Luckily my weekend isnt completely blown as Brette is in bangkok for the weekend (you might remember her from my posts on The Trek). She arrived early afternoon today, and it was really fun to show someone around. She wanted to see the malls, so we took her on the grand tour of MBK, Siam Discovery, Siam Central, Siam Paragon and Central World.

taking the taxi through the city we saw tons of redshirts, and military. There were roads blocked off, and people waving flags. It was kind of exciting. When we were walking from Paragon to Central World an ad hoc parade of Red Shirts drove by the malls, honking their horns and waving flags and yelling. They came on motorcycles, in the backs of pickup trucks, and even full buses. The mall managers and security stood nervously outside watching the passing commotion, obviously hoping that they would not stop in front of their establishments.

Durring the ride back to the apartment we saw even more redshirts congregating. So far nothing bad has happened in the city. Tomorrow is the day of the big rally. It will be interesting to see how it goes.