Reporter in Exile

Do it in the Road, Eat it in the Street

So I noticed foodie Evan Kleiman of KCRW in that other City of Angels has unilaterally declared May 1st Global Street Food day. Good to see America tasting some of its much-celebrated diversity. Although the hipster horde of Los Angeles may have recently discovered catering trucks serving up lengua and all-things con carne, the joys of street food are largely absent from the American diet. I'm sure health codes and dysentery dissonance are factors.

But while Americans focus on 'square' meals in carefully scheduled nutrient-consumption rituals, much of the world cruises through life grazing from stalls, booths, mobile kitchens and gutter-kettles tended by stooped oldsters.

In Thailand, street food isn't an option - it's what's for dinner. Each thanon and soi in Bangkok is lined with stalls selling trays or bags of eats-to-go. Many Thais don't cook at home and most residences lack stoves. (It's hot enough already.) Instead Thais either grab a plastic stool for a quick meal or take home plastic bags stuffed with tom yum goong, som tam and other spicy curry, noodle and rice dishes. Or one of the many, many mystery meat-on-a-stick satays, from dried squid to chicken knuckles. Dinner for a dollar.

As a longtime vegger, I can't say hyper-carnivorous Thailand's streets are the palate paradise of those in India, where a plate of Samosas ($6@Paru's on Sunset) can be scooped up fresh out of the pot for less than 10 cents. 

 

Under a plastic tarp to shelter from the monsoonal rains, revelers  during the 2010 Vegetarian Festival in Phuket, Thailand, peruse trayloads of the spiciest Vegan food I've ever tasted. (Photo: Todd Ruiz)

Abstaining from meat is considered a righteous Buddhist thing to do, but most Southeast Asians can't be bothered. In a very unscientific assessment, a 25-year-old Thai friend of mine estimated that he eats 10 pigs-worth of pork per annum. But for 10 days in October every year, yellow flags are strung above many stalls throughout the city to herald the Vegetarian Festival, a fortnight of eating je, which is really closer to Vegan. No meat, no dairy, no eggs -- also no garlic. (It may excite the senses and un-Buddhist passions!) On the southern island of Phuket, with its huge Chinese enclave, the festival takes on a mystical element with the inclusion of spirit-possessed men engaging in bloody self-mutilation and incendiary antics.

Not to say there aren't some good veg kitchens to be found. My favorite vegetarian cuisine on the planet is somewhere between a restaurant and a stall. I've been du-du-du-du-duhhh lovin' May Kaidee's cooking for more than a decade, ever since first visiting Bangkok. It is unfortunately located near the backpacker ghetto/mecca of Khao Sarn Road, but tucked around on a small soi, or alley, this is easy to overlook.

Also, the Supreme Master herself has one of her vegan "Loving Hut" restaurants about one click downriver in Thonburi, next to the Marriott. (Note: For those unfamiliar with Supreme Master TV -- check it out. Supreme network headquarters? Arcadia, Calif.)

Socking the Burma vote

TOP: Members of the Free Burma Coalition, Burma Refugee Council and other groups protested near the Burmese embassy in Bangkok on Sunday. RIGHT: Costumed "soldiers" intimidate voters trying to cast a ballot in a mock election held outside the Burmese embassy Sunday in Bangkok, Thailand.

BANGKOK -- Pro-democracy activists in Bangkok joined in demonstrations worldwide Sunday to denounce neighboring Burma's first election in 20 years as a "sham."

Reporters and Thai police outnumbered about three dozen Burmese refugees and activists, who gathered across from the Burmese Embassy to condemn both the military-led government and an election they believe is a rigged.

"We fervently hope that the vast majority of Burmese people with the right to vote ... will exercise their right not to vote," a spokesman for the Free Burma Coalition said, reading from an open letter drafted in response to the election.

Thai police stopped the protesters from approaching the embassy with a letter and burning Burmese flags.

Instead, demonstrators stomped their feet upon the flags and engaged in sidewalk theater. Two protesters dressed as Burmese soldiers intimidated and "beat" voters trying to cast a ballot for opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Protesters also repeated calls for the release of Suu Kyi, who has been under arrest for most of the past 20 years since winning the country's last open election in 1990.

International observers and foreign media have been barred from entering Burma, which the military-led government renamed Myanmar after toppling civilian authority nearly 50 years ago.

Suu Kyi, along with thousands of other political prisoners, could not participate under rules determined by the ruling junta.

Instead the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party is all but certain to win handily, despite its lack of popular support.

Burmese officials describe the election as a significant step toward restoring representative democracy. Critics say it's a naked bid to legitimize their unpopular rule.

 

 

 

 

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The Bangkok journalism scene's buzz for the past couple months has been about who succeeded in securing visas to Burma to cover the election. I know or am aware of several people able to acquire tourism visas, a not-uncommon practice the authorities clearly anticipated. The SPDC nabbed a Japanese photog today in Myawaddy, a town just across the border from Thailand, according to Irrawaddy.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand is offering feeds of what information is available from its clubhouse in the Maneeya building at Chidlom.

Clarification regarding Bangkok crackdown "field hospital" photo

It's always interesting to observe the life-cycle of an Internet conspiracy take shape. Healthy skepticism and inquisitiveness are vital to critical thinking but are best balanced by reason and inquiry. Although it may not succeed in preventing misinformation from becoming cherished folklore, I've reworded the caption for this image in my "Bangkok crackdown" gallery to read "inside the same car garage at Sarasin intersection used to hold detainees" instead of "inside a car garage at Sarasin intersection." Hopefully the preserved watermark, an inquisitive mind and translate.google will help to resolve any confusion.

 Blood and supplies mark the spot Thai combat medics tended to two soldiers and Chandler Vandergrift, a Canadian journalist, inside the same car garage at Sarasin intersection used to hold detainees.

The location, a car garage adjacent to "Brown Sugar" restaurant, served to both hold detainees and treat those injured by a grenade blast. No detainees were harmed at this location. I witnessed the blood seen in the image run from a Thai soldier whose arm was shredded by the blast.

From amid the tumult, the Bangkok crackdown in images

The surface of the planet is in flames just inside a large, bullet-punctured display window facing Sukhumvit Road.

Seeking to end to two months of protests by anti-government "red shirts" demonstrators, the Thai government fielded hundreds of soldiers supported by armored personnel carriers at dawn on May 19, 2010. Civilians suffered the heaviest casualties during the heavy urban fighting to follow, as well as one soldier and two journalists. At least 13 people were killed. Photos: Kenneth Todd Ruiz

 
Click here to view the gallery.

Denouement

 
ABOVE: Central World mall, next to the reds' stage at Rajprasong intersection, burns furiously in the aftermath of Wednesday's crackdown. RIGHT: A fallen banner for fugitive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whom the red shirts hoped -- and hope -- to restore to power. (Photos: Kenneth Todd Ruiz)
  
Difficult to find where to begin. As always with these things, it was wonderful and terrible. As a journalist, today's events will never be exceeded. As a human, it was a miserable tragedy.

Everyone knew this was going to end badly, but who imagined the reality? It was Viking opera. Everything that happened today seemed so ripe with symbolism, down to the flaming temple to Bangkok consumerism, Central World Mall.

The red movement was quashed in Bangkok, and now the capital is on fire. Insurrection spreads through the provinces. Whether completely right, wrong or somewhere in between, the poor majority of Thailand came to their affluent capital full of purpose to ask for something.  And they were crushed. Their leaders left them to burn. Hurts big and small. Just before leaving Rajprasong this evening, I spotted a dog curled up among the debris and meager possessions discarded by red shirts, waiting for an owner that will never return. In the roiling inferno of a Central World display window, the surface of a huge image of Earth was in flame

This isn't the end, but the turning of a page to an even more difficult and perilous chapter.

I'd love to post some more words and pictures and videos et. al., but too many sleepless nights preclude that from happening just now.

Scenes from Day 5, the Bon Kai pyrotechnics

After checking out the Khlong Toei market scene Monday, I headed for Sala Daeng intersection. Saw the room blown out of the Dusit Thani. Rumor-mill had it reds were targeting Room 517, where army snipers were rumored to be holed up. Made me happy to no longer be in 518, Nelson Rand's room, where I'd stopped to get some rest the day before.

Headed down Rama IV Road past the Dusit Thani along the south side of the road across from Lumpini Park. It was deathly calm, and every footfall crunched on broken glass or debris. Camp red across the street looked mostly deserted; through the barricade I could make out just a few figures moving about.

Where I was at on R4 was a terrible place to be, so I headed back toward the Pan Pacific Hotel and met some colleagues in the intersection at Sala Daeng. We went into the red camp and talked to the hold-outs there. None of the heavies were to be seen, just some random characters who pointed out bullet holes and shell casings from army fire. The Very Large Bomb was still wired up.

In fact, I had to inform the security consultant with BBC's Alastair Leithead he was standing on the det cable.

We headed next toward Din Daeng, but diverted to Bon Kai instead.

I'll fill the narrative in with these photos later as I've just heard reports of APCs heading to Silom Road. My video from Monday is much better anyway. It's 4:20 a.m. at the moment and I'm going to head out.

 

Red camp at Silom rigged to blow, picture of one of the bombs

Many of the most hardcore hardcore reds are camped behind those Mad Max-style barricades at the southwest corner of Lumpini Park. I'd spent much time there during the weeks preceding this orgy of violence, and camped there both Thursday and Friday night. By Saturday morning, most of the women and all of the children were evacuated, just leaving behind mostly the men ready to fight. Several women remained to fight or provide support as well.

The place is wired for doomsday. In this picture below, a gray det cable snakes from the center of camp to a Very Large Bomb placed inside those two tires lying horizontally.

 

Pictures from two nights in Bangkok

Here's a few captioned photos from Thursday and Friday. View the full post to see them.

Nattawut Saikua, a leader of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), spoke Friday evening near their stage in the heart of Bangkok's upscale shopping district. Less than an hour later, the attempted assassination of Khattiya "Seh Daeng" Swasdipol, a renegade Thai army heading security for the anti-government movement, sank the Thai capital into violence.

Minutes after Khattiya was shot, red-shirt guards -- who themselves wear black -- fired slingshots, fireworks, home-made rockets and explosives over their barrier at the southern end of the red-occupied zone.

Scenes from occupied Bangkok

View a larger map of the portions of Bangkok occupied by "Red Shirt" antigovernment demonstrators as of April 27, 2010.

Lumpini Park's corner is no longer a UDD outpost separate from their main area of occupation along Sukhumvit Road, it's actually connected by an unbroken expanse of red shirt tents/stalls/squats/vendors/etc. Here's the view south down Ratchdamri Road:

Stalls selling DVDs and VCDs (Not much Blu-ray in Isaan) of the April 10 violence, aka 'Black Saturday,' have sprung up and are quite popular:

Once that anti-establishment zeal takes hold, step right up and pick up a Bt30 ($0.99) People's Weapon, available in Working-Class Wood or Midnight Stealth:

Click here to continue the tour!

Hyperbole or inevitability, Thailand arcs toward civil war

Red-shirt security guards, one wearing body armor stolen from the army, watch over Rama IV Road outside of their fortified enclave at Lumpini Park. (Photo: Kenneth Todd Ruiz / reporterinexile.com)

While the Battle for Bangkok rages, insurrection has been spreading throughout the rest of Thailand. And I don't mean the multigenerational Southern uprising, which has long sought to establish an independent Islamic state. That topic opens a whole 'nother can of pad see ew.

Fueled by incendiary talk radio stations (sound familiar?), reds which have rallied and organized nationwide are beginning to take action at home, stepping the Land of Smiles toward open rebellion.

From the past week:

• Believing it carried soldiers and weapons bound for Bangkok, red shirts in Khon Kaen blockaded a military train and stole weapons from it earlier this week. They let it go Friday with 10 reds aboard to confirm  it was, in fact, heading down to the restive south as promised by the army.
• Also Friday, reds released nearly 200 soldiers they had suspected were on their way to Bangkok, but were allegedly also heading way down south (IBID) in Udon Thani, which is also in the northeastern part of the country known as 'Isaan.' 
• M79 grenades or an RPG shell set a tank of jet fuel ablaze at Suvarnabhumi, Bangkok's international airport, early Wednesday morning.
• Speaking of the restive south, Pattani is the heart of the Islamic separatist movement and capital of the Pattani Kingdom which embraced Islam soon after Thai conquest ~700 years ago.  On Wednesday a bomb attack on a police station killed a police official and injured 61 others. Bullet-pointing all the bomb attacks, extra-judicial killings and history of conflicts in the south would fill pages. I will be discussing the southern crisis in the context of Thaksin's leadership in a forthcoming post.

And rumors persist regarding billionaire bad-boy Thaksin's offers of cash bounty for demonstrators. From the sincerity and sentiments of the protesters, I'm skeptical they are only here because they're being paid or the village nai (boss) ordered them to do so. You can't buy the emotion and sincerity on display. 

However I personally heard yesterday about someone's father living upcountry now en route to Bangkok to join the reds because the fugitive, former prime minister upped his bounty. According to this person, who lives in Bangkok and is a moderate red, Thaksin has offered 100,000 baht (~$3,000 USD) to anyone who comes and joins the fight if they win and Abhisit steps down. If you die for the cause -- and victory is achieved -- your family will receive 1 million baht, or about $31,000 USD.

If true, this would certainly be an incentive for martyrdom among the dirt-poor base, but is unlikely to be the sum of their motivation.

Pandemonium as grenade attacks rip through financial district

Thai soldiers take up defensive positions immediately after a second set of grenade attacks struck Bangkok's financial district Thursday night, killing three and injuring scores of civilians. (Photos: Kenneth Todd Ruiz / Reporter in Exile)

Note: Editing video for upload soon.

UPDATES:

• Post's tally thus far is three killed, 70 injured.
• Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban just claimed on television the grenades were launched from behind the Rama IV statue, which is toward the back of the red camp at the corner of Lumpini Park.

It was difficult to tell where the grenades were landing. Urban fighting is much more confusing than out in the open. Echoes along the tall, not-so-wide street made proximity impossible to gauge. At least Tora Bora offered visibility/"situational awareness" and distinct vectors of fire. In the city, the familiarity of the environment -- the taxis and department stores, the banks and KFCs -- sets a more surreal and disorienting stage for violent chaos.

Five grenades fired from M79 launchers tore into a Skytrain station and a yellow shirt counterprotest this evening. From what we saw being loaded into ambulances, all the casualties appeared to be civilians. At least one woman looked too far gone to save. Soldiers sprang into action, stringing concertina wire across the road and rushing into staggered firing positions, but ultimately did nothing in response. Ambulances whisked in to load the injured. Saw nine or 10 bloody victims loaded onto them, mostly Thai. Tracy said she saw one farang (foreigner) woman who was injured. In the aftermath, enraged mobs nearly beat at least two people to death.

"Continue reading..." for the full story.

View from north of Silom

With about 500+ red shirts gathered across from Silom, I don't think they had the numbers to pull off an incursion into the business district. Sunday they announced a big Tuesday rally, so I'll be in position tomorrow for any developments. Let's take a tour of the other side of Rama IV Road, shall we?

"Read More" for the tour. Can I stop typing this reminder now?

South side perspective of the Silom standoff

Read the previous post for the newswriter treatment.  The scene on Silom was not only tense, but surreal. Soldiers fortified positions in public areas while office workers, shoppers and tourists streamed around them. Getting aboard the Skytrain (BTS) meant tiptoeing around slumbering riflemen and stepping over their weapons. Tactically, the BTS station is an excellent and obvious location to deploy because it is highly defensible with good visibility and elevation. Of course shutting it down for their operation would have defeated the purpose of keeping the business district wheelin' and dealin'.

Click "Read More" below for the full photo-narrative.

My first stop this morning was in New Thaksinville, which now stretches from just east of Rajprasak intersection all the way west past Siam Square to the MBK mall. Siam Paragon, Fun Center and most other businesses along that half-mile-or-so stretch were closed:

Thai soldiers secure financial district from protesters

TOP: A soldier aims his rifle toward antigovernment protesters gathering nearby as the Thai military mobilized Monday to defend Bangkok's financial district.  RIGHT: "Red shirt" demonstrators massed opposite the soldiers at the southwestern corner of Bangkok's sprawling Lumpini Park, across the street from the entrance to the Silom Road financial district. (Photos: Kenneth Todd Ruiz)

By Kenneth Todd Ruiz

BANGKOK -- Thai soldiers rushed into position this afternoon with shotguns and M16 rifles to defend the Thai capital's financial district from being overrun by hundreds of antigovernment protesters wielding sharpened bamboo staves.

Stretching concertina wire along the sidewalks and setting up firing positions along an elevated walkway in the heart of Bangkok, the army stared down demonstrators massing at an encampment across the street in a tense standoff that continued into the evening. Neither side initiated any confrontation as of 10 p.m. 

"We would like them to come to us," said a demonstrator identifying himself only as Po. "They have guns and will kill us. Maybe we will kill them. We have guns too. But they have many more."

Dressed in their signature color, the "red shirts" -- who would see fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra returned to power -- have already succeeded in shutting down the nearby commercial district and recently signaled their intent to take over Silom Road, home to Bangkok's business and financial institutions.

Their target, specifically, is the headquarters of Bangkok Bank, which protesters say is closely tied to the embattled government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiv. Several grenades have been fired at the bank since red shirt protests began mid-March.

Tensions are running high in the Thai capital eight days after 23 people -- civilians, soldiers and a Japanese journalist -- were killed in a poorly executed attempt to dislodge the demonstrators on April 10.

At least 10,000 red shirts have occupied a half-mile stretch of Sukhumvit Road, home to Bangkok's posh shopping malls. The Thai Chamber of Commerce estimates the massive sit-in could cost Thailand up to $2 billion.

Speaking from their stage erected in the commercial district, a red shirt speaker claimed Monday evening to have received leaked military plans to employ force and censorship to bring an end to the urban uprising within seven days. His claim could not be confirmed.

The United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship, or UDD, is organizing the protests with money widely believed to be coming from Thaksin's large coffers. UDD leaders are demanding the government dissolve and hold new elections immediately, and that Abhisit leave the country.

They recently rejected an offer by Abhisit to call new elections early in six months.

Most of the demonstrators hail from the disadvantaged and increasingly restive northeastern provinces of Thailand and saw Thaksin as a champion of the poor. The military deposed him in a coup four years ago. He was later convicted of fraud and corruption, and in 2008, Abhisit's government was installed after yellow-shirted middle class protesters seized Bangkok's vital airports.

Songkran in Bangkok

After an eternity spent watching my nails grow, I finally gave up on YouTube and managed to upload to Vimeo. I'm so done with YouTube.

Arrived home to Bangkok from Khon Kaen in northeastern Thailand early Thursday morning and spent the afternoon/evening touring the city. Bangkok has transformed. Little traffic on the streets usually choking with the stuff, and fewer of the infamous 'Thai smiles' to be seen. Things are tense and everyone seems braced for the next calamity.

Bangkok aftermath on Songkran from reporterinexile on Vimeo.

Todd's Tip of the Day: Heed those warnings about 'razor thieves' who gently cut into your bag and slide the goodies out. Tracy's recently replaced camera requires re-replacement after we waded through the human morasse on Khao Sarn Road.