Me taking pictures at the beginning of the protests, when they were still cheerful.
Jodi Ettenberg is a former lawyer, marshmallow enthusiast, volcano climber and world traveler. Originally from Montreal, she worked as a lawyer in NYC to save up for a serious nomadic adventure. She quit her job on April 1, 2008 and has been eating her way around the world ever since. Following 6 weeks in Burma, she is currently in Bangkok. You can follow her on Twitter or on her blog Legal Nomads.
Having spent close to two years traveling around the world, I wanted to culminate my trip somewhere quiet, somewhere where there was good food and a reasonable cost of living. Somewhere like Bangkok, where the somtam is plentiful, the clothes fit my 5 ft frame and the people lovely. Little did I know that Bangkok would be the centre of the worst political violence Thailand has seen since 1992. What started as a cheerful protest climaxed two months later with a series of standoffs, over 80 deaths and startling acts of arson.
Arriving in town in May, I found a terrific room on a quiet sidestreet near Victory Monument, in an area named Din Daeng. Living there felt like stepping into Sesame Street. The mototaxi drivers at the end of the road high-fived me whenever I passed, asking “where you go?” and what I ate that day. The street food stalls got to know me too, stuffing parcels of sticky rice and taro in with my meals when I stopped in to eat. And during Thai New Year (Songkran), the street was transformed into a gauntlet of water-soaked, whiskey-fueled madness; it took me 15 minutes to get from the mouth of the street to my place.
My street in the aftermath of the army crackdown. Photographer unknown.
By mid-May however, the change in the atmosphere was palpable. Months of peaceful red shirt protests had spiraled into a giant game of chicken, with the government imposing a State of Emergency over Bangkok and a dozen other provinces, and providing a hard deadline for the reds to leave their main stage in central Bangkok. Despite being several SkyTrain stops away from the main protest site, Ratchaprarop road near my place was a key artery through the city, and my area hosted a fierce turf war. On May 13th, red shirts built huge tire barricades in Din Daeng intersection and set them alight while the army set up its own barricade at the other end of the street. As the thick black smoke from the tire burning clogged the air, the call and answer of grenades being launched followed by army gunfire punctuated my nights in my apartment.
What's left of Center 1 at Victory Monument
And then my area was declared a ‘live fire zone’, meaning that the army was using live rounds (instead of rubber bullets) and had a mandate to shoot anything that moves. This is not speculation: dead bodies lay on Ratchaprarop road, there were patches of blood on the streets, and still the grenades and the gunfire ran through the day and into the depths of night. I fled the area on May 17th, jumping into a cab as grenades and gunfire exploded through the air. My cabbie got a heathy tip! And then in the early hours of May 19th, the military cracked down. Armored personnel carriers lined the streets in central Bangkok and began to break through the tire and bamboo barricades lining Silom road. Suddenly, the protest was over. The main red shirt leaders surrendered, protesters were herded back to their respective provinces and a curfew was swiftly imposed on Bangkok. But it did not end there: malls, banks and large shopping chains were targeted in staggering arson attacks, and thick black smoke and billowed over Bangkok for several days.
Me with army soldiers in Sala Daeng, before the crackdown.
On Sunday, I joined thousands of Thais in cleaning up the streets of Bangkok and it was cathartic to participate in the mass scrubbing of the city center. While the political animosity continues online and in the media, it was nice to see most people shelve the rhetoric and get dirty. Wednesday, I returned to my apartment and found it unscathed, with only the broken glass and charred remains of Center One mall on the corner to remind me of the chaos only days prior. And on June 15th, I will leave Bangkok and head back to North America for the summer, taking with me a series of extremely vivid memories, bronchitis caused by inhalation of the thick black smoke and a fascinating, tumultuous way to end my round-the-world adventures.
