Bangkok Protest Post 1

I'm slowly making sense of what my organization is doing and what the protest in Bangkok on Wednesday was about. I've been working at this since my three month stint here last year so I have a little head start this year. But doing all this stuff in Thai leaves me feeling like when you just wake up and you try to remember a dream. You feel it, but it's just beyond your grasp.

On the bus ride from Kamphaengphet yesterday I tried to write down my understanding of the key land reform issues. I shared this understanding with my boss today and he suddenly had this great idea - to send me a copy of the affiliated groups' objectives in the land reform policy written in English.

I've read some of it and have some thoughts about it, but want to go over it more carefully over the weekend. I think that basically I agree with what they are trying to do and I have confidence that the people I'm working with and those others they are working with whom I haven't met. But I think like any group, they have blindspots because they hang out with people who agree with them fundamentally. Those who disagree are the opponents. But then there are people like me, who are friendly, but don't have all the details they have and so when I read their documents - in English - there are places where I have serious questions.

I'll get to that in a later post. Let me at least start this chronologically to get this protest story out here. We are getting into the field burning season and so the sky has an LA like quality and the sun is a big red ball as it sets in the haze. And it becomes a natural clock that helps me keep some sort of rhythm to track the passing time.


We got into a pickup truck about 5pm and headed south. We had a couple of farmers with us already and were headed to pick up about ten before we headed for the bus. Mr. Delak is in the back on the right. He's the man who demonstrated how to make a cool head covering from his pakima in a previous post.

Off the main highway, we went down little back roads
to get to the villages where the farmers lived.

And then, in my distorted mind, we arrived at a combination of a parking lot and empty lot, where a large bus was waiting. I could imagine this being like UFO believers meeting out in a remote place to go to their rendezvous with the aliens. But we were just gathering together to drive to Bangkok. It was nice to see different familiar faces from Pethabun and the meeting at Wat Pa Dara Phirom.

Every now and then we stopped at gas stations for pit stops.
They all had large bathrooms, pretty clean. Some even had shower facilities.
And dogs lying around in odd places.

As it was getting light in the morning we got into the urban space that is Bangkok.

And finally we pulled up at the Rama V statue at the National Assembly. There were so many people there already. I was thinking this was pretty amazing. But it turned out that most of the people were graduates from last year who were finally having their ceremony and this was the spot to celebrate.

Here's our bus with people pretty much off and the National Assembly in the background.

And here are some of those graduates hamming it up. The red license plate says "Complete 2551." 2551 is last year on the Thai calendar.

And there were lots of vendors to supply people with everything we needed and lots we didn't.

And people waited for the others to arrive. We were from the North.
People were coming from the North East, the South, and Central Thailand.

There were even mechanical bald eagles whose wings flapped.

There were flowers for the graduates.