Bangkok Protest Post 3 - The March

[Sunday, February 15, 2009 11am Thai Time]

So, everyone was finally gathered, the signs were ready, the truck with the microphone and speakers set, and around 9:30am the march started. It was a little less than a kilometer; from the National Assembly building to the Parliament.

In the video you'll see people carrying little flags. The red ones are farmers from the north. Green are from Isaan or Northeast. Bright green are from the South. The video gives you the best sense of the march. Below are some more pictures.

Now they are ready to move.

Here's the National Assembly building. If you look up National Assembly on Wikipedia, you can see why I was confused.

The National Assembly of Thailand or Parliament of Thailand (Thai: รัฐสภาไทย, Rathasaphathai) is the legislative branch of the government of Thailand. The National Assembly is a bicameral body, consisting of two chambers: the upper house or the Senate of Thailand and the lower house or the House of Representatives of Thailand. The Assembly was first convened in 1932 after the adoption of Thailand's first Constitution. The Assembly took its current form after the adoption of the 2007 Constitution of Thailand.The National Assembly currently meets at the Parliament House of Thailand, in Dusit, Bangkok, Thailand.

The Assembly meets in the Parliament. But this building, called the National Assembly building is really something different. This is part of

Dusit Palace Bangkok

• Dusit Palace is the name of the compound of Royal residences constructed in European style and built between 1897 and 1901. These were originally called Dusit Garden by King Rama V and later Dusit Palace by King Rama V1.

One of the 16 palaces is the building in the background below - sometimes known as the National Assembly, the Throne Hall, and The Ananda Samakhom (Anantasamakom)







I found it amusing that the entrance to the Parliament is across the street from the entrance to the zoo.

All along the wall of the zoo, each section has a picture of an animal painted by Thai students. It was really kind of neat.

I had to keep myself as separated from the march itself as possible. I had my camera and was documenting it, but told people who offered me flags to carry that I wasn't allowed to do that. And I turned down one reporter's request to interview me. I was the only white face in the crowd and one of the few I saw all day, even there in Bangkok.

This is one of the protesters from the Bangkok slums. I met her at the meeting in Petchabun. She is very articulate with a great sense of humor.

And there were vendors - especially across the street along the wall of the zoo.
This cart is selling somtam (spicy papaya salad) and barbecued chicken, Northeast specialties.

It's about 34 Thai Baht to the dollar these days.

Bangkok Protest Post 2 - Getting Ready

Finally, the signs were coming out. Some had to be put onto poles.

The pickup with the loud speakers - a necessity in Thailand - arrived.

One of the issues my organization is working on is the rights of farmers living 'in the forest.' There are a number of different situations. This man is making the point that while they have designated where he lives a forest area, he and his family planted all the rubber trees that the Government claims is a forest.

This is a student from Ramkamhaeng University here to see what was happening.

U-Mong Creek Nature Walk, Chiang Mai

[Saturday Feb. 14, 2009, 9pm Thai time]
Behind Wat Umong (on the south side) is a Wildlife Reserve. There are some birds and deer in cages/enclosures, some picnic areas, and cabins. You can also take the nature trail that is maybe 3 or 4 kilometers round trip.

You can get there two ways.

First (blue trail thru Wat Umong on the map), if you walk through the Wat grounds to the fish feeding lake, turn right and follow the trail around the lake to the other side and then the road out of the Wat grounds. Turn right and go up the hill just a bit into the reserve.

Second, (White route on the map) if you stand at the main entrance to Wat Umong looking out to the street, turn right and right again at the three way corner. Then go until the houses on the right turn into an open country (well, it is fenced in) and the first road on the right has a sign that even says wildlife reserve in English as well as Thai. Go up this road (the one you'd get following first option above.) This road is no more than five minutes by bike from the entrance of Wat Umong.


Once into the reserve grounds, keep walking up the road. You can get to the trail head a couple of ways. We went up the road and then to the right past a place they put out food for the deer.

There were a couple of deer there feeding as we came up the unpaved road.

The trailhead is pretty clearly marked. There's another little sign - you can probably see it better if you double click on the picture - between the two trees on the right. (Tne one on the far right has two trunks veed).

Here's a view a little ways up the trail. There were lots of birds though not really close enough for my little Canon powershot. We did see a pair of black crested bulbuls - striking with their black heads and bright yellow bodies. We saw a large bird of prey circling high above, what I think are malkohas, with their long, long tails, a racket tailed drongo, and some others we couldn't identify. It's the dry season now and leaves were falling from the trees the whole way, which makes it a little easier to find birds in the trees.


The trail isn't too well defined, especially now when the ground is just covered with leaves.

This is thorny tree was about 8 inches in diameter.

And this little butterfly patiently held its wings open as I worked to get it in focus.

This is a nature trail and there are a few signs identifying trees like the one on the right of the picture. That was one way we were certain we were still on the trail. But this was the last sign we saw. The trail got iffier. Eventually we weren't sure if we were on the trail or not and I decided we needed to veer to the right and get down to the creek.

Somehow, as we went right, we found what was clearly the trail again.
It was luck. But it does appear that there is a fence around the reserve (there was one where the trail crosses the creek at the top) so possibly if we'd gone further up, we'd have hit a fence and there was a path along the fence at the creek. But no guarantees. Can you see that there is a trail there to the left of the tree on the picture above? This is near #3 on the map.

Here's J catching some zzz's where the trail crosses the creek.
There's a rock slope that is probably a nice waterfall in a wetter
season than now. Today it was a pretty shallow and mild creek.
This picture and the next several are at #4 on the map above.

The water in the creek was crystal clear. Can you see the shadow of the water spider? It's below and to the right of the center of the picture. It's a cluster of five little dots.

These are the same damsel fly, the one on the left is the true color,
the one on the right you can see more details. It's about 3 or 4 inches long.

For the most part, the many beautiful butterflies were impossible to capture with my camera. But this one was very cooperative and I was fast.

Each of these flowers is about 2.5 inches long.

And here's J showing how big teak leaves get.

And here we're back at the bottom and off the nature trail. This is at #5 on the map.

This sign says, basically, that wild animals of all kinds love life just like you.

And a few blooming flowers at the end of the hike.

This last flower wasn't really on the hike. I saw it on someone's garden wall on the way home. But if I don't stick it in here, where would I put it?

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.