NEWS FLASH: Military Coup in Bangkok 4 blocks away
Tuesday, September 19th, 2006
I was woken up by a text message from the wife of an AP reporter that tanks were rolling down the street and a state of martial law had been declared in Bangkok. This is a great picture! If u blow it up, you can clearly see a Tuk Tuk speeding past the tank. These guys are fearless in normal traffic, but it seems they don’t even care if there is a tank in their way.
I got up to watch BBC World report with Tanks rolling down the street only a few city blocks away from where I’m staying. Shortly thereafter, the TV screen went blank and a message came on the screen that said due to Sun Spots, coverage may be temporarily disrupted. Pretty funny. It’s been an hour and nothing has come back on yet. Now they’ve blocked all the “Farang” satellite stations, not just the BBC. The Thai stations all have the same guy on talking about something in Thai. I wish I could understand what the hell he is saying. Now they’re broadcasting file footage of the King and playing patriotic songs from the last military coup 15 years ago.
They haven’t blocked internet access yet, so I’m still up to date on what’s going on. But I’m sure as hell not sticking my head outside to see what’s going on. I look too Thai for that sort of thing. There was an eyewitness that said, “We saw a group of blokes bundling a cameraman and another chap into a van. We are taking photos, but not out in the open.” Probably not a good idea to go out and get some shots for my blog. May we live in Interesting times, eh???
This may sound a bit selfish, but I’m almost out of Thai Baht so I hope the ATMs still work. But on the bright side, this kinda news should really crash the value of the Thai Baht even worse than the US Dollar has crashed in the past year. If I can find an ATM that works, I should get a pretty good exchange rate tomorrow. I just looked on Yahoo, the Baht is trading down 1.5 percent already in the States and should really crash when the Asian markets open in the morning. I just may get the prices I remember from Thailand 13 years ago if it crashes the economy tomorrow. More to come as news develops… as long as they don’t cut my internet access
Well… it looks like the coup has been a success as of 2am local time. Martial law has been declared and they’ve occupied the offices of the PM, who now all of a sudden is not sure if he’s coming back or not. At least he has a few properties in the UK that he bought from ill gotten gains while in office.
This is amazing! I just looked up martial law on wikipedia and they’ve already updated their site to include today’s coup that happened less than 3 hours ago. Martial_law#Thailand
Well… I’ve just been outside with the break of day and it seems fine. Shops are opening and busses are running. Since I’ve never been awake at this time before, I have nothing to compare it to, but my friend says that it’s VERY quiet compared to a normal morning in Bangkok. But there is no panic or even a sense of urgency in any of the locals. For the first time since I arrived in Thailand, I took my passport out with me though just incase there were checkpoints.
Kane