What the hell is going on in Thailand?

First, I apologize as I am woefully behind on my trips....all I can say without boring you to tears is that I have been working HARD. So no time to even pull trip photos off my camera. I hope to find the time over the holidays to put up a couple of postings.

In the meantime, some of have heard and have asked me 'what is going on in Thailand?' Aside from the fact that there are protests and the airport closed because a particular political party disagreed with the current administration, I was really unable to share much....until now.

You see in Thailand, news is censored. Newspapers, TV, and until recently even internet sites like You Tube were blocked to "protect the people." Protect them from what???? Well, it seems that the country is not worried about its skyrocketing AIDS rate, or the sex tourism trade or the abject poverty one sees on the streets. No, they are worried about you reading something negative about the government and the king. There is a law here that prevents one from even speaking about the King or monarchy in public lest they get arrested and / or deported. And in fact, I am only recently emboldened to share this as I am moving to Singapore and also because I am writing this from a hotel room in Hong Kong. Thai government tracks all goings-on on the internet as well, so I will leave my comments brief as I like the Thai beaches and want to return occasionally.

But what I would like to do is share with you some links where you can read more. All this news in printed form is blocked in Thailand. I learned about it thorough word of mouth and was encouraged to find it online (but not to forward it as it may attract unwanted attention from the censors). Expats are speaking in quiet whispers, asking one another, "did you see the article? it was the first time I understood what was happening here."

In fact, the Economist was banned from Thailand for its thorough dissection of 60 years of the monarchy. And Newsweek also shared a pretty thorough commentary as well charatcerizing events as the brewing of a "civil war", this publication is also not available in Thailand anymore.

So, if you would like to understand more, please take a look at these links.

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12724800&source=hptextfeature

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12724832

http://www.newsweek.com/id/172612


More later. I promise.

Joanna