Trouble in Bangkok, continued

Yesterday, 19 May was a difficult day in Bangkok. The government authorities began their crackdown on the Red Shirt protesters at 5:45am, and by the time we went to bed at midnight, it seemed that half of the city was on fire.







All of these pictures were taken from our apartment building, some from our apartment windows, others from the roof.

Later in the day, some of the fires were out, but one huge fire continued to burn. Central World, a massive shopping complex that is said to be the second-largest mall in southeast Asia, was fire-bombed by some of the Red Shirt protesters as the government security forces moved in.




The Red Shirts had camped outside Central World for six weeks without so much as scratching a plate glass window, but just as two of their leaders were surrendering themselves to police and telling their supporters to go home, it seems that some more radical followers decided to leave a token of their frustration and anger.

Major news websites will have their own chronology of the day's events. For us, the day was spent shuttling from the TV to the roof of our building to the computer for e-mail and Internet updates -- all while trying to work from home. Social networking sites in Bangkok, like Twitter, were a good source of up-to-the-minute information, but we could never be sure what was accurate. The Embassy also sent out regular bulletins throughout the day. A nighttime curfew was put into place yesterday; it extends through Saturday.

The three of us are fine here in our apartment. Unlike many others in the city, we did not lose power yesterday, and our TV signal was only out for a couple of hours. Soldiers blocked entrance to our street yesterday, and this morning Jennifer saw a group of soldiers resting right in front of the gate to our building.


So we are still at home, working as best we can through our remote access to office e-mail, and waiting for the situation to improve. It's a sad time for Thailand.

Here are pictures of yesterday's events from the Boston Globe's Big Picture.

Impressions of the day and background and analysis from BBC World News.

Short analysis from Slate.

Long analysis from Foreign Policy, with pictures.

A map showing events here; our apartment is just off of Sukhumvit 3.