it didn't feel like a city under siege

maddy and i went into bangkok this morning. my passport was stranded at the chinese embassy (i'd dropped it off there to get a visa about a week and a half ago), and i wanted to get it asap just in case anything went wrong and i need to fix it. maddy's going up to chiang mai tomorrow (and we're headed back up again together in april for songkran), so we wanted to get some train tickets.

we got on the 7 am van outta suphan to victory monument and were in bangkok by 8:30 am. when we got out of the van, we saw a parade of red-shirt cars going down the street, cheering for the protests and inciting cheers from some people on the sidewalk. i mean cheer in the most traditional sense--think high school sports game cheering. it was happy and seeming had no malicious intentions. just like "heyyyy guys! check us out! honk if you love the red shirts!"

but maybe i'm just bad at reading people cuz later today, around 1:30 pm, some people set off some m79s at a military building. the current gov't isn't stepping down or dissolving, btw. the protestors say they're gonna pour donated blood all over a big gov't building tomorrow. not really jovial in any sense of the word. 

anyway, i'm alive. no other run ins. we stayed on the sky train/metro, got on the van back to suphan at 1 pm, and were back in our rooms by 3 pm. it's weird...this protesting stuff is scary but at the same time wildly intriguing. blasted poli sci degree for making me think about my own safety second to the political  situations.