Good Thing You Didn't Park Your Bus in Bangkok

April 13th, Bangkok-- The first official day of Songkhran, violence erupted at the Thaksin support rallies in the Din Daeng district of Bangkok (I happened to be staying at a guest house in the Thewet district, sandwiched in between the police blockades and the khlong).
What just two days ago seemed like an emotional yet peaceful crowd of red shirts today ignited buses (supposedly retired public bus lines) and tires in order to interrupt traffic. One bus sat flaming in front of the UN, not far from Khao San Road, where tourists and residents alike were playfully splashing each other with water and fragrant powders and clay.

Whether you’re getting nailed by super soakers at the Songkhran festivities or trying to avoid burning buses, the streets in Bangkok are a little treacherous today.

Last night protesters ignored a curfew that was issued by the police earlier that day in response to the violence that erupted at the ASEAN summit in Pattaya. One red shirt snacking on fried noodles on Sri Ayutaya Road, in the main area of the protest said, “I will stay here tonight, there’s a curfew but I will stay. We will all stay—there are forty thousand of us! If we stay until tomorrow morning then we’ve won. We want Thaksin to come back. Maybe he can’t be prime minister again immediately, there won’t be a military rule like last September, but we want him to come back.”
Although police came to meet and suppress destructive and violent protestors earlier in the morning, bus burning continued until the evening. Thaksin supporters dismantled buses to prepare them for burning along Phetburi Road, and a crowd of locals crowded around burning tires that had been set on the train tracks, just a block away from the UN where clouds of black smoke were rising. Police and military marched in at around 6PM, when red shirts who had occupied a highway ramp turned violent. Protestors threw things (presumably rocks or bits of rubble from the previous evening’s protests) and gunshots were fired.
Military standing on the edges of the danger zone, many with roses adorning the barrels of their guns, cheerfully directed clay-spattered tuk-tuks loaded with Songkhran partiers unaware of the violence away from the protests.
Happy lunar new year, everybody!