2 The Yellow Army

The day after we arrived into Bangkok, Harriet and I needed to make our way 300km south to a town called Chumphon in order to catch a ferry to the island destination of Koh Tao. We headed downstairs to the hotel reception to book ourselves a train.

Our guide at reception was very helpful , though her English wasn’t very good – this was often the case in Thailand. Most people speak a little English, but not enough to communicate precisely- ie “Taxi” they understand. “Will this Taxi cost more than 300 baht?”; they will not understand. Apparently (I heard from several sources) the English education in Thailand is very poor. But I digress. The woman at the counter who was trying to book us a train ticket was saying something along the lines of “no trains”. This was somewhat disturbing for us, as we didn’t fancy a 300km walk, so we asked for her to clarify- and she did so by saying “protesters No trains.”

(the next paragraph is political- those who have an aversion to politics look away now) What had happened was that the anti- Thaksin movement in Thailand - which had succeeded in sending Prime Minister Thaksin back into exile in London- was still not happy with the current government under Prime Minister Surayat, saying that it was just basically made up of Thaksin cronies. The protesters, known as the yellow army (for they wore yellow to show whose side they were on), had been clashing with police throughout the last few weeks, and taken over several government buildings, including government house. They were currently occupying these buildings, and calling on the government to resign. The army, which had overthrown Thaksin two years ago was staying put, saying they were not getting involved one way or another. Prime Minister Surayut had declared a state of emergency in Thailand, and subsequently shut down all trains running south of Bangkok. Hence, we had no easy way of us getting down to Chumpon.

So there were no trains. We had a few options. Either stay in Bangkok, get a bus that would leave at 7pm and arrive at 4am at the pier(not our hotel), or get a taxi. We took the latter –a Mr Karem drove us down in a people carrier for 4500 baht, but we rode in relative comfort, and got to sleep in a hotel.

We also got the added benefit of seeing all of the crazy motorbike antics on the road. Motorbike is the preferred mode of transport for all the family… literally. We saw a mother driving a bike, with a child on the back, and a child on the petrol tank with another child sitting on her lap. It was astonishing!