I'm pretty sure a Thai military coup is the best military coup a girl could ask for.

So I'm under martial law. But if I didn't have CNN I probably wouldn't have known.

I'm fine. Chiang Mai is fine. Bangkok is fine. Thailand seems pretty much... fine.

Last night I was with some friends at a bar watching a Thai classic rock cover band. On my way out of the bar I pointed out that it looked like the kids in the tattoo shop were watching CNN. Seemed a bit odd. And then I saw the older Thai hippie guy who had been drumming. I went up to him to say, "Good job!" and he started pointing to the television and sounding really upset. Here's what I got out of my conversation with him -

"Soldiers everywhere!"
"Army say to Thaksin - GET OUT!"
"TV Army all same same!"

Wha??? I figured it was worth going home and checking it out.

So going home was kind of strange.

I turned on the TV and it was the same thing on all of the Thai channels. And guess what it was....

KAREOKE! Of course. It was "We love the King" song after "We love the King" song. There was even an English "We love the King" song. I tried to video it with my camera. Pretty low quality, but I'll post it. And the radio was in sync with the TV for a surround sound effect in my apartment. Occasionally there was a person in a suit with a "We love the King" yellow shirt saying stuff. In Thai. I didn't understand.

I checked out the internet and CNN and figured out what was going on. A coup. Sounds scary, but I can't imagine a better country to be in during a coup.

Here are some reasons why everything is fine -

1) People have been hating Thaksin for a while.
2) This is the 17th coup in 60 years. The last one was 15 years ago, and it was non-violent.
3) It's military led and the head of the military is cool with the King and all the soldiers are wearing "We love the King" yellow. (This morning Erica told she read that yellow was declared the offical "Anti-Thaksin" color which seems equivalent to a group in the U.S. declaring that on October 31st all of their supporters should dress their children up in costumes and send them around the neighborhood knocking on people door's asking for candy. Kind of cheap shot, but no one's really going to have a problem with it.)
4) There were tanks outside government houses in Bangkok but the whole "takeover" happened without a gunshot.
5) CNN was showing shots of people calmly taking pictures of the tanks on their camera phones while the soldiers were probably posing for the pictures.
6) I'm 400 miles from Bangkok, and even further from Hungary, where there is some seriously scary stuff going on.

So I went to sleep reflecting on my first coup experience. Calm and musical I would say.

My friend Stacey put it nicely, in response to my news of "nothing interesting to report here besides some "We love the King" kareoke."

"I never would have thought a military-led upheaval could go so smoothly."

Exactly.

When I woke up I checked cnn.com and read that all international news channels had been cut off in Thailand. Ah! Scary!! Then I turned on the TV and watched the same story on CNN.

Hmmm...

And I heard the exchange rate dropped drastically, which I actually got excited about, but it's not even back up to 40 baht to a dollar (which is the conversion I use in my head), so I'm not even impressed. And it's already on it's way back up.

And Thai TV, with all of my Thai pop channels, is back. Thank goodness.

They declared today a holiday so banks, schools and the stock exchange weren't opened. I had a training session at AUA scheduled and that went on as planned. The electricity went out at one point but the director said, "Oh, I can promise you this has nothing to with the coup - happens all the time." And sure enough, it was back on in 30 seconds.

I have to yet to meet a Thai who doesn't totally dig the King, trust the military, and either dislike Thaksin or just not care about politics. So while a coup may have been a bit drastic, it really seems everything will be fine as long as Thaksin doesn't come back and try something stupid. And it sounds like even if he were dumb enough to try something he wouldn't be successful. Let's recap: his opponents are... the city of Bangkok (more specifically the urban middle class, intellectuals and pro-democracy activists, so Chiang Mai too) and the military. His supporters are... poor rural farmers. I really don't think he would get too far.

In other news...

The orientation I had today at AUA was really cool. AUA has a ton of really fun supplemental resources to go along with very well put together books they use. And each 30 hour course only goes through 4 units of the textbook so teachers can get creative with how they're teaching and the students really get to practice and understand what they're learning. I'm really excited. I'm glad I'm at AUA.

I made my first iMovie with some of the video clips from Cambodia.



It's a first draft. I have more dance party clips on a CD and I'm going to try to add those to it. And then maybe one from the elephants! Enjoy!

Yours safely,
Beth