The dat after the coup in Bangkok
Mood:  don't ask
September 20, 2006
Udon Thani, Thailand

We live just West of Udon Thani’s Ring Road. These are my notes from the day after the coup in Bagnkok.

I had a dream...

Since the advent or Marshall Law, our house was seized and is being used as a base of operations for military patrols around our village just to the West of Udon’t Ring Road. The living room is the commander's office by day, and the Charge of Quarters operates out of it at night. Our family has been forced into the tin shack in the otherwise vacant lot across the street, but they won't let us go.

My wife has been forced to cook for the military unit day and night. She prepares five meals a day to accommodate the different shifts. The kitchen is a mess. As soldiers return from patrol in the early hours of the morning, they wake her up to make coffee and noodles. She gets very little sleep and I am afraid that her grades may suffer.

Her sister does the unit's laundry and cleans the bedrooms, which 35 troops sleep in by shifts, and she only gets 3 or 4 hours sleep each night. Her fingers are so waterlogged from the constant washing of clothes, that her skin barely hangs on her fingers.

I have been pressed into service to assist the unit's communications and quartermaster officers. Since I don't speak Thai, things haven't been going very well. There are still fourteen pillowcases unaccounted for, and if I can't come up with them pretty quickly, they will recover the cost by cutting my meager rations.

We don’t get enough to eat, and supliment out diets with roots and insects from the vacant lot next door. Yesterday, one of the soldires caught my wife’s sister eating a beatle and he took it away from her and scolded her stearnly. Water is scarce in this part of town, so we get by with captured rainwater.

We have executed papers that hand the house over to the Army, and as I am a foreigner, they have confiscated all of my personal possessions that might be of value and my bank accounts, leaving me merely the clothes I stand up in. They do allow me use of one of my computers during my assigned sleeping time.

We have not seen the motorcycle since that first fateful day, but frankly I am so exhausted I really don't care anymore.

The lizards in the yard have all been captured and barbecued, and the papaya tress were stripped bare on the first day. Neighbor's dogs have been disappearing, but I hope that is because they are being kept indoors by their masters.

There is promise that nightmare will end. Within two weeks, a civilian government will be installed, and a democracy designated by the military's appointees will begin to operate in a little over a year. By then, the bank accounts of all foreigners and foreign companies will have been debited to pay for their individual liabilities incurred in support of the former Primer Minister and other crimes against Thai society, and the foreigners, no longer having long term visas or bank accounts will be ejected from the country, only being allowed to return on limited short term visas. The sole exceptions will be those foreigners who can pay for the very expensive work permits that the New Democracy has proposed.

Its time for me to go check the deliveries of pork and noodles that just arrived, then count the sheets.

Other than that, the coup has had litte effect on our daily lives.

Hang in there...

In the accunt above, the facts are fiction and the names were created to protect the guilty. The point is: This coup, so far, has been well executed and has not presented any problems for foreigners living in Thailand. Life goes on an usual.