This my second visit to Phuket. Before the trip, I have been repeatedly asked by many kind people why I am still going to Thailand in spite of the chaos. Even my parents are worried.

Either way, I confirmed with friend who went up the week before and he told me there was no trace of tension or unrest over in Phuket. On top of that, another friend was in Bangkok. If I am not wrong, he stayed just a few junctions away from where the red-shirt protesters were holed up and the fact that he could tweet about his situation there tells me that even in Bangkok, much of the Thai capital is safe. I was not very concerned with what goes on in Bangkok and to be frank, I was actually more concerned with an earlier quake down at Sumatra. After all, I had already taken leave, booked the tickets and hotel rooms. I am quite sure I would be perfectly pissed for the rest of the year if another tsunami wiped out the beaches in Phuket.

Why am I going Phuket again? It’s because I just wanted to get away from Singapore – where every road is always congested and everywhere is full of people. I just want to go to a place where I could get away from the crowd here to just laze around and relax, even if I am not doing much sightseeing or shopping.

Either way, this round I didn’t get out to Phi Phi Island again, even though I originally wanted to go. The reason was that I was running short of Thai currency and end up spending a lot of time near the vicinity of the resort (Phuket Island View) at Karon bordering Kata and two nights sipping beer and looking at ‘ladyboys performing’ over at Bangla Road in Patong.

If I compared it to the last resort (Woraburi) I stayed in, the room Phuket Island View is just passable. I didn’t quite like this because there wasn’t enough power points in my room to go around (I had to ‘steal’ from one of the bed lamps), the air-conditioning was weak on the first day until a technician came by to fix it, and the water pressure at the shower was pathetic. However for the price difference (almost 6000 baht if I remembered correctly) between Woraburi and Phuket Island View, it is difficult to complain. The consensus is that we’ll still go back to Phuket Island View as long as prices stayed at that range. After all, we don’t really spend that much time in the room.

So as usual, here are the photos from this trip.

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Back to the situation in Bangkok, as I am writing this post the Thai army is clearing and in fact, has cleared the area where the ‘Red Shirts’ are holed up in. Around 1500 ~ 1530 hrs Singapore time, it was reported that the leaders have surrendered, and two of them have been arrested. The rest will surrender to the police soon after.

My personal opinion is that democracy cannot come to a land when there is no rule of law and a strong and vibrant middle class. The government gahmen must also have a vision for nation building – a ground plan on how the country should proceed for the next 10 ~ 15 years, whether it remains in power or not. A gahmen can claimed itself to be democratic, but it is not just about free elections and universal suffrage. When a country does not have these fundamentals, then its elected gahmen will be as fragile as Thailand’s.

Anyway, I sympathise with the ‘Red Shirts’ for several reasons. First of all, it wasn’t the ‘Red Shirts’ who started this entire mess. The so-called People Alliance for Democracy or ‘Yellow Shirts’ did much worse back in 2008. While the ‘Red Shirts’ have generally stationed in central Bangkok, the ‘Yellow Shirts’ created trouble not only in Bangkok but all over Thailand. Secondly, most of the ‘Red Shirts’ are generally just poor people from the poorer north and northeast regions of Thailand. The People’s Power Party (PPP) gahmen they supported after the last election in December 2007 was removed through a combination of street violence, political intrigue and what I called ‘judicial wizardry’. Not only were two Prime Ministers, Samak Sundaravej and Somchai Wongsawat ousted, the PPP was ultimately dissolved. It was the political equivalent of razinjg the stronghold to the ground after killing the leaders. Lastly, while the police had issued arrest warrants for Sondhi Limthongkul and 8 other ‘Yellow Shirt’ protest leaders on charges of insurrection, conspiracy, unlawful assembly and refusing orders to disperse, no action has been taken against them until today.

The military operation in central Bangkok may have ended the protest and the violence but it will not end the deep rooted resentment of the poor in Thailand against the more affluent or those considered to be the social elite. The people will pay close attention to the action taken against the ‘Red Shirt’ protest leaders now in custody and it is unlikely that the political situation in Thailand will normalize in the near future.

I will remember Bangkok May 19th, 2010 the way I remember Beijing June 4th, 1989.

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