Thai Red Shirt Protestors

Today’s photo of the day comes from my trip to Thailand in 2009, when I went behind the protest lines and got to know the Red Shirts in their Bangkok encampment.

“…our plans changed when our cab approached a traffic jam caused by an angry mob facing down an army blockade with a public bus burning behind the line of soldiers.

From what we gathered, the Red Shirts had set the bus on fire to form their own blockade against the oncoming army, but as a result the army had to stop all traffic from going by. This caused the motorists to become quite angry and as we got out of the cab and joined the scores of onlookers on the sidewalk tensions seemed to mount.”

Meeting the Red Shirts in Bangkok

I’ve skipped ahead a little bit here. You can read the whole story at: Civil Unrest and Meeting the Red Shirts

“My time as an adrenalin junkie was short lived, however, as a few minutes later the army decided they had had enough and opened up the barricade to the motorists.

Naturally, we wanted to see more so we followed the cars past the burning bus and walked around until a rickshaw driver offered to take us to the Red Shirt encampment area.
Smiles and open arms were all that greeted us when we reached the home base of the Red Shirt resistance. Everywhere we went people wanted me to take their photos and were hopeful that we were with a news agency so they could tell their story. The encampment itself was extremely organized and well stocked.

Booths were set up with free water, food, tarps to sit or sleep on and more. It doesn’t hurt that the ousted PM is a billionaire and is self-financing his own revolution. I even had my toe, which I banged up earlier in the day, cleaned and wrapped by the super-friendly, and free, first aid staff.”

See the story of how the protestors returned to the streets of Bangkok in 2013.