It’s now Friday evening and I’ve completed the last day of, office, work and it’s only now a few days before I head off on holiday. To Thailand. Most people would start to think about things like packing. However I’ve decided to leave it just a little bit.
Before this weeks events I, like most of you, knew virtually nothing about Thai politics. The only thing I knew was what the Thai Blogger put. So, I’ve been on a steep learning curve - again, the Thai Blogger has helped here, as have BBC News and more recently, The Bangkok Post.
These events won’t be able to last to much longer. It’s peak tourist season and the country stands to loose too much money, and respect - some already estimate this as being as much as $4 billion. The Thai media and sources in the UK are saying that Bangkok International Airport will reopen in the next 24 hours so travel through it on Monday/Tuesday will be fine.
Definitely don’t wear red or yellow as these are the colours of the respective sides. I suggested to a friend of mine, Mark, that I could wear orange and he replied out that I could possibly offend everyone in the process.
This, on it’s own, would be a cause of concern however no more than 24 hours after the Bangkok situation arose major terrorist attacks occured in Mumbai, India. Normally you’d sit and watch the TV and go that’s awful but not really think about it. However when I saw it my jaw hit the floor. You see my connecting city is none other than Mumbai.
So, here I sit on Friday night wondering quite what will happen and where things will be come Monday morning. I’m going to leave my packing until Sunday afternoon. Unless the UK Foreign Office advise explicitly advise against travel to Thailand I’m going to go for it. I may get stuck at an International Airport 2/3 round the world for a day or two but I’m going to make it!
It must be said the airline I’m flying with, and will remain nameless, managed to entertain me when I rang up to check my flights. After telling me my flights “would be fine” the friendly man asked if my meal choice would be “normal or veggie”. Classic. Though, I had to ask him to repeat what he’d just said. I’ve opted for normal!
I’ll be posting more on this as things develop.
