Normally yesterday would have been a yellow-shirt day because Monday is the birth day of the king and it's become common practice for many Thais to honor him by wearing his color. Lately few wear yellow because it's been coopted by those screaming PAD fanatics who've commandeered the airport and irrevocably altered life in Thailand.
I got on the MRT subway wearing black and grey accoutred with some cute secondhand Birkie sandals purchased recently for 500 baht from the fabulous secondhand boot guy at Chatuchak Weekend Market. For no particular reason I sat down next to an unsmiling older Thai-Chinese guy who was one of the very few wearing a yellow shirt. As the train pulled out he got up and moved to the next row of seats.
Was it because I'm a foreigner? Unless the trains are jam packed, the seats next to me are often empty and I've often contemplated wearing a "Farangs Don't Bite" sign around my neck. Was it because I wear strong smelling patchouli oil? Nobody's responded negatively to that exotic 1960s-era perfume since the mid 1970s when the owner (a former madame) of a funky Port Costa hotel and bar on the San Francisco Bay refused me entrance to her premises because she hated patchouli.
Or did the guy move because of my reddish shoes? That I can even contemplate such a seemingly insane reason indicates how all of us here, like it or not, are implicitly or explicitly affected by the gut level reactivity generated by the current political tensions. A few weeks ago my maid Noi, who's watered my plants and tidied my apartment thrice weekly for 12 years, complained that she just didn't own enough tops in non-political colors. She, like so many other Thais, has enough ordinary problems just getting by in life and doesn't need more externally created ones.
Yet with the airports closed, the political situation growing ever bleaker and the future growing ever more uncertain, almost nobody has the luxury of being an ostrich anymore. Over the past few days since the insane November 25 airport takeover started looking insoluble, at least in the short term, I began noticing how it affects various aspects of life here I take for granted.
- Getting secondhand The Economist magazines at Chatuchak. Thai Airways isn't flying so the magazine guy can't buy old issues off whoever was supplying him before.
- My New Yorker subscription won't arrive by post, nor will any other subscriber to overseas publications receive their copies.
- Bookazine and Asia Books and other suppliers won't receive their daily newspapers, weekly magazines, or book shipments.
- Noi said gorgeous flowers were being sold off at 1 baht per stem at the market near her house because they can't be flown out. I can't begin to imagine how many other exported items are affected.
- Villa Market only had imported cranberry jelly when I went to buy cranberry sauce for my friend's Thanksgiving party. Villa stocks way more foreign items than even the luxury Thai supermarkets and what'll it do as this situation drags on?
- Three good friends will probably have to cancel a one-month trip to Nepal to celebrate their 50th birthdays because they're due to leave on the 10th.They're literally a drop in the ocean of the people and goods whose movements have been impacted by the airport closure.
- Yesterday as I waited at BNH to see a doctor, I talked to an older couple of Brazilians on a large tour. They were due to fly out on Saturday and have run out of their heart/thyroid medication.
