For their high school English class, these kids were instructed to way lay any foreigner they could get their hands on and ask them a series of questions, including name, country of origin and credit card number.

Nipple alert! Breast feeding in public is against the law in some states of the Union you know. And I personally don't believe monkeys should be exempt.

... when monkeys ...

It's funny ...

... drink from soda cans.

So I did end up going to ol' Sondhi Limthongkul's illicit talk show in the park on Dec. 9th (see my Dec. 4th "Poop Bomb!" posting for what passes for background on this blog) ... it was a little bit anti-climactic because a few days before, in his birthday speech, the King basically told Thaksin to chill out and not take everything so seriously -- which was the King's typically low key way of saying drop the lawsuits against Sondhi or the Thai people will rise against you because they love their King. They take their King and his wishes very very seriously here.

It was also anti-climactic because my friend who was going to translate for me couldn't come at the last minute, so I basically sat there in the grass for an hour and a half making up wildly implausible reasons why Sondhi was flashing photos of Russian fighter jets onto the giant screens scattered around Lumpini Park, where he was holding his live, non-televised show. I found out the real reason why later on, but now I can't remember. Something about dodgy Thaksin-family connections. To Russian fighter jets. Okay maybe I should find a nice article about it and link to it. How responsible that would be of me. But someone is smoking a cigarette in the Internet cafe I'm sitting in and I can't take it anymore -- I have to get out of here fast.

But the evening itself was still quite a pageant -- everyone had on Sondhi's bright gold "We will fight for the King" and there was lots of outrage and passing out of anti-government leaflets. There were also thousands of people -- 18,000 one of Sondhi's newspapers reported the next day (oh wait, that would be Thai Day since that's the only English paper he owns and the only one I would have been able to read). There weren't quite 18,000 but there were plenty of angry Thai people! Although come to think of it, they don't look so angry in the photos I posted below. But they're angry, just really deep down. Below the laughs and the smiles and the pleasant countenances. They're MAD!!!

The media covering the media, ad infinitum.

Boy they look like scary snipers, don't they? Those are the screens that broadcast Sondhi's big head and that of his lovely co-host, who was also named in some of Thaksin's lawsuits. The building is where it all happens (the talk show I mean) -- actually the fun part is outside, where I was. And the scary government helicopter.

A human rights activist holding up a bumper sticker that says "Two years already, where has Somchai gone Thaksin?" Somchai is a Thai Muslim lawyer who was "disappeared" almost two years ago by a group of police officers who dragged him into a car and drove off, never to be seen again (Somchai that is) according to eye witnesses who have testified in court. Somchai was in the middle of defending a group of muslim men from Thailand's southern three provinces who were thrown into jail and tortured by police for alleged involvement in a bloody resistance movement.

Cheerful and subvervise. This pleasant couple is handing out anti-government propaganda with a smile!

Government chopper ominously circling the proceedings. Most people waved sarcastically and unfortunately the photo of the guy standing up to flick it off didn't come out.

This woman is in hysterics from something that Sondhi said but I have no idea what.

Pause.

I sure wish I knew what he had said.

After a hard night of subversive activities I treated myself to this BRILLIANT ice cream sandwich -- sandwich meaning it's ice cream in a hot dog roll! Yum! I saw someone stuffing their face with one when I first showed up and basically obsessed about that and only that since I had no idea what was going on.

Here it is at another angle.