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!!!