Rojak Timeout (Part Deux, by Happy Belly)

After the first Bangkok situation report by Happy Belly came out earlier this week, we received messages from quite a few concerned ESPL readers regarding her safety. Here is an update on her situation.

It was the phone that very rudely jolted me awake at 8.30 a.m. on Wednesday.

“The crackdown has begun. It looks bad. I’m flying home today. You should leave too,” said my Singaporean friend who also works in Bangkok.

“Huh, OK, let me think about it.”

I was still groggy from sleeping at 2 a.m. after my movie marathon the previous night. Struggling to open my eyes, I reached for my home to check the latest Twitter updates. (By the way, Twitter is the best thing ever for crisis situations. TV and radio are slow, and in Thailand, censored too.)

The picture didn’t look good but it didn’t warrant fleeing. Yet.

Two hours later, while I was sitting down to a breakfast of bad news and a ham-and-cheese sandwich, my Aussie neighbour came to say that they were starting to burn tyres in a street near our apartment.

I lost my appetite.

TV news further confirmed that the protesters might spill inwards from the main road. Plus, a stage had been set up near my place where some 1,500 renegade protesters were gathered. And if the troops bulldozed that place, there were only that many streets that they could spill into, one of which would be mine.

Stay or leave – it was a very difficult decision. I’d never liked running away from anything. But the thought of being totally sealed in by an angry mob was equally choking. I could have stayed at a hotel where some of my colleagues were staying but I wasn’t entirely confident that that stretch would be spared.

So I up and left on a one-way ticket to Singapore. As the hard-to-find taxi drove to the airport, my heart sank as I passed the scenes of destruction all around me. The Land of Smiles is irrevocably scarred. I got to the airport by 1.30 p.m., having swung by the bank to take out some cash just five minutes before it closed.

As I waited for the next five hours at the departure gate, it was with both horror and relief as I followed the nightmare unfolding on Twitter. Shopping centres were on fire and my favourite cinemas had collapsed. Electricity and phone signals were both cut. It was a city run amok.

It was only when I came back to Singapore that I realised how living on the edge of violence had taken its strange toll on me. When there was thunder last night, I woke up with a start thinking it was an explosion. Or when the helicopters flew past in the morning, I felt the familiar fear grip my heart that the troops were coming.

No one knows when this will end but I need to go back soon. My two hamsters need me.