Ready to face tougher circumstances

Although I had been going back and forth about whether or not I really wanted to go to Thailand (see my first few posts..) mainly because of personal emotions coming into play, I have overall, I believe, been so excited about going to Thailand, ever since I found out in February that I had been accepted into the program.

Beginning in March, however, I began to have separate worries - due to the political protests that began between the Red Shirts and the government (See my posts in April for some background info).

For the past few years, though, the government and its people have been in conflict, so although the protests were starting up again, one of my program directors even said that, "[the institutes we'll be working for] are located closer to the "downtown" area but are universities and are normally not involved in political situations."

That was, until, the protests started having actual shootings, people (including media personnel) being killed in crossfires...

One of the first killings grabbed international attention because a Japanese-camera-man (Reuters) was killed in crossfire, and most recently, a Thai Red-Shirt General by the name of "Seh Daeng" was shot in the head (and is in critical condition) during an interview, right after saying, "The military cannot get in here."

How ironic, indeed.

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It's just confusing to me, since:

1. I was reading an LA times article about the rising violence, which, towards the end, gave me the impression that: yes, the protests are turning bloody, but it's only concentrated in one part of Bangkok, so the rest of it is fine.

2. The U.S. Thai Embassy closed, and was evacuating people out of Bangkok.. And the State Department has issued a warning, for U.S. citizens to not travel to Bangkok.

That is why I have been trying to scour through ALL Thai-protest related things, recently (thank goodness I'm out of school, now, to actually spend time away from my chemistry-readings and problem sets, guilt-free!), and have found things like this guy in Bangkok's (Newley Purnell) Twitters for actual, on location, updates.

Here's just a little perspective on where the violence is actually occuring in Bangkok..

http://newley.com/2010/04/27/map-of-red-shirt-protest-areas-in-bangkok/

On May 15, The Bangkok Post:

http://newley.com/

And, actually, here's more of a real-time version on GoogleMaps that I think should be more accurate...

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So.. where will I be (IF, at this rate, I ever even go ..) in Bangkok? The Institute that I'm staying at is located more on the outskirts of Bangkok and is thus, safe...

But, where I'm working, Chulalongkorn University - is... pretty much smack dead center/around the protests... how convenient..

[you can see in the second map, is pretty much on the block to the left of 'Chulalongkorn Hospital']