Other areas, I see on the news this morning, not so much.
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On Tuesday evening, just hours before the army begins moving into place for its daybreak assault, a handful of us Metro-Parkers venture out to feed our craving for big, greasy western food at a German restaurant on Sukhumvit Soi 11, one or two kilometers outside hostile territory. The restaurant is doing a bustling expat trade -- you can't keep a Deutscher from his Schweinekotelett -- but the rest of Sukhumvit looks like downtown Portland on Christmas morning: vendors, hustlers, gawkers, all vanished.At Anton's suggestion, we taxi over for after-dinner drinks on the rooftop of ultra-posh State Tower. Bangkok's notorious traffic is nil, but the driver takes a roundabout course to avoid the you-know-whats. State Tower is Beverly Hills glitzy, but we can only reach the outdoor bar on the 64th floor, not the 87th, because they won't let Betsy in with her cheap flip-flops. Never mind the rest of us in our scroungy blue jeans and t-shirts, women's footwear is a big deal in this place. But even the lower-level view is stunning. The lights of flat, flat Bangkok fall off the edge of the earth in all directions. Only the dark patches where authorities have cut off power to the rebel camps give any clue to the trouble below.
Next morning the crackdown begins -- on the red shirts AND on us, as all course assignments are due via email by 5 p.m. Some procrastinators have barely started, but they are the detestable sort who can bang out A-work in 20 minutes.
Wednesday evening the other Metro-Parkers walk a mile up the road to the seafood restaurant, but I'm tired of spending big baht on meals out and opt for wonton soup at the vendor cart close by. Walking back, I swing into 7-Eleven for a chocolate ice cream fix ... but it's closed. My 24-hour market has gone dark early for the curfew, and in that moment the enormity of this civic upheaval is brought home to me: I must go to bed without my ice cream.
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