Red Shirt Rally in Samut Prakan 12th March 2010

[Richard Barrow]

I am at the City Hall in Samut Prakan posting this on my mobile. We will be giving you live updates on various sites - mainly Twitter at the moment:

http://www.twitter.com/richardbarrow

I will also be doing a moblog soon here:

http://www.mythailandblog.com

And I might also upload some live pictures to:

http://richardbarrow.snaplog.com

About 300 red shirts at the moment at the Old Paknam Prison and City Hall. Riot police on duty protecting the provincial hall.

[Richard Barrow]

Parade through town is now over. We are back in office. There were an estimated 5,000 red shirts taking part. They have now headed towards Bang Saothong for a big rally there tonight.

Highlights from my iphone posted live here: http://richardbarrow.snaplog.com/
Short video clip from my iphone posted live here: http://www.mythailandblog.com/2010/0...t-parade-video

More live picture links on Twitter @RichardBarrow

We are now sorting through pictures from the Canon cameras.

[Richard Barrow]

A few highlight photos of the red shirt rally in Samut Prakan. Will post full album soon.



Picture of Panrit (Gor) working.

[Stephen Cleary]

Gor's wearing the same colour shirt as me today, a pink one. I thought it nice and neutral till one of my high school pvt students replied about my pink shirt(after i mentioned i was neither a red or yellow shirt fan) "The teacher doesn't like the red-shirts as he loves the King".

It's weird how it works. Loadsa red-shirt fans in say Ayutthaya and Samut Prakan but here in Suphanburi (next to Ayutthaya) hardly any one likes the red-shirts! In fact, i've seen more than a few share of the town's folk wearing yellow today - not a single person wearing red!

[Richard Barrow]

It wasn't pink by choice. It is the official media shirt for Samut Prakan Press Association. Probably a wise choice today.

At the moment we are live at the red shirt rally site in Bang Phli. They are expecting 10,000 people but only a few hundred so far. They are saying that police checkpoints are delaying them. I have posted some live pictures on my Twitter account. Getting dark now. Getting bored now!

[Richard Barrow]

We have two photo albums from the rally and parade this morning. First is mine and the second Panrit's.

http://www.paknamphotos.com/redshirt_01
http://www.paknamphotos.com/redshirt_02

I just got back from the red shirt rally in Bang Phli. I posted a few pictures live on the following site before it got too dark:

http://richardbarrow.snaplog.com/

Sounds like tomorrow is a rest day and they will meet again in Paknam on Sunday morning before heading into Bangkok.

[KhaoNiaw]

A funny story, which I'll take with the requisite pinch of salt, but the teller swears she was one of the group.

People were being signed up to join the rally in Paknam this morning at 300 baht/head. They got a couple of pickup loads and drove them down to City Hall. Once it was over, no money was forthcoming and they had to make their own way home!

[Richard Barrow]

Probably explains why not so many people went to the evening rally in Bang Phli.

[Richard Barrow]

The pictures from the rally at Bang Phli are now up on the Internet.

http://www.paknamphotos.com/redshirt_03

Low turnout and I am sure the organizers would be disappointed.

[paul_au]

I see Gor has a pink shirt on, that must be considered a safe colour for reporting this story, he won't anger authorities if things turn bad.