Thursday Night – The real War-zone!

Well, this turned out to be one crazy night at Silom, it was one night I wished I had not gone to take some pictures for the tweeple. It started with the usual scene, No colors set up on the right side of silom, the Reds on the other, quietly behind their bamboo fort. To start the night off, the police had arranged five of their mobile jails in a line to block the two protesting groups sights of each other. I honestly had no idea why they did not do this last night, it completely stopped any confrontation from each side, they were unable to see their opponents and things kept calm.

The red base earlier did not have any one on the frontline, but they were all behind the fort, walking around as usual. After walking around the fort, I made my way to the middle of the intersection. It was great, you could just stroll up and down the police trucks and take pictures.

It started to get dark and tensions became high, the No Colors took a long sign out in front of the intersection and lots of them pushed through to the middle as well. In about 20 seconds, the riot police were all around them. All the reporters moved from taking pictures as the riot police started to move in and surround them in a semi circle. They pushed them back with ease, within about 2 minutes, they had pushed them all back to the Silom road. I even met up with @wildorchid9999, who I mistakenly recognized as @legalnomads. Sorry you two, I only briefly saw a picture of you and got mixed up, nice to meet a twerson for the first time anyway.

Silom road was now blocked off, police pretty much made a huge line in-front of the No Colors, they were not getting through. They made two sets of lines, one group facing them, one facing the other way. A floodlight lit up the whole area that was situated around the MRT side and made my iPhone pictures brighten up (thank you police!).

This is when things got ugly, and people were screaming all around the place, up and down the silom road. At around 20:01, there was a huge shaking bang behind all of us, everyone in the crowd turns around. As normal, all of the reporters run towards the noise. The speakers shout “mai mee arai krup”, trying to calm down everyone. I personally thought it was a tuk tuk blasting out as they normally sound like that but something told me this was different from the small shake.

About 40% of the crowd started running to cover, we were all standing beneath some back alley soi with some bars, some people tried to get in to Burger King, but they had padlocked their doors up already, I would not want to get in their anyway as its all glass! After being in cover for about 5 minutes, I made a run for the BTS – I wanted to get out of there. While running up to the stairs, I managed to snap a picture of the huge crowd of soldiers making their own barricade on the silom road with huge red plastic blocks. When I saw that, I knew something was going down! The soldiers under the BTS were getting everyone to cover as they were all armed ready for action.

After running up to the BTS, the door was about to shut, they let me through with two Indian people. We all tried running up to the platform level, but the soldiers ushered us back down. We obviously were not aloud to go up, what were we supposed to do? I realise now that the bomb had fractured the ceiling of the BTS. Walking back down the stairs gave me the feeling of “how am I going to get out of this war-zone”, a word I have been throwing around without actually thinking about it properly.

WIth about 20 soldiers in the middle of the BTS platform below the train platform, all crouching, aiming forward. I was confused because all the bombs were behind us, opposite to where they were aiming. We were ushered down the opposite stairs to the soi which has the BNH hospital on. It was hard to get through with pretty much all of silom civilians trying to get out. At this point I could not remember how many taxi’s I asked to get home. Luckily a motorbike was willing to take me home and I took whatever he asked for.

I can safely say that after all the excitement I had over the past few days of being at the rallies, this was a real eye opener how things can change from being all fun and dancing, to absolute mayhem, bombs going off and glass falling from the sky. I really hope everyone who was injured is ok and get out of Silom. Please be careful anyone still inside the actual war-zone they used to call Silom. Thank you all for your kind messages wondering if I was safe or not, Im at home now all ok.

PS: I take back my statement, I do not want to be a reporter anymore. After seeing them all running towards the noise of bombs, I thought they were insane!

Follow me live on Twitter @Dany_K for latest news and pictures from Silom, the front line!