School was closed today so we tried to visit some of our usual stops. The noodle shop outside Seacon Square was open but Seacon itself was closed. Uniformed guards and people frowning into their walkie talkies were wandering around the perimeter. The club was open but not crowded with the usual faces. There was even seating in Starbucks at the height of the afternoon heat. The supermarket was crowded though, but the air conditioners and the refrigeration units had conked out. The dairy products had been moved to buckets filled with ice. Most vegetables and fruit, except the expensive imports, were gone. No eggs for the second day in a row. Rather than risk food poisoning, I passed up anything raw and uncooked. We have enough food at home anyway; tonight we had skillet pizza.
The curfew hours have shifted from 9 p.m. tonight to 5 a.m. tomorrow and will extend to the weekend. So far, it is quiet in the streets, but the number of places that were set on fire by arsonists has grown to nearly forty. The city says that CentralWorld will have to be demolished; it cannot be saved. The worst is the terrible loss of life. Sadly, they found the bodies of at least six people, all shot, inside a temple that was supposed to be neutral territory in the middle of the fighting. The government spokesman said that emergency services received a call for help from the temple but guards would not permit them to enter the grounds. It remains to be seen if the government will investigate what happened at the temple. To its credit, the Abhisit government has tried to be transparent and publish accurate figures of those killed and injured; a vast difference from May 1992 when estimates of those killed and injured ranged from a mere dozen to hundreds.
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