as you may have heard the political situation in thailand is heating up. for the most part, all the turmoil is in bangkok. we have had some demonstrations and a few bomb blasts in chiang mai, but, so far, we've personally witnessed none of it. the most we see are people wearing red shirts or flying red flags. however, the warnings for chiang mai are becoming more serious. (chiang mai is the second largest city in thailand and a predominantly "red shirt" area.) we're (westerners) being warned to avoid certain parts of town - one happens to be very close to where we live. the constant news updates and warnings have caused me to become a bit fearful. last night i heard loud explosions, normally i would put them off to fireworks, but i couldn't see any fireworks and it was early in the evening and i couldn't think of any reason that there would be fireworks - not that they need a reason here. i immediately became concerned.

people make lots of guesses about how this will end. i've heard everything from new elections to civil war. and just hearing civil war scares me. my imagination is just wild enough to jump to lots of conclusions when i think civil war. i've seen glory, gone with the wind, the red badge of courage, cold mountain, the outlaw josey wales, and shenandoah. so i've seen enough to think i can imagine civil war here. (how realistic is what i'm imagining? that's highly debatable.) i think of troops seizing homes to use as base camps. which immediately makes me think of how perfect the house we live in would be for a base camp. i wonder all about logistics if things turn ugly. where do we go? what do we do? will we be safe?

the thing is, i really don't feel like we're in any danger. but the constant feeling that something could happen is tiring. it's making me jumpy. turns out last night that it was just fireworks. a celebration of some kind. i don't know what was being celebrated, but i am glad that things haven't turned so serious that celebrations have ended. i don't know how long this will continue. i do know that every day it goes on the damage being done to the entire country of thailand grows and i suspect that the longer it goes on the more difficult it becomes for either side to step away.