Bangkok, Thailand
By NBC News' Warangkana Chomchuen
“Michael is the first and only international singer who inspired me to learn English to understand his songs,” a die-hard Jackson fan wrote on Pantip, the most popular Thai web forum.
Another comment, posted nine hours after the “King of Pop” was pronounced dead, read, “I’m still waiting for news agencies to say they made error report.”
A devastated fan said she has been writing a diary to Jackson for years now, and she would continue doing so even after his death.
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By NBC News' Warangkana Chomchuen
Thailand has been in dire need of some good news recently thanks to political upheaval and the gloomy economic outlook. The surprise birth of a baby panda has cheered the nation.
Officials at the Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand had tried unsuccessfully for years to breed the mammal and were unaware the mother was pregnant. Thailand joins the United States and Japan in a rare club: the only countries outside of China to breed a panda in captivity.
However, the panda cub's parents are on loan from China, making the cub's length of stay limited to only two years, according to an agreement between the two nations. Still, the Thai zoo says it is ready to do what it takes to make sure the panda stays in the country.
Watch NBC News' Warangkana Chomchuen report on the panda below.
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By NBC News' Warangkana Chomchuen
BANGKOK – Thailand’s media is a complicated morass of contradictions.
A constitutional monarchy, the country has draconian laws that restrict and prohibit publishing or broadcasting materials deemed insulting or offensive to the monarchy.
But when it comes to reporting dramatic crimes, especially those involving sex and violence, all hell breaks loose. Crime reporting is so detailed that it tends to the gaudy and salacious, the death of David Carradine being the most recent example of over-the-top coverage.
In contrast, century-old lèse majesté ("injured majesty") laws mean that Thai media most often exercises self-censorship and is extremely cautious when it comes to covering the monarchy, military, judiciary or other politically sensitive issues. The codes say that whoever defames, insults or threatens the monarchy is punishable by a sentence of three to 15 years imprisonment (though royal pardons are usually granted after conviction).
Carradine most definitely did not receive the royal treatment. Thai Rath, Thailand’s best-selling daily newspaper, published a grisly photo of the actor on its front page last week. The photo, though pixilated to hide some of his nudity, shows Carradine hanging by rope inside a closet.
Carradine’s family was outraged and their lawyer threatened to sue any other media outlet that published the photo. But criticism of the coverage from Thai readers was minimal.
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By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
BANGKOK, Thailand – The initial investigation into the pub inferno that killed 64 New Year’s revelers here makes for depressing reading: Not only did Bangkok's Santika Club have no operating license or insurance, there were no heat or smoke detectors, no fire alarm, no emergency lights, no fire escape sign and no sprinklers. It was packed with highly flammable material, electrical wires were dangerously exposed, windows were blocked and the main entrance was just over six feet wide, according to experts quoted in the local media.
It was, in other words, a death trap.
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| PAIROJ/AFP/Getty Images file |
| Thai policemen and rescuers stand by the bodies of victims of a fire that ripped through a nightclub in Bangkok early on January 1, 2009. |
Yet this was not some seedy, underground establishment, hidden from view. It was a large flashy building on a busy upscale Bangkok road, with the capacity for several hundred, frequented by well-heeled Thais and foreigners.
How on earth were they allowed to get away with not adhering to any safety codes?
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By NBC’s Warangkana Chomchuen
BANGKOK – Someone once said living in Thailand is like having a sports day every day. But instead of having five teams in five colorful jerseys compete the way Thais do in primary school, we only have yellow and red, sported respectively by anti- and pro-government protesters who take turns venting their angst in the streets.
The yellow-clad protesters, or the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), recently made themselves known internationally by blockading Bangkok airports. The country was forced to shut down its air links, leaving roughly 300,000 travelers stranded while damaging the country's economy.
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| AP |
| Protesters attack a car coming out of parliament with rocks after the voting for the country's new prime minister in Bangkok, Thailand on Dec. 15. |
But just as the yellows protesters left the streets, and the new prime minister – the third in half a year – was named by parliament on Monday, the protesters in red shirts showed up.
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By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
BANGKOK, Thailand – A strange thing happened in Bangkok today on the king's 81st birthday. Very few people wore yellow.
In Thailand, colors represent different days of the week. Yellow is the royal color, since it stands for Monday and King Bhumibol Adulyadej was born on a Monday. On his previous birthdays Bangkok has been a sea of yellow. Not today.
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| AFP - Getty Images |
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Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej sitting next to Queen Sirikit during a review of the honor guard for his birthday celebrations on Tuesday. |
There may be a straightforward explanation for this. Yellow was the color worn by the royalist anti-government protesters, the Peoples Alliance for Democracy (PAD), which seized Bangkok’s main airports and closed them for more than a week, causing immense damage to Thailand’s economy and image.
Most Thais were appalled by this, and by the increasingly cult-like behavior of the PAD’s leaders and the violence of their armed "security guards," and simply don’t want to wear anything associated with them.
But the lack of yellow today does beg a bigger question: has the PAD by its actions damaged the very institution it claimed to be defending?
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By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
SUVARNABHUMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Bangkok - Serirat Prasutanond has perhaps the least enviable job in Thailand right now. "We are doing our best, really," he told me. "We want the tourists to start coming back to Thailand."
Prasutanond is the acting president of Suvarnabhumi, Bangkok's international airport, which was taken over and closed for a week by anti-government protesters, and today he was supervising the clean-up. He said the computer systems were fine and the inside of the vast terminal -- which resembled a refugee camps, strewn with bodies just a few hours earlier - was mostly cleared of rubbish.
He has told the Thai media that the airport could be fully open by Friday, but was cautious when I asked him if this was realistic. "It all depends on security. The security systems have to be approved," he warned.
As we spoke, teams of cleaners hauled away bags of rubbish, and hundreds of sheets of cardboard, which the protesters had used as mats to sleep on. Others dusted and washed the floors, while earnest-looking airline officials hovered with clipboards. At a Thai Airways check-in desk, a supervisor told me their systems were fine and they'd soon be testing the baggage belts, which a few hours earlier were being used as beds. "There was no damage," she told me, "they (the protesters) were educated people," betraying her sympathy for a group that has largely drawn its support from Bangkok's middle class.
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By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
U-TAPAO, Thailand – It once was a forward operating base for the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War. About 100 miles southeast of Bangkok and renamed as U-Tapao International Airport, it now has become the capital city's only air link to the outside world – and a way out for the tens of thousands of tourists stranded in Thailand.
Used mostly by occasional charter flights, the airport only has one runway, one small terminal, and one X-ray machine. It has only four check-in counters, and one crane to lift luggage onto planes.
Yet they were hoping to get 50 flights out today – an impressive total, but only a fraction of the 700 flights a day that routinely used Bangkok's main airport, Suvarnabumi, before it was seized by anti-government protesters. (Airlines are also stepping up departures out of Thailand's other main international gateways, Chiang Mai and Phuket.)
This morning U-Tapao was chaos. "Organized chaos," according to John Landon from Colorado, who was making his way back home from a vacation on the resort island of Koh Samui. "The Thais have done really well to get this up and running."
Hundreds of tourists lined in the hot sun outside the tiny terminal building. "Don't worry," said a woman through a handheld loudspeaker, "Everybody will get on the plane. We won't go without you."
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By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
Bangkok's massive multi-million dollar airport terminal tonight resembles a night market. It's teaming with yellow-clad protesters and lined with make-shift stalls selling badges, t-shirts, stickers and jewelry, as well as food and drink. Outside, the passenger drop-off zone is a sea of yellow protesters rattling their plastic "clappers" as they listen to fiery speeches from the top of truck.
The approach road to the terminal is lined with cars that reflect the largely middle-class character of the protesters – the SUV is the vehicle of choice. There are several security checks along the way, where guards wielding metal rods and golf clubs stop and search approaching cars. It feels like the anti-government protesters are settling in for the long-haul.
All flights remain suspended, and the estimated 3,000 passengers – most of them tourists – stranded last night when the airport closed have been moved to city-center hotels.
But who exactly are these protesters clad in yellow – the color associated with Thailand’s king – who risk crippling Thailand's lucrative tourist industry? And what do they want?
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By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
BANGKOK, Thailand – Late tonight, one of Asia's busiest airports remained under siege, sealed off by several thousand anti-government protesters. The protesters, clad in yellow – the color of the king – sat on mats and cardboard, in the road outside the main terminal building, where cars and buses usually drop off passengers.
They were listening to fiery anti-government speeches, interspersed with Thai folk songs blasting from the top of a truck, also draped in yellow. At one point, a protest leader, speaking in perfect English, apologized for any inconvenience to the thousands of stranded passengers. "Please understand that our purpose is to stop this corrupt government," he said. The crowd of protesters shook their plastic "clappers" in approval.
The pleas didn't garner much sympathy with the bewildered passengers inside the terminal.
"I just wanna go home. I like Thailand, but I don't like this," said one man, as he lay on the floor, waiting for news of his delayed flight to Sweden. Nearby a young couple nursed two sick infants.
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