Transcript of the above video: 

So the title of this video may not be overly clear although the thumbnail I think might provide a little bit of context. So I made a video contemporaneously but this one where I discussed just my brief thoughts on this recent peaceful rally; I am calling it a rally, less so a protest although the label protest is not exactly wrong. I am calling it a rally and I kind of want to distinguish it because in the past, I have seen protests and they, especially if you go back about 15 years ago, they could take a very negative turn and go in a very negative and oftentimes, not oftentimes, but sometimes violent direction. And that is not at all the vibe that I have gotten from the last two of these that I have gone to as an observer to just see what is going on with regard to the last two political protests, rally, whatever you want to call it at Victory Monument here in Bangkok. It has been my observation that these are very peaceful demonstrations; it's Thais getting out there and it is actually not overly political in any kind of partisan sense; that is something else I really enjoyed about this in a sense is it is just Thais getting out there saying, "hey this is our country, we don't want outside undue foreign influence; we don't want to have problems with other countries but we are going to assert our sovereignty as and when it is necessary and as and when it is appropriate, and that has been something that resonates very deeply with me, as a person who is a naturalized Thai, as an immigrant here to Thailand. I agree that Thailand should - Thailand for the Thais if you will - and matters pertaining to her internal policies and her domestic politics are her own affair. That I agree with. 

The reason though for the video is I attended this - again as an observer - but I noticed something this time that I didn't notice at the first rally. One, as I discussed in another video and I get into in some deep dives in the paid news service, it was a little more laid back, this rally if you will, this event. More laid back frankly than the one last time. The one last time seemed a little bit more energetic, I'll put it that way. You had a lot more folks; I think it was from a lot of pent-up consternation on the parts of many here who were not particularly happy with the way that they were perceiving things in policies in the government. This time there is no less resolve and there is no less concern, but a lot of folks were more sitting down, listening to the speakers it was not as sort of, raucous isn't the right word, just was not quite as energetic, not to say that there was any again, lack of enthusiasm. I think some of it could be attributed to the fact it was really hot, like very hot, a very hot day. I went to this one in the evening, the last one I went to in the afternoon; that may have accounted for something. People might have been a little bit more sort of tired out when I came to this one. The speakers, their message again, it really was about national sovereignty. 

That said not to get so much into the substance of this, more to make the observation that when I got, so if you know Victory Monument, there is sort of a walkway that makes sort of a crescent moon shape around the monument itself. You come down off the BTS and then you can walk around it, walk around the whole monument and if you were wanting to look at this particular event you can look down - we will put up photos and things, you can kind of see down onto the event - but about 20 paces from effectively the interchange with the BTS walkway, the Mass Transit System walkway, there was a group, it was about four or five if I recall, Immigration Officers, Thai Immigration Officers, and the minute they saw me, the gangly white boy walking along, they kind of looked at me and my friend who was there with me, they sort of said, "whoa, what are you doing?” and I said I'm Thai and I showed them my ID and they were, "oh okay", and we talked for a little bit and then kept on going. I didn't really discuss with them, nothing of any deep substantive discussion but the overall impression that I got was that they were there because this is a Thai event. I don't know, if I say they were trying to shoo away foreigners or something, but I think that there was a message just in their presence which was, "hey we are Thai Immigration; if you are Thai and you are here, fine, that's your prerogative, that is your right as a Thai to be at this event". But I think if you were a foreigner and you were yelling, rallying along or whatever, I wonder what they would have said. I didn't see them do that to anybody. To be clear, I only saw one foreign couple in the entire time we were there. I was there for a little while and I only saw one set of what I thought were foreign; they could be like me, they could have been Thai but they were going to the BTS and I think they just happened to need to use the walkway and they were coming in the other direction from the BTS; they were going toward the BTS not coming off of it into the rally area if you will. So that was an observation I made is that Thai Immigration was right there. 

I think it warrants a video because I have actually received a number of emails and a couple of comments on various prior videos where people have sort of made reference to or implicit sort of concern about foreigners and the fact that I have talked about some of these issues; there was one comment in particular that sort of seemed to imply that because I have talked about this stuff, other foreigners might talk about it, and I need to be careful with my behaviour. Well, to quote the late great Tupac Shakur, "I can only care about what I do, I can't care about what everybody else does." If you want to hear that quote, go watch the video Changes on YouTube; I'll put a link in the description below to that video where he actually says that. And I kind of feel the same way. It's like look; I'm not calling for anybody to do anything. I am just sort of making my own points and in my situation, that is appropriate. But it seemed those Immigration Officers there brought this to the foreground of my mind of yeah, I'll go ahead and make a video on this topic because yeah, and I am not making this to, I have seen many comments and emails in the past where people think I am trying to lord it over them that I'm Thai or something, that's not my purpose. I am making this just out of concern because foreigners that don't know the difference I guess, could find themselves in a real spot of bother if you will, if they are perceived to be inappropriately engaging in Thai political events or inappropriately engaging in Thai political discourse. It is very much viewed as a Thai matter. Nationalism is very much a thing in Thailand; it is one of the reasons I like living here frankly and it is one of the things I admire about the Thais is they care about their country, and they want to keep it their country. That's important. 

But the point of this video is again, here I am talking to these Immigration Officers and one of them wanted to take a picture of me with my ID card, so I expect that that was probably for their own internal record keeping, that yeah, the gangly white guy came walking down the walkway and we said, "hey what are you doing?" and he said "hi, I am one of you guys" and we took a photo with him and moved along. The point I guess I am trying to make is if you are a foreigner here, just be circumspect in your commentary if you will, your discussions on internal Thai political matters, because there could be ramifications, not least of which is implications from Thai Immigration; it could be negative implications from Thai Immigration. So that is the thing to take away from this video and hopefully this provides some insight. We will certainly be keeping folks updated on this situation as best we can as it evolves. 

Just real quick here, sort of an addendum for that video, I again was at this peaceful protest; protest isn't even quite the right word, it was a rally, I don't know that I would call it a protest exactly. I mean they noted that they have their concerns with the government, so I guess insofar as that goes, yeah. That said, very quickly, I am going to go ahead and do deep dives into this stuff, where I think this is all heading, how I think it could have an impact on expat land here in Thailand, and greater Southeast Asia. For those who are interested in that, you can check out our paid news service. If you want to get on the email list for the paid new service, it's [email protected]. You can send us an email, and we will go ahead and get you on the email list, tell you about the terms of doing the paid news service, get you on the email list, and you can get the episodes with deep dives into all of this. Currently I'm 11 episodes so far and I'll be doing one, I expect I will probably be doing about an hour on talking about my observations, deeply and where I think that this stuff is heading; some of the topics and basically where I think things are moving, what direction they are going to be moving and how it's going to impact expats here in Thailand. So those who are interested in that, email us, again, [email protected]. And then of course as I have discussed in other videos, and I know folks, there are some of you out there that get very sort of angry at me for bringing up the fact that my better half and I have started a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok. Pancake Palace, American Diner style food, breakfast anytime. Link is in the description below if you want to come see us at Pancake Palace and have a nice breakfast or have some diner style food. So that is basically all I had to say; I wanted to tack it on without interrupting this video.