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Estimates that one million people might gather here during the period are probably conservative, says Tongthong Chandransu, a law professor and expert on Thai royal funeral ceremonies. “After all, 500,000 people showed up last year on October 14 to observe when the king’s body was transferred across the river from Siriraj Hospital to the Grand Palace,” he says.
If you're already ensconced there, give these rally sites a very wide berth. You can even take a "taxi boat" from Phra Athit pier to piers near the Grand Palace, Wat Po and the National Museum. Don't take the San Saeb Canal boats which run eastward from Wat Saket. Get back to your hotel area by dark and don't wander out to the Democracy Monument area.
Yet Somyot acknowledged that the bombing might have been set in motion by Thailand’s July 8 deportation of 109 Uyghur men and women back to China at China’s request—despite pleas from the international community and Turkey’s willingness to welcome them as ethnic Turkic brethren.
Along with the stories of King Thibaw and Queen Supayalat, The King in Exile tells of the strange, twisted lives of their four daughters and seven grandchildren. As foreign visitors surge in, drawn by the idea of a new frontier, the book erodes the mythology, so pervasive in the region, of a happier, fairer era when white European men kept the grateful dumb natives gently in place.
Mobile ownership is “virtually universal” among Indonesian adults, said Kapoor, and Indonesians are far more likely to access the Internet by mobile phones than Filipinos, Malaysians, Singaporeans or Thais.
Susan J Cunningham 