I have written about walking tours of the Red Encampment before. I am not trying to advocate “Demonstration Tourism”, but the fact of the matter is that it exists already.
This is the road in front of Central World the way you probably have never seen it before. I took the picture this afternoon and as you can see it has now started to change into a Walking Street. At the far end is the stage at Ratchaprasong Intersection and there were several thousand people sitting there listening to the speakers.
In the early days of the protests, most stalls that were being set up only sold Red Shirt souvenirs or some food and snacks. Then, over the weeks more vendors started to come selling some practical items that people might need like umbrellas and sunglasses.
All of the Red Shirt protesters were given free food for every meal so there wasn’t much reason to have that many food vendors. But, that has changed a lot with a wide choice of food now on sale like this grilled chicken. This is obviously for the Demonstration Tourists.
Now the road has many stalls where normal people come out in the late afternoon to sell just about anything. It is the kind of things that you can see at temple fairs up and down the country. But, I bet these people don’t pay rent!
This afternoon there was a steady stream of people entering the Night Bazaar from the Pratunam checkpoint. These days no-one wears red shirts so it was difficult to tell who were protesters and who were tourists. But, I can tell you that I saw a couple dozen foreign tourists buying things and taking pictures.
- Posted from my iPhone
