Songkran

Songkran is one of our families favorite holidays here in Thailand. It is a 3 day event that celebrates the start of the Thai New Year. Songkran originates from the Thai Buddhist tradition of sprinkling holy water on elders and Buddhist statues as a symbol of spiritual cleansing. It has lost a lot of its spiritual significance with the younger generations, and has now simply turned into a huge country-wide water fight. Thais travel to large cities to participate in the huge water fights there. In Chiangmai, the city is filled with people in the backs of trucks, songtheows and standing along the streets with squirt guns, hoses and buckets of water ready to soak each other. Since this is the hottest time of the year, being doused with the water is incredibly refreshing. Our family celebrated by Troy filling up the truck bed with water, and us riding around the city soaking everyone in site, while being soaked in return. The occasional ice water being thrown on us took our breath away, but must admit, was most welcome. We had a great day of celebration and are thankful for a refreshing activity for a tremendously hot time of year!

Natalie's Hospital Stay

At the beginning of the kids break from school, instead of going away for a couple of days for a little R&R - we had a bit of a change in plans. Woken at 5 am from screams of pain, we rushed Natalie to the hospital for what appeared to be a relapse of a Urinary Tract Infection that she had only 10 days earlier. Thankfully, she is home and doing really well.

Thanks for all your prayers for our family!
Blessings,
The Scott Family

Update on Political situation

Protests Urge Resignation of Leaders in Thailand

Wason Wanichakorn/Associated Press

Supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra, the ousted prime minister, gathered during a protest on Sunday in Bangkok.

By THOMAS FULLER

Published: March 14, 2010

BANGKOK — Tens of thousands of protesters poured into Bangkok on Sunday demanding that the government step down in what was one of the largest demonstrations in Thailand’s recent tumultuous history.

Convoys of farmers in pickup trucks and busloads of families wearing the protesters’ trademark red shirts blanketed a district of ministries and government offices.

“We are here to announce class warfare, in peace and for democracy,” Nattawut Saikua, a protest leader, told a roaring crowd not deterred by the scorching sun and 90-degree temperatures.

Organizers estimated the crowd at 250,000 people and said more were on the way by road and riverboat. The police estimated the number of protesters at 120,000 but said that was likely to increase. The protest leaders have vowed to continue their demonstration well into the week if their demands are not met.

In four years of political turmoil here, the divisions in Thai society have been complex and manifold. But on Sunday, protesters and their leaders portrayed the demonstration as a struggle of the poor and disaffected against a government supported and controlled by the elite.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, a former economics professor educated at Oxford, was described in speeches by protest leaders as the son of “privilege” who had evaded military service and now presided over a veiled dictatorship.

“They have never felt pain,” Mr. Nattawut said of the governing class. “We don’t have their connections, but we’re ready to die.”

Mr. Abhisit came to power in December 2008 with military backing after a court forced the dissolution of the previous government by disbanding a political party loyal to Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister ousted in the military coup four years ago.

Mr. Abhisit’s government, which has two years left in office before it must call elections, has poured money into rural development projects, but Mr. Abhisit remains unpopular among voters in the rice-growing area of northeastern Thailand, a stronghold for Mr. Thaksin.

In his weekly television address on Sunday, Mr. Abhisit rejected the protesters’ demands to step down, calling them “unpractical.”

“I cannot accept any demand that is considered a threat,” he said. “I came to power in a constitutional way.” He added, “I have the right to complete my term.”

The depth of the distrust of the elite and the sense of victimization was on display among protesters at the rally on Sunday. Vendors sold hats that read: “Whatever you do is right. Whatever I do is wrong.”

“We’ve come to ask for justice and democracy,” said Sompaan Nhongbor, 63, a rice farmer from the northeast who drove to the protest in a pickup truck jammed with 12 people and a large bag of sticky rice to sustain themselves.

“We’re not doing this for Thaksin,” Mr. Sompaan said. “If Thaksin were a bad person, we would be chasing him out, too.”

The protesters, or redshirts, as they are called here, say they had more opportunities during the five years when Mr. Thaksin, a telecommunications tycoon, was prime minister. They credit him with creating a heavily subsidized health care system and with cracking down on illegal drugs.

Voters from the northeast still speak bitterly about the 2006 military coup that ousted Mr. Thaksin, a move they say was carried out by the Bangkok establishment.

A Thai court decided in February that the government could seize $1.4 billion of Mr. Thaksin’s assets because he had used his position in government to advance his business interests.

Many here say they perceive the decision as continued persecution of Mr. Thaksin by a shadowy elite.

Mr. Thaksin addressed the rally by video on Sunday night from an undisclosed location outside Thailand, The Associated Press reported. “The people who caused the problems in the country these days are the ruling elites,” he told the crowd.

Near Parliament, there were hundreds of trucks, bearing license plates from across the rural heartland, serving as makeshift kitchens.

Many Bangkok residents say they fear the demonstrations will turn violent; some wealthier families left, while others stayed indoors. But most parts of Bangkok, a vast metropolis of about eight million people, were calm and unaffected by the protest.

Verdict Unlikely To Heal Divide

Verdict on Thaksin billions unlikely to heal divide

Mr Thaksin still enjoys a loyal following in Thailand

Thailand's Supreme Court has confiscated much of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's family fortune, but, as the BBC's Vaudine England in Bangkok reports, the verdict is unlikely to end his appeal or heal the country's deep political schisms.

Back in 1976, Dr Weng Tojirakarn was a young student leader in protests that ended with the military opening fire and killing many of his fellow demonstrators.

He fled to the hills, where Thailand's Communist Party offered a haven for many in the radical intelligentsia of the time.

Not necessarily communist, several of those activists have since become leaders of the red shirts, like Dr Weng. Some, such as Chaturon Chaisang, were even members of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's cabinets.

Equal rights

For men such as these, the Supreme Court verdict against Mr Thaksin's private wealth is of no importance whatsoever to the struggle.

I'm not fighting for Mr Thaksin. I'm fighting for my country to be a genuine democratic system Dr Weng

"Mr Thaksin is just only one person in this country," says Dr Weng.

"He may be an ex-prime minister but he is nothing to do with what I'm fighting for, because I'm fighting for the genuine democratic system in Thailand."

Dr Weng wants a system where "real political power must be in the hands of the people and all man is created equal, every citizen must have an equal political right and also economic chance".

"But that never happened in Thailand," he says, adding that he looks to Britain or Japan for states where the monarch is supreme and democracy thrives.

"I'm not fighting for Mr Thaksin. I'm fighting for my country to be a genuine democratic system," says Dr Weng.

To that end, Dr Weng shuts up his small, poorly decorated doctor's clinic off a frantic highway in northern Bangkok every weekend and drives back to communities of the rural poor he once ministered to as a radical young student.

There he and other leaders of the red-shirted United Front for Democracy (UDD) hold what they calls schools, to raise the political consciousness of the people.

The arguments put across and discussed with varied communities focus on the injustice of the coup in 2006 that deposed a freely elected leader.

Genie released

These lessons have added pungency as they are delivered to communities that voted for Mr Thaksin, once they realised he was going to fund small businesses, provide cheap healthcare, and generally support his voter base beyond the urban centres.

To many in Thailand, that style of governance - where a shirt-sleeved Mr Thaksin, without pomp, would tour rural areas and listen to people's problems - was new.

THAKSIN TIMELINE 2001: Elected prime minister 19 Sept 2006: Ousted in military coup 25 Sept 2006: Corruption investigation begins 11 June 2007: Thaksin family assets frozen 25 Aug 2008: Prosecutors ask Supreme Court to seize frozen assets 21 Oct 2008: Sentenced in absentia to two years for conflict of interest in land deal 26 Feb 2010: Supreme Court seizes $1.4bn (£910m) of Thaksin family's contested assets

But to some Thais - who cannot imagine that their servants should have a vote equal in power to their own - it was threatening.

Their preferred exercise of power has been through a strong military, monarchist bureaucracy - a system Mr Thaksin cut through.

The anti-Thaksin yellow shirt protesters who helped usher in the current government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajiva openly spoke of wanting a new system where some people's votes counted for more than others.

This is why a billionaire businessman and his cronies can be in the same alliance as men such as Dr Weng, all of them convinced they are fighting for genuine democracy.

"This is a united front - meaning we have to co-operate where we can co-operate. What we can't co-operate on, we put aside," says Dr Weng.

Analysts are agreed that many Thais are more politically aware these days.

They call it the genie that cannot be put back in the bottle, or the toothpaste that cannot be squeezed back into the tube.

They also note that the wellsprings of anger and the sense of disenfranchisement engendered by the 2006 coup are only growing deeper and more bitter with each setback to the man they regard as the only one who cared for them.

For this reason, any hope Mr Abhisit's government might have that the latest court ruling against Mr Thaksin will fatally weaken his support base, could be in vain.

'No rabble'

Some argue that a possible lack of money to fund further red shirt demonstrations could lose it numbers and damage its ability to stage massive protests capable of bringing down the current government.

Coup rumours as ruling looms Profile: Thaksin Shinawatra

Others argue the anger will only grow and fester, becoming more dangerous over time, with or without the money.

So far the red shirts are holding to their line that they are not the violent rabble the government calls them, and their decision to hold off on any protests until the middle of March is a principled one to reinforce their point that they are not lackeys of one rich man and his wealth.

Others say they have postponed the protests because they could not be sure of getting adequate numbers to the capital - an ability likely to be diminished with the prospect of less funding in the future.

Dr Weng and his colleagues say they have been developing a red shirt movement without the benefit of any of these frozen funds.

Mr Thaksin will not be alone in seeing the judicial actions as "very political". He insists he is innocent, and a fighter, and will not be deterred.

The latest court verdict against him appears unlikely to change the political balance much either way.

Nor will it heal the divisions in this country. Brought to the boil by Mr Thaksin, many of those divisions long predate his emergence, and are likely to outlast him.