Red shirts

Whenever you take a bus somewhere the driver always takes you to an area where some of his friends are waiting with a taxi, tuk tuk (little 3wheeled motorcycle/taxi/go-kart thing), or travel service, or hotel hawkers so they can get a piece of the tourist pie. So this particular morning, we got to Bangkok at about 3am and I was met by snickers and pointing fingers. I thought they where laughing at my shirt cause I was wearing a red Japanese baseball jersey i found 2nd hand in KL. The graphics are kinda falling off so I figured they were laughing at my silly shirt. Come to find out there is a red shirt rally going on in Bangkok right now and unbeknownst to me I was backing a post government official who was fired then convicted of corruption sentanced to hard time and fined somewhere around a billion baht bucks (3B). So after his trial and conviction he took off so he didnt have to pay the fines. Then he starts stirring up the red party to try and get his spot back in office. He and the red party have a boatload of money so they are funding the delivery of supporters of the red party, who are primarily in poor rural communities, to be brought to Bangkok to attempt to influence the government by slowing down the city because of the protests.
The red shirts have shut down 4 major streets that lead to a round-a-bout located at the democratic monument. There are people everywhere down these streets, they are just camping out, hanging out day and night with even little tarped off showering facilities. There are vendors selling 2nd hand clothes, food stalls, people cooking food for their family on the curb, men, women, children, grandparents, and everybody else sleeping on blankets laid over the ground, I just saw today some guys with flame thrower looking devices that where aimed down in the sewer to smoke out, what im sure to be, oceans of cockroaches waiting for their chance to storm in.
From my hostel I can hear angry speeches all hours of the night. There has not been any confrontations yet between the red shirts and police or military but the government has set up precautions in case it comes to blows.

I have been taking advantage of a sweet deal on cheap tuk tuks. The government is giving out free gas to tuk tuk drivers who take tourists to the tourist travel centers so that they will get the hell out of Bangkok. Then the tuk tuks will take you to the sites for like 10Baht! The weird thing is that they have the same deal for tailoring shops. I was told that the gov is doing this to promote the sale of Thai silks and suits made here but that sounds kinda fishy. I never really get the whole story is SE Asia when things are being explained with a THICK accent and in broken English. Along with them not knowing all the facts and coming from whatever motivations they have.

So anyways, thinking bout skidadlin up to Chang Mai for a bit and check out some treking!!!
Some long walks with maw nature and cool mtn air sounds amazing