Port O Potty Drama

So if you've watched the video clip about the Red City (a few posts below), you can see trash is starting to pile up at the main protest site. While they were still living in Ratchadamri, my colleagues complained of walking past rows of reeking, overflowing port-0-potties that were baking in the sun. One might think that squalor would naturally follow a seven week protest, but in Bangkok, it hasn't necessarily been so. During past red and yellow shirt protests, the city provided port-o-potties and trash collection free of charge at the protest sites. They considered it a public health service.

The Red Shirts will soon be up to their eyeballs in trash and flies because on April 27 they hijacked four garbage trucks and used them to fortify their barricade at Lang Suan Rd. The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration says it will no longer pick up trash at the rally site. Likewise, they won't be in to service the port-o-potties which by all reports are in sorry shape. April is the hottest month in Bangkok, and the overflowing port-o-potties were already stinking up large swaths of downtown BEFORE the services stopped.

I heard secondhand that the Reds never thanked the city people who came to clean the toilets. Instead, they had only complaints about how filthy the toilets were, and because they were always broken. Words just fail me.

Maybe if the standoff last long enough, the Red Shirts will be driven off by a giant swarm of flies.

On a more serious public health note, cases of Influenza A and H1N1 are spreading among the protestors.