by Zoe Daniel
A pack of wild-eyed journalists and photographers comes pelting past us. Among them is Brett McLeod from Australia’s Channel Nine. They’ve all made a run for it after getting a bit too close to the action. Brett stops to brief me as they pass. Someone was shot in front of them.
We see soldiers moving up towards the rally site, tent by tent. They’re firing warning shots. The protestors who aren’t at the main stage are cowering. We start to move towards the stage as the soldiers get closer. They’re just a few hundred metres away when I spot a woman with two young children in the middle of the road, right in front of the approaching army. One is a baby, the other a toddler, around the same pudgy age as Pearl. They’re naked as if they’ve just had a bath. The woman is carrying a bucket and has a child on one hip. The other is playing on the road. There’s no sense of urgency whatsoever.
I feel a sudden surge of white hot rage. ‘What the fuck?’ I say to no one in particular.
I’ve left Jum in the office monitoring Thai media, so she’s not at my side to translate as she would usually be. Regardless, I march up to the woman and say something along the lines of ‘Get your kids out of here!’ Thailand is known as the ‘land of smiles’, but in this case her beaming grin makes me furious.
We’re right next to the redshirt leaders’ tent and it’s in chaos as they and their supporters make ready to flee, but I beckon someone, urgently.
‘Get them out of here!’ I shout. ‘What are you thinking?’
He looks at me, dazed, and then takes the woman by the hand.
‘Take them to the temple, now,’ I demand.
The man nods and hustles the woman and babies away towards the temple nearby, an area declared a safe zone by the government.
I’m still furious, shaking and emotional. We stop to do a piece to camera but instead of delivering my lines I break down and weep in frustration and exhaustion. The army is moving closer every moment and I have to get it together. David and Paul are with the camera, unspeaking, patiently waiting for me to compose myself as I stand, miked up, staring down the lens and sobbing for all of those who have left their blood in pools on the streets around us. Throughout, the remaining redshirts at the main stage sing on.
My mobile rings and it’s Rowan. He’s been rattled by a call from my boss, who was just checking in to see how he and the kids were faring in Cambodia – but when her number flashed up on his phone he feared I’d been hurt, or worse. I’m happy to hear his voice and he mine, even for a minute.
By the time we return to the office, I’m back on track. I start madly writing my main TV story, incorporating developments as they come in. Steve from TV New Zealand is sitting opposite me, doing the same. We get news that the redshirt leaders bar one have surrendered and told the protestors to go home. It appears the army has achieved its objective of clearing the city.
Jum is feeding me information from Thai media as I write my script when I hear a whistling sound directly off our office balcony that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. ‘What was that?’ I ask Steve, alarmed.
‘Nothing,’ he says, looking bemused. An instant later – BOOM! We’re all still in body armour but we dive for our helmets. Another explosion. I shout to David, who has his head down editing my story in the soundproof booth, and we all bolt onto the balcony. Massive plumes of black smoke fill the sky from the Chidlom BTS station just below. Suddenly, barricading our office windows doesn’t seem like such a crazy idea.
I begin to wonder whether this story will ever come to a conclusion as I again rejig my TV news piece and file for radio. I’m live on the 7 p.m. news in Sydney when soldiers begin running into the still-smoking station, where protestors are now burning tyres. Reports begin filtering in about arson attacks on buildings around town. Media organisations are publicly warned by the government that we may be targeted. Our office building is a hub for international journalists.
We hear that others are evacuating and decide to move to my house, where we can meet the rest of our filing requirements without being so exposed. We jump in the car and drive the few hundred metres home past burning vehicles, the flattened bamboo barricades, and abandoned tents and debris.
When we get to the house we face the immediate problem that the army has set up a bunker at my front gate. The hotel across the Soi is being used as a staging point and its underground car park is full of soldiers and Humvees. My house is the line of defence. The soldiers smile sheepishly as we pull up, shifting sandbags so we can get the car in and out. I wonder whether it’s a good or bad thing to have the army so close.
Monta is wringing her hands as we get out of the car, still in our body armour and helmets. She’s been bunkered down with little more than Thai radio to keep her informed about what’s been going on, all the while hearing the constant booms and gunshots just down the road. In fact, she and the security guard have been isolated for a couple of weeks, only speaking to Khun Tu, who’s been occasionally dropping in with supplies and news. She’s very happy to see us all safe.
I quickly point the staff to beds. Jum is so tiny that she takes Pearl’s. Paul is in Arkie’s room, complete with the remaining Bob the Builder bedding, and David grabs the daybed downstairs. We close the heavy teak shutters in case of stray bullets and also so our presence won’t be too obvious. We’re still getting information that buildings are burning around the city, notably the massive CentralWorld shopping centre adjacent to the redshirts’ main stage.
We need to file for Lateline and are facing some serious time pressure. There’s a looming deadline as well as a government-imposed curfew that will soon prevent us from being out on the street. They’ve warned that soldiers will shoot on sight.
For the sake of speed we take the car as far as we can and then head the rest of the way on foot. The air is acrid and we can see plumes of black smoke well before we reach the fire at the Rajaprasong intersection. We plan to get a few shots and do a quick piece to camera. David needs to change the camera battery and he turns to Paul for a fresh one.
We all gulp when we realise we’ve left the crucial kitbag at the house. It’s a beginners’ mistake; we’re shattered with exhaustion. Paul heads back for it on foot while the rest of us wait. I’m edgy about being out at dusk. We can see soldiers above us on the Skytrain tracks and there are a lot of gunshots. It’s hard to tell where they’re coming from as the sound ricochets off the city buildings. By the time Paul gets back I’m seriously stressed about missing the Lateline deadline altogether as well as being out past curfew.
There’s barely time to take in the sight of the huge landmark shopping centre on fire as the gunshots continue to echo around us. I stand still for a minute to do a piece to camera, only realising what a surreal scene it is when I watch the cut story, which makes it with only a minute to spare.
The next morning the rally site is literally flattened by the army. Soldiers move through smashing tents with sledgehammers and the bulldozers follow. Charred vehicles litter the city streets among the smoking buildings. It’s clear that many of the protestors left in a hurry. In one tent we find unopened, melted ice-creams next to half-made Molotov cocktails. Mountains of paperwork remain in the redshirt leaders’ tent, including handwritten letters to Thaksin Shinawatra from his supporters. A plate of noodles with a fork still in it sits festering in the sun.
Thousands of refugees from the rally have gathered in the grounds of the police station to catch buses back to their rural homes. We find the family we followed through protest life – they’re safe but rattled. They sheltered in the nearby temple, which was hit with gunfire. A number of people have been killed, including a female medic.
We visit the temple and film the bodies lined up on mats. Of course, the footage will never make it to air in Australia – it’s too graphic for a Western audience, although it will play on a loop on Thai TV. I shudder: it’s the same temple where I sent the woman with the two babies. It was supposed to be a government-sanctioned safe zone and the recriminations against
the army for attacking it will continue for years afterwards. The army will argue that they were responding to attack by redshirt militants from within the temple site.
That afternoon we file from our office despite continuing threats to Western media. The military tows two cars loaded with grenades and redshirt paraphernalia out of the building’s third-floor car park and soldiers make a great show of unpacking the explosives into neat piles out the front. I will always wonder whether the car was planted there to make the redshirts look bad, but it’s impossible to know.
The staff head home for the first time in ten days and I sleep alone at my house in Bangkok’s silent CBD, which is still under curfew. The next day I meet Rowan and Mum and the kids at the airport.
It’s over.
FOUR
It takes me months to get over the redshirts.
Immediately after the crackdown, Rowan and I take the kids to a Thai beach with Mum for a few days, but I find the transition back to normality difficult. It’s impossible to relax. The overnight reversion to motherhood feels unfamiliar and clunky: from urban conflict zone back to potty training Pearl is a big leap. And the adrenaline keeps me hyper-aware for weeks, jumping at loud noises and ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice, even though the redshirts have gone to ground to lick their wounds.
Thailand has become very quiet, as if everyone’s taking a holiday from politics for a while. Rowan’s keen for us to enjoy some rare quiet time by exploring Bangkok, going out for dinner, meeting up with some new friends, but I just want to bunker down at home. I’m flat and grumpy and unpleasant to be around. At work, I struggle to develop any other stories. David, Jum and I do a few short trips, but nothing seems significant enough after such a baptism of fire. It’s the classic correspondent’s curse; we’re always either too busy or not busy enough, with nothing in between.
My headspace is still confused as I try to find a balance between work and home. I need to combine the toughness and intensity that’s required to do my job with the softness and patience of parenting. The kids are still in transition, too, no doubt partly because of the upheaval during the protests, but also because I’m suddenly the worker and Rowan’s at home. He’s going through a hard time as well, with giving up a full-time job to freelance. Having loved Phnom Penh, we’re also finding it difficult to settle in Bangkok, a gigantic city that feels impersonal in comparison.
We keep coming down with one virus or another and then Pearl does an Arkie and splits her forehead open like a ripe tomato one Saturday morning when she crashes into a door jamb. I spend the weekend in hospital with her until she’s been stitched up by a plastic surgeon. It happens in theatre: I’m having no repeats of Arkie’s straitjacket experience.
I move through what feels like a grey fog for ages, before I finally get my act together and in September head off to Laos for Foreign Correspondent. It couldn’t be more of a contrast from Bangkok and it’s just what I need.
I take a trip down the Mekong River, an amazing journey from the French-influenced world heritage town of Luang Prabang in the north to the Cambodian border. We fly in by turboprop past mountain peaks laced with fog, emerging through the clouds to see the massive muddy river hurtling south. It’s September, nearing the end of the wet season, and the river that the locals call ‘Mother’ is at its peak, carrying rich silt to the rice paddies downstream.
Luang Prabang’s ancient Buddhist temples and French shop-houses hug the banks of the Mekong in a spectacular river valley. It’s a languorous place, particularly at this time of year when the Wet keeps the tourists at bay. We stay in a simple hotel on the riverbank, shuttered windows and little balconies accessed via French doors overlooking the passing parade of bicycles, tuk-tuks and the odd horse and cart, as well as the occasional storm.
It’s tempting to sit, drink strong Lao coffee and contemplate, but we have a lot of distance to cover. The river is a 5000-kilometre link from the peaks of Tibet to Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, passing through China, Laos, along the edge of Burma and Thailand, and through Cambodia. We’ll be following it for about a thousand kilometres via road and water, looking at the likely environmental and community impact of a planned series of major dams. Fifty-five are proposed, eleven of them on the main stream of the Mekong.
Serious concerns have been raised about the impact of the dams on fish stocks, as they will affect migration and breeding patterns. Endangered species like the Mekong giant catfish, a prehistoric-looking creature that lives in deep pools, and the freshwater Irrawaddy dolphin, unique to the region, may well die out. Sixty million people who rely on the river as a food and irrigation source and a vital transport link will also be seriously affected.
But Laos, with a population of just six million, is one of the most underdeveloped countries in the region. Once a French protectorate, it became an independent constitutional monarchy in the 1950s, but a civil war and the Vietnam War led to conflict that overthrew the pro-royal government in 1975. It’s since been a communist one-party state. During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese fighters set up inside Laos and it was massively bombed by the United States. It remains the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world, and large tracts of land are still riddled with unexploded ordnance. It’s also the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia, which limits its economic growth. Eighty per cent of the population are subsistence farmers, and other key industries like mining are heavily supported by foreign money. Dams, according to the Lao government, are a key part of its economic future.
The government wants to turn Laos into the ‘battery of Asia’ – selling power across the border to Thailand while also delivering electricity and, with it, development to Lao communities. Professor Philip Hirsch, from the Australian Mekong Resource Centre at the University of Sydney, tells me that ‘Laos decision-makers and many of those advising the Lao government have been sold on the idea that Laos is, to use some of the hyperbole, a new Kuwait to Southeast Asia – the new Switzerland of Southeast Asia. It’s going to get rich by selling power to its neighbours.’ The key question, of course, is whether the benefits of that development will outweigh the damage to the world’s largest freshwater fishery, a unique ecosystem described as the ‘Amazon of Asia’.
We journey by road and water through the breathtaking scenery between Luang Prabang and the capital, Vientiane. This trip involves a hair-raising drive over the mountains – a full day of escalating hairpin bends past wilderness and the occasional remote village clinging to the sheer mountainsides. I wince more than once as we swerve to avoid trucks that speed past despite the sheer drop to seemingly bottomless oblivion. The views are extraordinary, though, and the trip takes us more than twelve hours because we keep stopping to film yet another unmissable vista, and another, and another. David can’t help himself.
This journey reminds me of the privileges that my job provides in the form of incredible adventures. I feel extraordinarily lucky, but I also realise that the quieting of the Thai political situation means I’ll be taking more long trips like this away from my family. I think about them a lot during the long hours in the car and on the boat, but by the time we reach Vientiane and a functioning telecommunications system, the kids are in bed. It’s been one of those trips with little phone range, early starts and late finishes, much of the time out on the river. Days have passed when I haven’t been able to check in. I call Rowan from the hotel in Vientiane but he’s distant and annoyed with me for not calling more frequently. I hang up feeling glum. This is life on the road, I tell myself. Get used to it.
It’s become clear to us during the trip that despite the scientific and economic advice against dams on the lower Mekong, the Lao government will push on. China has already built a number of dams on the upper reaches of the river and Laos is keen to capitalise, too. In Vientiane, the government spokesman Xaypaseuth Phomsoupha says, ‘We do not deny that most of the Lao people, in particular those living in the country, are still living under the poverty line, having income of
less than US$2 per day.’ Income from dams, he asserts, is the fastest way to bring development to Laos.
This is one of those stories that I expect to revisit in twenty years, when I’ll report on the disastrous impact of the damming. It makes me sad, but as a Westerner with access to the tools of civilisation, I can’t condemn the Lao people for seeking a better life. One of the local village chiefs tells me, ‘I’m worried about the environment but building dams is good for developing the country. I don’t blame them and I can’t stop them. I want our village to have electricity and lights.’
A report from the Mekong River Commission, a jointly funded organisation set up to advise the countries of the Mekong basin, recommends a ten-year moratorium on mainstream dams. Laos begins construction on the first dam anyway. It looks unstoppable. We’re lucky to see the river so unspoilt.
Our journey ends with endangered Irrawaddy dolphins frolicking in the sunset on the border of Laos and Cambodia. I hope they’re still there next time I visit, but I fear for their future, along with that of the people who get 80 per cent of their protein from the river’s fish.
I get back to Bangkok just in time for Pearl’s second birthday and ready to recount my great adventure, but I miss Rowan. He’s timed some work to immediately follow my return so that we won’t both be out of the country. This kind of extreme time management will become commonplace for us over the next couple of years so that we don’t have to leave the kids alone with Nisha. I’ll constantly dread a big story breaking on one of their birthdays.
On this occasion a small bomb goes off in Bangkok as I’m wrapping Pearl’s presents late one night. I make phone calls and file radio around gift wrap and sticky tape on the dining-room table. Luckily Pearl doesn’t know what day her birthday is, so we delay it until Rowan is back.