BANGKOK – Several foreign correspondents were spotted in the skies over Bangkok today, parachuting in to the capital the day after the crisis subsided in order to file one report and bolster their resumes.
Upon landing they were seen looking disoriented and asking passersby for the way to “Bang, bang? Shoot, shoot? This way?”
After getting pointed in opposite directions by helpful, nodding Thais, and walking in circles for several blocks, they then jumped into a tuk tuk which ground to a halt in rush-hour traffic for over an hour. Then one journalist suggested taking the “elevated rail” to “Democracy Monument”.
Finally reaching the nearest fire, a smoldering noodle shop on Rama IV, they piggy-backed on the hard work of locally based correspondents who had been covering the story for months and years, been shot at and risked their lives.
With the cameras rolling before the last embers faded, the journalists filed wildly discursive and incongruous stories about the crisis: one, on how an extremely Buddhist, forever peaceful and unified nation steeped in pacifist principles had combusted overnight, another on how Thailand is a monarchy famous for its spicy food, prostitution and elephants, and the final one, in flak jacket and helmet, on how the lèse-majesté laws enforced by “King Phoopiphan Dulyjej” prevented him reporting openly from “this civil war-torn Asian metropolis” as several people drank beer nearby.
The journalists were reportedly flying out early tomorrow.
