I don’t know how much of this makes it back to the other side of the globe, but there has been quite a bit of, on the face of it, unsettling news coming from the places I am staying, or will be traveling to shortly.
The biggest one would be all the unrest in Thailand. I honestly expected that to settle down quite a while ago, but obviously it’s still continuing and perhaps even worsening. The good news, with respect to me, is that it’s confined to places that I am not planning to go with Steph. I would really like to get to Bangkok, but wasn’t going to do that until after mom left, so there’s plenty of time for Thailand to get things sorted out! For you worriers out there, I’ve already registered my trip with the US State Dept so I get all of the Embassy warnings and such.
There is also news coming out of the Philippines following their election on Monday, but to be honest I actually expected worse news. There were some killings, but the presidential win was such a landslide that there weren’t too many complaints. Also, the places I’m headed (Northern Luzon and Palawan) are very calm, with most of the unrest coming in the south east portion of the country (Luzon is the northernmost main island and Palawan the westernmost).
The last bit of news is from Indonesia where there has been a lot of chatter about arresting and killing terrorists. First, where I am in SulSel, terrorism is not even an afterthought; most of the news is from Java. I think that the government really is busting-up terrorist groups, but the interesting part is the timing. The latest case is the most obvious example of what I mean:
One night watching the news I saw that the head corruption investigator in Indonesia had been, surprise surprise, accused of corruption. This was obviously pretty big and very crummy news for a country that is literally crippled by corruption. But I’m guessing you never heard about this little bit of news because literally the next morning the only news coming out of Indo or about Indo was the bust netting terrorists. I honestly never thought anything of it, but when I talked to Imran he seemed pretty convinced that the timing was more than coincidence. Apparently this is routine here, some bad publicity about the government comes out and the next day some terrorists are arrested or more likely, shot. As I think back that has happened at least 2 other times while I’ve been here. I’m not saying they made up the terrorists, just that the timing is…convenient.
Anyways, that’s the news from here with my own personal views on it. I don’t think any of it is worth worrying about, though I am keeping close tabs on Thailand.
Less than 2 weeks now!
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