So i was sat around in the pub yesterday having a chat about the events of the last few weeks and what the future holds for Thailand. I kept noticing myself turn my head to check the table behind me. There was a Sikh guy sitting behind me on his own, easily within earshot. Thai? Maybe Thai-Indian? He could easily speak English and Thai. He wasn't doing anything else, so he probably couldn't help but listen. Behind his table there was a foreign guy with a Thai woman. Not sure if they were close enough to hear us.
Wondering if I was being needlessly paranoid, I waited until the Sikh guy had moved on, and in a slightly hushed voice asked if anyone else had thought felt uneasy about the guy sitting behind me. Not only had the other guys , but one of them had scoped out another table a little further away and wondered about them, too. Along with my house, a British pub would normally be a place I would never feel paranoid about in this way, but now all bets are off.
It's important to be having these conversations, but it's getting increasingly scary to do so. The penalties are just so severe. We started getting in to who among us had changed their Facebook profile pictures to something more 'respectful', and why. Then about if any of us had dared wear a colourful shirt yet. The one guy who had forgotten to wear black one day said he felt like more eyes than usual were trained on him. What were people thinking?
It's not just the 'law', but social pressure which is making people think very very carefully about what they do before they do it. And whilst it's relatively easy to talk about these things as a foreigner, there have to be Thai people feeling paranoid, compelled to go above and beyond in their expressions of grief, and have no way of safely expressing anything that they fear might be inappropriate.
It's an interesting but deeply uneasy time to be in Thailand, that's for sure. Orwell was a prophet.