Categories
Thailand

Thais arrive home from Egypt

2011 02 02 ice sculptors

In this MCOT story today…

68 Thais stranded in Egypt arrive Thailand safely via Jordan:

Sixty-eight Thai nationals earlier stranded at Cairo airport because of violent protests there arrived in Thailand safely early Wednesday via Amman, Jordan after spending three difficult days at Cairo airport because of a shortage of food.

Thai International Airways (THAI) charted flight TG8851 from Amman landed at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport at 4am with the 68 Thai citizens who were stranded in Egypt. Their families had waited at the airport since 2am.

…I couldn’t help but notice this:

Phnom Muekhunthod, a member of a team of four Thai ice and snow sculptors who won laurels in the International Ice & Snow Sculpture Competition in France last week said the team spent three nights at the airport without bathing, but received food boxes every eight hours.

(Emphasis mine.)

No time to look this up now, but Thailand — a tropical country with famously hot and humid weather — is home to ice and snow sculptors? Where and how do they practice?

Image: MCOT.

Categories
Thai politics

Thai PM Abhisit on Egypt protests

CNN.com:

Thai PM: Leaders must exercise restraint against protesters

Thailand’s Prime Minister has called on leaders troubled by civil unrest to exercise restraint, less than a year after a bloody military crackdown on the streets of Bangkok.
Abhisit Vejjajiva sent in government troops to quell long-running Red Shirt protests in the Thai capital last May. Ninety-one people died and hundreds were injured in the street battles that followed.

But as thousands gathered on the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and Suez to demand an end to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year-rule, Abhisit — speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — told CNN leaders should respect the wishes of their people.

Abhisit said as long as demonstrators did not resort to violence, governments had a responsibility to restrict the use of force.

“When the protesters were peaceful [when they] were exercising their constitutional rights, there was absolutely no need for any kind of force to be used.
“Unfortunately in the protests in April and May there was violence — grenades launched, invading hospitals and so on — and we had to make sure that order had to be preserved.”