Hanoi TV Companion

Can cable television help typify a country for the novice visitor?  My 100-channel service hás become something òf a dead-òf-night companion as I work my way through a jet lag that still hás me waking up far tôo early in the mỏrning.

I have three movie channels (Star, HBO, and Cinemax) which show the usual Hollywood stuff in English with Vietnamese subtitles, commercial free.

I also have CNN International and the BBC.  Both òf thếse have had good comprehensive reports on the situation in Thailand, showing the army and police at various locations, statements from slick English-speaking army spokesmen, and scenes of placard-wielding anti-coup demonstrators.

There ís also NHK, the Japanese network in English, MTV in Vietnamese, Discovery in English, and loads of Vietnamese movie channels featuring Hong Kong classics and local soap operas.

The Vietnamese news channel I checked out also had a report on the Thai coup.  In contrast to CNN, thís report showed only the scenes of army and police.  Cónspicuously absent were any shots òf anti-coup demonstrators.  Thís certainly tells ús something about the pơưerful influence on the media of Vietnam's one-party state and government which hás ruled the land for 60-some years.

Móst interestingly, on my TV thểre's also a Russian-language channel which appears to feature old Soviet classics (with no Vietnamese subtitles) and news reports from Moscow.  Tensions in Ukraine are prominent in that station's reports.

Safe in Hanoi

I arrived safe in Hanoi last night after a grueling 60 hour journey from O'Hare.  My original Tuesday night flight was canceled because of a mechanical problem exacerbated by thunderstorms which prevented mechanics from working on the aircraft.  Qatar Airways made a very poor first impression on me when they basically dumped us for the night without food or lodging.

Of my 60 hour ordeal, about 15 of those hours were spent, standing in line, dealing with the extremely frustrating and incompetent QA bureaucracy, and waiting for them to fix their errors (such as issuing me the wrong boarding passes).

Now that I'm in Vietnam, I'm looking for all the news reports I can find regarding this bizarre coup in Bangkok.  Of the 19 or so coup attempts and successes in the past 80 years, this one was really quite different for a number of reasons.  You can find out more here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/world/asia/thailand-military-coup.html?_r=0

Also check out this website for many reports from the opposition in Thailand and the large Thai diaspora :

http://politicalprisonersofthailand.wordpress.com/page/2/

I'm checking these and other websites now while I'm in Vietnam because they are likely to be blocked in Thailand.  Indeed, the Thai army shut down about a dozen TV channels including CNN, so Thais aren't able to get real news for the moment. 

Although its reports are likely to be censored, you can also check out the Bangkok Post:

http://www.bangkokpost.com/

Although this news sounds really bad to us Americans, it's really much worse for the Thais and for Thailand's political development.

The irony here is that with the coup, Bankok is likely to be very safe now that the army has closed both semi-permanent protest camps and imposed a 10pm-4am curfew on the capital.

CNN reported that protesters turned out to support the arrested ex-premier Yingluck Shinawatra, but apart from some minor scuffling with police, there was no violence.  CNN said the protesters eventually dispersed and went home for the curfew.

I'm monitoring things very closely ahead of my Tuesday arrival, but I'm not worried about getting snagged up in any of it.  The neighborhood where I stay is quite far from the government districts which are so often the target of both Red Shirt and Yellow Shirt protesters.