So there’s been a military coup here in Bangkok. All is well, and to be frank I’d hardly have noticed if not for TV and internet news.

There are a few soldiers around, but they’re smiling and very relaxed. They’ve been posing for photos with tourists, and the public have been smiling and giving them flowers, drinks and food. I haven’t heard any reports of violence, and the whole thing seems to have been well organised and generally accepted by the people.

There’s been a lot of posturing and grumbling by Western leaders about the fall of democracy, but in all honesty the former regime was anything but democratic. The constitution has been dissolved, and we are currently under Martial Law, but as I said you’d hardly realise anything was going on aside from seeing small pockets of soldiers every now and again (granted there are more in the heart of the government areas, but that’s miles away from my neighbourhood).

We will apparently have an acting Prime Minister within two weeks, and a fair, democratic general election in one year’s time. The army have said that they have no interest in ruling – they only wanted to remove the previous regime.

I travelled to the Parliament buildings yesterday morning to take a look around – plenty of soldiers, tons of press, but not much to see. We did see Thawee Kraikhupt, a minister from “Thai Rak Thai” (”Thais Love Thais”, the former regime), holding a one-man-protest at Democracy Monument (pictured); the signs in Thai apparently say that he is on hunger strike to protest the removal of democracy. Apparently he was removed himself shortly after I took the picture.

Talk of curfews and censorship are nonsense – international news was apparently removed from some cable/satellite feeds, but it didn’t happen here and is back on now in any case. The internet and phone networks have been working fine, and the local press has been reporting freely on events.

To sum up, life essentially continues as normal – for now.