I've been following Richard Barrow's tweets and photos on twitter along with many of the news organizations.

http://twitter.com/RichardBarrow

Things are much quieter in the red zone, food is available and people are walking about.

Richards last tweet:

"Life is really going on as normal here in Nana despite bring [sic] on the edge of the Red Zone. Amazing Thailand!"

Humm..? My first post was misleading. Richard Barrow has been one of the "go to" sources for the media organizations.

His Bangkok Dangerous map, marking all the "hot spot" on a Google Map, has been often duplicated on TV in the states.

http://maps.google.co.th/maps/ms?hl=...,0.111494&z=14

There are also many photos available in his tweets.

This is the first time we've done the twitter thing, and despite the numbers that show only 4% of tweets are about news, twitter and Barrow have put us on the streets in real time.

Agree that he's well worth following. I've also been keeping an eye on @KevinRevolinski/bangkok-troubles which is a list that includes Barrow.

Barrow posted 3,000+ tweets recently and some were not so uplifting, but these I liked:

"A policeman just came over & banged on my window! Made me jump! Luckily he was only playing with me. He was all smiles and joking"


"Amazing! Just 100 meters from the army checkpoint there're 100's of taxis picking up & dropping off foreign tourists.


"RT @VoxScorpio: Are you saying this mess is the new TOURIST ATTRACTION? ==> If I say yes I would get in trouble again.

Kevin Revolinski is putting a lot of good stuff out also.

BKKApologist @ twitter

Some super stunning unrest photos

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/201...in_thaila.html

Wow, thanks karenmike, and thanks to boston.com for the incredible pictures.

There will be no winners in this battle.

Yeah, the pictures were surprising, this was the "real deal" going on in BkK.

Bad news: RT @UbonFarang: http://bit.ly/aWA9N7 Sea of Red arriving in Ubon Ratchathani to protest

Mark MacKinnon is doing an amazing job of reporting:
http://twitter.com/markmackinnon

Perhaps this is a better place for this picture tweeted by Thai of the fire at Central World
http://tweetphoto.com/23051981

RT @Marilyn_Res RT @georgebkk Reuters: Thai authorities order TV stations to broadcast only govt sanctioned programmes

Unreal: @RichardBarrow Pictures of the Provincial Hall in Ubon Ratchathani http://goo.gl/qOVF

In the past, we've failed to understand how essential to news twitter has become, but we're all on board this tweet thing now and twitter's remarkable ability to quickly disseminate information and oh, so many close up photographs, is truly amazing.

markmackinnon, an East Asia Correspondent for Canada's national paper and with 6,000 followers was pleading for help an hour ago, tweeting that people are dying.

The ubiquitous close up photos, bring this horrifying story home in a way that the news outlets in the states fail to achieve.

Thanks for sharing your links.

Also, please don't forget the Bangkok Dangerous Map:
http://maps.google.co.th/maps/ms?hl=...,0.111494&z=14

to me the revelation is that you can use twitter to piece together a mosaic that describes what's going on far, far better than any single source.

"I am going to switch off my cell phone, go to bed and pray that all of this madness has gone when I wake up in the morning,"

http://twitter.com/RichardBarrow


One thing is 100% for sure, the Fodors Asian Forum is all over the BKK story.

We got tweets, we got thousands of words of informative extended comments and answers to specific questions, we got links to live TV broadcast and up close and way too personal photographs. This (our) Asian Forum has become a one stop shop for all things "Thailand mess" - and that unfortunately, appears to be a gross understatement.

I believe a lot of people on this board feel an emotional attachment to Bangkok and to Thailand -- I know that I do. And the contrast between the laid-back and smiling Bangkok that we'd known and the tension-filled, blood-stained Bangkok of the past weeks is impossibly difficult to comprehend. If the images of Bangkok under siege and on fire are so ghastly to a visitor, one can only imagine the feelings of a resident.

So, it's not surprising to me that lots of information, discussion, and reaction goes on here.

So true, rizzuto. Bangkok is my favorite city in the world, a place I hope to move to when I retire. I have friends in Bangkok, and as much as I hurt, I hurt more for them.

rizzuto - but you know, almost the first thing that struck me about Thailand was the contrast between the beautiful and lavishly decorated temples, and the poverty of so many of the people around them. I thought of medieval Europe, with the massive cathedrals sucking up money that could have gone to improve life for ordinary people. I'm thinking that the analogy for the current situation in Thailand may be England in the early 1600s, or France in the late 1700s.