couple of things

[Bamboo Grove]

I was having a few beers on my balcony with a friend of mine couple of days ago. It was about 22.00 and as I live quite near the Chiang Mai airport you can see planes coming and going. However, that night we could see about 20 planes coming from easterly direction (I suppose from Udon) and going north. They must have been air force planes although they didn´t seem to fly in formation. I wonder if anybody knows if there are war games going on here. It must be quite expensive to have so many planes flying around at the same time.
The other thing was last night. I was watching Thai TV (as I haven´t bothered buying UBC just for couple of months) and a special program was introduced. It was shown on every Thai chanel and it was the Queen giving a speech to a big audience which seemed to include the cabinet. It was about the situation in south and she was giving advice concerning how to handle the matter. It´s very rare that anybody from the royal family gets involved in every day politics, so they must have thought that it´s time to intervene before it worsens even more. Last time I remember seeing such a thing was back in -92 when the King gave a "lecture" to Suchinda and Chamlong.