May 19 saw the worst violence Thailand has seen in nearly two decades as the Royal Thai Government handed down orders to crackdown on the red shirt anti-government protesters that have been occupying the city since mid-March. I watched the day’s events unfold from a safe distance in a friend’s apartment-cum-expatriate refugee camp not far from mine, which offers an iconic view of the Bangkok city skyline. Logged into the Reuters’ live blog of events, Al Jazeera’s live broadcast coverage, Twitter and Thai TV stations, we could see the thick black plumes of smoke billow and cover the skyline from the affected areas – a view so vastly different from the city we all knew.

Stay tuned for an upcoming post about the aftermath and my afternoon cleaning up the city this week.