Lockdown! How Does This One Compare to Others? [Season 4, Episode 25]

In their continuing effort to find something to talk about besides coronavirus, Greg and Ed decide to compare the current crisis to the past crises that they have lived through in their combined 38 years in Thailand. This is their first pandemic but they have survived coups, floods, assassinations, curfews, and violent protests that have shut down huge parts of the city.

So how does today compare? Well, first Ed notes that the oddest thing about the 2006 coup - the first for both Greg and Ed - was how un-tense and untroubling it seemed throughout the city. Greg agrees that the weirdest thing about it was trying to figure out how unbothered Thai people seemed to be about it. However, the countless protests that occurred between the two coups (2006 and 2014) were a different story. The guys trade stories about the unsettling nature of large mobs that at one moment can seem tranquil and in another menacing, whether it be just a sense of impending danger or an actual gunfight.

The boys also reminisce about their many flood experiences, from ‘the big one’ in 2011 and 2012 that led to Greg postponing his wedding to the many smaller ones that required Ed to wade down his soi to make it to his office for work. 

Of course, none of those events is exactly like the present crisis and the boys wrap up with a discussion of what makes the current lockdown unique.

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