Bangkok: A tale of two protest movements

While 2010 protesters held up cell-phones to broadcast Bangkok speeches to northern villages via radio, tech-savvy Bangkok youth in 2014 have amplified their movement through social media such as Facebook, where they often post political views and photos of themselves at protests such as this one near the MBK shopping center.

Paid daily wages to occupy an unfamiliar city, Red Shirt families, sleeping on hard pavement, endured 40 degrees Celsius in the hot season of 2010. While some 2014 protesters hail from southern provinces, most can return at night to the comfort of their Bangkok homes or join protests during lunch breaks.

Despite recent bombings and shootings, leaders on all sides have so far been careful to avoid repeating the bloody military crackdown and ensuing looting and burning of shopping malls, theaters, ATMs, convenience stores and piles of tyres in central Bangkok in May 2010. Many wonder how long the relative calm will last.

While the 2010 protests often felt like earthy upcountry festivals, the 2014 movement features sophisticated sound and light systems and Thai rock legends such as Rang Rockestra, Audy and the bald-headed leader of Fly. They have turned the protest movement into a sort of "Woodstock," with massive outdoor performances broadcast live on Blue Sky TV.

During the military crackdown which left scores dead on May 19, 2010, a man walked through the ransacked Red Shirt camp at the Rajaprasong intersection, amid sniper fire and smoke from the burning Zen Shopping Center. Their rivals have now taken over the site with rock concerts and nightly speeches aimed at toppling the Red Shirt government led by Yingluck Shinawatra.

Protest sites, occupied by farmers in 2010, have become a fashionable habitat in 2014 for the "beautiful people" of Bangkok, including actors, DJs and celebrities who don national flags, colors and hats boasting their adulation for Thai King Bhumipol, Asia's longest serving monarch.

Anti-government protest leader Suthep Thaungsuban, who was deputy leader of the government during the 2010 crackdown on Red Shirts, has spent hours every day doing what his nemesis, former PM and convicted fugitive Thaksin Shinawatra, cannot do - march freely on the streets of Bangkok.

Both protest movements, in 2010 and 2014, closed off traffic and turned Bangkok transport corridors, such as this one near Siam Square in 2014, into crowded, festive markets full of hawkers peddling t-shirts, hats and other paraphernalia supporting their causes.