The Travels of Päivi and Santeri

Recent lack of freedom in Thailand have been business as usual in Singapore for years. Both countries are dictatorships. [Suomeksi] We visited Singapore for a few days trying to sort out Thailand visa mess. The 30-day permission to stay had to be changed to a visa that could then—possibly—be somehow extended. Not too complicated, fortunately. And the obvious motivation behind this seems to be ripping off tourists.

Before entering Thailand we knew that the King is extremely respected and revered in Thailand. And that it is illegal to insult him or the monarchy in general. This raised some contradictory thoughts in us and sounded quite pre-historic, very far away from the anarchy we support or from the republic states that we were used to. When we entered Thailand there was a film shown on the flight before landing. In the film an older couple was walking around in fancy clothes and distributing presents to peasants. There were also some pictures of the couple when they were younger, and the old man took pictures of the people that worshipped him. Funny thing, we thought and continued sleeping.

Thai Military seized power in Bangkok on Tuesday night, the 19th of September, just a few hours ago. They occupy now every crucial corner in the capital, among others government building and the Prime Minister’s office.

We have no longer storage space limitations. Our books are transferred to this new blog. Some of the books used to be in Google books but we had to remove them because of technical issues. The new high-resolution e-books (PDF) are available at nomad and travel book downloads .