Thai police walk the streets to clear any remaining anti-government protesters on in Bangkok, Thailand. (Wally Santana/Associated Press)

Submitted by Elaine Saulnier

Bio: Orignally from Montreal, Elaine Saulnier now lives and works in Bangkok, Thailand.

My story: I've been here in Thailand studying for the past three years. Yesterday has to have been one of the scariest times of my life.

In the morning, everything looked like it was going to be OK, but then, as my boyfriend and I watched the Thai news, we found out that the so called "black shirt" (armed and dangerous) part of the Red Shirt protesters were coming down the main road (Rama 4) in our area, having already set the Channel 3 building on fire.

We tried to escape, that is, get in our car and get onto the expressway and head to a friend's outside the city. But as we were leaving, we saw tons of people pouring into our street, saying and motioning for us to go back.

We followed their advice. We tried stopping for water at a small Tesco-Lotus Express a few hundred meters away from our apartment, but they were already closing and locking up, fearing protesters. The local Thais on our street were all visibly afraid, as well as foreigners that live in the same building.

We slowly realized that our panicked attempt to flee might have actually harmed us. As we calmed down we could hear hovering helicopters every few minutes, and a few distant "booms."
 
It settled down as soon as the curfew began at 8 p.m. But since no one was out reporting, we felt completely out of touch and just more nervous.

After waking up this morning, it feels safer, and like the government is in control in Bangkok, despite more Red Shirts starting to light fires outside of the city. It was a scary experience, but now I hope that Bangkok can just rebuild.