Those of you who are keeping up with the news at all already know that Thailand has been experiencing some political unrest. I don’t pretend to keep up with politics, but here is the gist of what’s happening:

Thailand had a female prime minister who was bad news. Anti-government protesters took to the streets last November claiming that she was just a puppet for her notorious brother and therefor shouldn’t be in office. At the beginning of May, Thailand’s Constitutional Court did remove her from office on charges of nepotism. Of course that brought all of her supporters running to the streets in a frenzy also. So then the anti-government supports in yellow shirts and the supporters in red shirts were camped out in Bangkok planning huge rallies. All the protests over the past six months have already caused 28 deaths and 700 injuries, so the military’s army chief stepped in and seized control of the government on Thursday, aiming to prevent any more bloodshed and mediate a truce. A 10:00 PM curfew has been imposed for the country and gatherings of 5 people or more are prohibited.

What does this mean for me on beautiful little Koh Tao? Another day of sand in my toes and saltwater in my hair. These things never affect island life. On an island like this you can forget the outside world is turning. This island is almost entirely made up of scuba divers, people who have come here to stay for an extended period of time as dive professionals, and those who are passing through and come over to get certified. Our island has one police officer, because the biggest diving school in the world has pretty much paid them off to not have a presence here. They basically said to not interfere with the tourists because they bring in too much money, which is true. Funny, one little police station which always looks closed and this place feels safer than any place I’ve ever been. So with barely a cop here, you can imagine how nonexistent any military presence is. Apparently a few months ago some of the yellow shirts came to the island and had a bit of a parade, trying to rally supporters to come back up to Bangkok with them and protest. No one here could be bothered, so the yellow shirts left the next day, and that is the biggest political event this island has seen.

So now you’re thinking I’m trapped in this little bubble of a world while the mainland goes to chaos. I wouldn’t go that far either. Granted, I have no idea what the situation is closer to Bangkok, but tourism is too big here for Thailand to drive them away. Tourism makes up 10% of this countries GDP. Any places driven by tourism should be mostly unaffected.