In Bangkok
YOU don't even have to leave Singapore to realise there's something going on in Thailand.
Despite the fact that this was the September school holidays, despite the fact that Bangkok is a favourite getaway of Singaporeans, the Singapore Airlines flight I was on yesterday heading towards the city was barely half-filled.
"Yes, very empty," one stewardess sighed when I asked her how this compared with the usual load. "On any normal September holiday, there should be no seats."
Certainly, there were no children on board and none of the usual noise from tour groups. Most of the passengers looked like they were on business trips.
Singaporeans are clearly taking the directive by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - as well as the situation on the ground in the Thai capital - very seriously.
After all, the week-long standoff between the anti-government protesters and the authorities finally claimed its first victim yesterday, after one man died when scores of supporters from both camps clashed in an early morning face-off.
SIA isn't taking any chances with their staff either. The stewardess told me that they would normally be put up near the city, but for this trip, they will be staying in a hotel near the airport, even though they will be flying off the very next morning.
"Hopefully nothing serious will happen while we're here," she said.
Bangkok itself looked different when I touched down. In a city notorious for its gridlocks and roads choked with traffic, there was one obvious disparity: there were hardly any cars on the streets.
"No traffic. Five minutes," my chirpy taxi driver told me in halting English as we sped down the empty expressway.
It wasn't quite five minutes, but I've taken as long as an hour to get to the centre of Bangkok in recent years. This time I breezed in under half an hour.
At my hotel, which is located some 20 minutes away from the protests at Government House, life appears as normal. Hawkers line the street outside selling durians, cockles and sweet drinks. The foot massage parlours are filled with tourists giving their aching feet a well-deserved rubdown.
Everything is okay in the capital, the hotel staff assures me. But when I asked them for directions to the Government House, their eyes widen. "Why do you want to go there? No safety, no safety. It's okay here, but not there," one of them said. I just smiled.
But just as I stepped out of my hotel at 10pm to grab a bite and check out what else is different in an emergency-state Bangkok, I heard a familiar refrain.
One tuk-tuk driver came up to me along an alley and asked "Tuk tuk, sir? Pretty girl? You want?"
Some things, I guess, will always stay the same.
Read also Tourists shunning Thailand.