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Steve Marshall in Bangkok - Source: ONE News -
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It's Saturday night and I'm at the Bangkok airport departure lounge.
This time last week, I was at the Sydney Opera House with thousands of others welcoming home teen solo sailor Jessica Watson from her round the world voyage.
What a contrast in stories! Having filed the story of Watson's feat for ONE News, I kissed my wife goodbye and boarded a plane to Thailand to cover the military crackdown on anti-government protesters in the capital.
No need to pack a suit for this trip. I had thrown in my trusty "on the road" Columbia shirts and cargo pants that served me so well during my foreign correspondent days covering world events for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
I've been working this assignment as a one man band, where I do the filming and editing as well as the reporting. It's more commonly known as a VJ or a video-journalist.
Today, I'm seven kilos lighter, having finally dumped the bulletproof vest and helmet which has been my second skin for the past week.
I feel for Thailand and its people after this cycle of death and reckless mayhem. This morning I took one final look around the Bangkok streets to film some final clean up shots. Telephone repair men were fixing melted wiring on lamp posts, firemen were dousing building ashes and large cranes were shunting burnt out trucks off once blocked streets.
I clambered up onto the railway lines near the station that was burned by the protesters when the soldiers stormed their protest site on Wednesday. I said a few words to camera explaining that a sign Bangkok is nearing normality will be when trains into the city centre start moving again. I wondered when this will be as soldiers appeared on the platform, armed and on the look out for hard core militants still on the loose.
The 40-odd acts of arson on some of Bangkok's most prized buildings by anti-government protesters will leave long term scars on the Thai capital, but at least the shooting and explosions have stopped.
I've been getting around by hiring motorbike taxis. They've been a God-send this week as I've dashed back and forth from my hotel and the central protest zone which was home to some 5,000 demonstrators, who had taken over central Bangkok for the past six weeks.
I edited my final story on my laptop in the hotel this afternoon and sent it back over the internet to TVNZ headquarters. I then caught a motorbike to the location where I had been doing live reports into ONE News for the past seven nights. Here, I wrapped up my Bangkok riots coverage by looking at the economic impact the riots and hard line military action is predicted to have on South East Asia's second largest economy.
Building damage in Bangkok alone has been put at $1.5 billion and 20% fewer tourists are predicted to visit this year. Given the tourism industry accounts for 6% of Thailand's GDP and 15% of the country's entire workforce, it could be some time before the "land of smiles" recovers from the worst violence seen here in decades.
Read more of Steve Marshall's articles .
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