Zoe Daniel - Storyteller - A Foreign Correspondents Memoir

April 2010

I push open the car door and hear the first shot. Blanks or live rounds, I wonder, as the five of us tumble out, heads cocked towards the sound. We dither, or at least I do, the others waiting for my call. Eventually our cameraman, David Leland, loses patience. Well, come on, are we going or not?

Only a few weeks ago I was a stay-at-home mum. What am I doing? But theres no time for reconsideration now. My brain snaps into action and so does my mouth. Flak jackets, helmets, gas masks everyone, now !

David and I are with our Thai producer, Jum, whos tiny but a powerhouse in the bureau, and Paul Gates, our unflappable Aussie producer. Our driver, Khun Tu, has parked the car off the main drag, a recent work-survival course dictating my instructions to him. Park rear-end to the kerb, check . Out of the line of fire, check . Plan an escape route um, sort of.

Poor guy, I think, as the rest of us head counter-intuitively towards the gunshots. Hes new.

But then, so am I.

Im the new correspondent appointed to cover Southeast Asia for the ABC. Im not inexperienced I used to be the correspondent in Africa but Im a little rusty. Ive just had three years off. Well, three years off paid work, bringing up two babies. I left Africa pregnant and with a view that being a war correspondent was no longer something I aspired to, but Ive arrived in Bangkok on the brink of the worst civil unrest in years. The city is about to become a battleground.

Emerging from the lane where our car is parked, we peer in the direction of the gunfire, up the major four-lane road that leads to the citys shopping district. For a moment it looks like any busy road at lunchtime, but in an instant everything changes. Thai army trucks loaded with soldiers scream around the corner. Cars reverse away from them at speed or U-turn across the median strip, fleeing back the way theyve come. Motorbikes pivot on their rear ends.

The soldiers have come to move anti-government protestors whove been locking down the city centre for weeks. Using tear gas and warning gunfire, the soldiers start working their way up the thoroughfare. Everyone, including us, turns and runs. Were caught in a surging mass of people rushing away from the military towards the city. David is leading the way, followed by Paul, whos lugging the tripod, me with the radio gear and finally Jum, slowed down by her oversized bulletproof vest.

Ducking in and out of alcoves, we scurry along the footpath, David picking off the occasional shot with the camera, me urging Jum to hurry and worrying that shell get hurt. Shes a recently widowed mum, and the thought of her son becoming an orphan torments me. Sheltering in the lee of the Japanese embassy blast wall, I take some gear from her and she giggles, her combat helmet wobbling. Shes much braver than me, but I smile too.

We catch up with the others a few hundred metres ahead of the soldiers, who have blocked off the road. Theyre still firing tear gas but the wind is in our favour. Were out of range. Still, when I see David filming in the middle of the road, I screech at him to take some cover. Far cooler and more experienced than me, he replies that if were going to report on this, he needs to get the shot. Fair point. I shut up.

Dozens of onlookers warily monitor the soldiers. Shopkeepers mutter and shake their heads, then pull down and lock clunky metal shutters and retreat into their shop-houses.

Theres a whoosh and burst of heat a police bus has been torched right in front of us. We shoot a couple of pieces for our TV news bulletins. A bus has been set on fire, presumably by protestors, I blurt down the camera lens. Its caught electrical wires above. People are just standing around; there are so many civilians here. Fire trucks are moving in, and yet behind us we still have the army setting off tear gas canisters, setting up razor wire And this is Bangkok at midday

Other media arrive just as we start to feel as if weve overstayed. While some journalists set up to film on the road in front of us with the soldiers approaching, I look at my watch: deadline looming. We jump into the car, which the driver has manoeuvred around the back streets into a safer spot as per the escape plan, drive to the office and file. Later we hear that one of the journalists who was setting up metres from us has been shot. Hes alive but badly hurt.

The afternoon and evening are punctuated by the distant booms of gunfire and firecrackers as the protestors wind up the soldiers. Its pretty clear that the unrest is going to get worse. Around 1 a.m. I lie down on my office floor. The adrenaline chases sleep away, but so does the heartache. In the three years since I had my first child Ive barely been away from my family. Now Im locked in a blacked-out office building waiting for a city to explode.