There are a couple of things that you definitely don't do in Thailand that might seem strange to anyone not from here or unfamiliar with the culture of the country. Don't wear your shoes in someone's house, don't touch a monk if you are a woman, and no matter what, never, ever be critical of the Royal Family.
Thailand is one of the few places in the world that still has lese majeste laws in place that forbid anyone from challenging or criticizing the King or any of his family members. Doing so can get you in a lot of trouble and carries with it a 15 year prison sentence. Some exceptionally stupid foreigners have been busted in the past vandalizing statues and reverent poster or monuments to the Royal Family and ended up getting the book thrown at them along with a 15 year prison sentence.
In all of these situations (that I am aware of) the King ended up pardoning them after a certain amount of time. This was the old King though and well, the new King doesn't exactly have the same loyal following that the previous one did.
Let me start off by saying that I don't really have an opinion about either one of the Kings. I am not Thai and I very much believe in a "when in Rome do what the Romans do" type of life. I am merely speaking about what I have been told by my Thai friends who say these things to me behind closed doors in hushed conversations. The previous king (pictured above on the left) was revered and loved by everyone. The new King (pictured above on the right) has the commanded respect of the Thai people, but for a lot of Thais, this admiration is not genuine.
The new King has a reputation as a womanizer and spends most of his time not living in Thailand. Recently when the country was locked down, he fled to Germany with an entourage of dozens of "ladies in waiting" and this was all over the international press. Of course this was not publicized in Thailand out of fear or lese majeste laws, but Thai people have the internet also. They saw, and what they saw didn't really surprise them.
There were also some less-than-flattering images of him that emerged where he was dressed in a extremely non-royal way that showed he is covered in what appears to be gangster tattoos and I'm not going to post them here. They are easy enough to find.
The point of this article is not to bad mouth the Royal Family though, but to rather point out that the people that have been opposed to the unconstitutional power that the King has over Thailand, primarily the military is being protested publicly by some very bold young people, right now.
On the evening of August 3rd, human-rights lawyer and activist Anon Nampa took the stage at Victory Monument to speak about how the Royal Family's power over the government, particularly the military, needs to be curbed.
People have called for this in the past, but they have always done this from overseas and then quickly claim amnesty or political asylum. Anon is the first person (who wasn't completely nuts) to call for this sort of action inside the Kingdom.
He was arrested on the 7th of August and later released and was not charged with any infraction of lese majeste. He held another rally, this time with more people in attendance on the 9th of August, then spoke in Chiang Mai (where I currently live) and encouraged his supporters to come to what is planned to be a larger event in Bangkok on the 16th of August.
Anon has sparked quite a lot of interest in this virtually overnight as protests over his arrest lead to him perhaps gaining a lot more followers than if he had simply been allowed to talk (my opinion, this is nothing official). What we are seeing now is not just a rallying cry against overreach on the part of the Royal Family but also against the current government which is primarily a military junta that installed itself after the coup in 2014.
I feel as thought it is important to point out that political unrest and protest is not uncommon in Thailand. It has been going on basically the entire time I have been here and the government has been overthrown 3 times since 1991. However, this is the first time that the Monarchy has been thrown into the mix and I suspect the reason why they are included this time is because of the actions of the King who doesn't seem to be terribly attached to his country and instead uses Thailand's tax resources in order to live a lavish life overseas.
It will be interesting to see how the government handles this because if they arrest Anon and his fellow leaders, the movement will likely only grow.