Bangkok "Red Shirts" Give up the Fight !

Tourists travelling around Thailand are continuing to enjoy their holidays despite street clashes in the capital Bangkok and general anti-government tensions.

Street battles in the capital over the last few days have left two people dead and more than 150 injured.

One U.K. tourist speaking from Bangkok yesterday said, "you would not have even known that anything was happening. Life appears to be quite normal. You can see a few soldiers blocking off roads so tourists can't go in but there is still plenty of access. The only areas blocked off are the main Government areas, which doesn’t really affect tourists at all."

Adding that yesterday was a national public holiday for the Songkran Water Festival, so there were lots of people in the streets enjoying themselves all over Bangkok.

Another visitor Julie Green also from the U.K. arrived early Monday morning and said that when they drove from Bangkok Airport to the hotel there were a lot of armed police and barricades which was a little scary, but that having checked into the hotel and gone exploring the city, they had not seen any problems, just a heavy military prescence.

They plan to head back to Bangkok on Sunday after a few days on Koh Samui and are not put off by the situation at all. They have registered with British Embassy in Bangkok and are receiving regular updates.

Officially, the British Government along with several other nations have made statements that there is a "high risk" to security in Thailand and therefore advise against all tourist and non-essential travel to Bangkok and nearby provinces.

Last night(Tuesday), many of the protesters were beginning to disband and leave the site of the final protests outside Government House.

In the face of an overwhelming army presence, the organisers agreed to disperse in a victory for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who had appeared on the verge of losing his hold on power after just four months in the job.

"All of my brothers and sisters, please give up and board these buses provided by police," top protest leader Veera Musikapong said, clambering on to a police truck to address the crowd.

"Police will take good care of you," he said as the demoralised crowd stripped off the red shirts that have symbolised their campaign for the return of ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

But as thousands of weary protesters started heading home, a large proportion of them from the country's northeast which is the heartland of Thaksin's support, others defiantly said their campaign to dislodge Abhisit would continue.

"We have stopped the protest but we haven't stopped the fight for democracy. We will continue the movement," said staunch Thaksin ally Nattawut Saikuar.

Police and the army said that protesters not involved in Monday's street violence would be allowed to return home but that "hardcore" figures were being detained, with protest leaders facing imminent arrest.

The government had said it wanted a peaceful end to the crisis, after troops on Monday used tear gas and automatic weapons fire to clear protesters from the rest of Bangkok, which remains under a state of emergency.

As dawn broke yesterday, hundreds of soldiers brandishing assault rifles and riot shields advanced upon Government House, and armoured personnel carriers and other vehicles blocked off all access points.

The military used loudspeakers mounted on trucks to issue further warnings to disperse or face the consequences.

The number of protesters at the site fell to about 2,500 on Monday night as the pressure mounted on Thaksin's so-called "Red Shirts" after hours of running battles in sweltering heat the day before.

Army spokesman Colonel Sunsern Kaewkumnerd said troops had also suppressed protests in three provinces including Chiang Mai on Monday, during which protesters took control of a television station and a railway terminal.

Mr Abhisit has hailed the success of the military campaign to dislodge the protesters, amid fears of a repeat of the violence in Bangkok last October in which two people died and 500 were injured.

He has been under immense pressure to end the crisis quickly to prevent further damage to both Thailand's international image & it’s tourism industry which relies heavily on worldwide visitors .