I had been at dinner with Stephanie, the other grade one teacher, when it happened. The city is huge, we didn’t hear it or even know about it for a few hours. I realized something was up when I was walking home. There were lots of sirens and the security guards outside my building looked panicked and their walkie-talkies were going crazy.

It happened about 2 miles from my apartment. I had been in that area the week before to do some grocery shopping and walked right by the shrine.

The bomb the man used was a pipe bomb. When it exploded it shot out shrapnel. Which caused many deaths and injuries. Here in Thailand the media doesn’t sensor anything. When going online to read about what happened there were very graphic pictures from the scene.

Our school was good at keeping us updated in the days following. There was a second bomb the next day that was thrown into the river; nobody was injured. There was another bomb threat at one of the train stations, the train was shut down for a few hours.

School ran as normal. Things seem to functioning normal around the city. I was in the area the week following and got a picture of the shrine. There is a bit of damage, but there were tons of people there paying respect.

I feel safe in this city. There are always going to be bad things that happen. I don’t want the bad to out weight all the good, because this city has so much good.

Here is a picture of the shire about a week after the bombing.