PHUKET, THAILAND - So I was nosing around Rama IX Park, disturbing everyone unfortunate enough to cross my path - joggers, students, road sweepers... My three-day-old Thai wasn't very helpful, but this is what I found out:
Only about 5% of the conversations were in English, so there might have been quite some miscommunication...
According to the gardeners, a group arrived in the park at about 4pm. Production in the park went on for about two hours, until about 6pm. They gave me the *running motion* *around the lake motion*. Appearing frequently in the conversation was the English word "exercise".
A cyclist told me that production spent time in the Fitness Center - a tiny indoor public gym on the north side of the park. Normal opening hours are 6am to 9.30am and then 5pm to 8.30pm (for the working class), so there might have been an Hours of Operation. The guy who opened the shutters at 5pm couldn't, or wouldn't, communicate anything about what happened.
The Phuket Gazette photo was taken next to a police booth. Nothing from them. The shops along the road outside the park mostly don't know anything, and even those who said they knew, I think those were false positives. (My fault, my Thai sucks.)
I have absolutely no idea what they could have done in that gym. It's just weights machines and stuff. There were photos of a muay thai event on the notice board though, but it looked like a different location. Heading all the way to Phuket, to lift weights??
Oh, by the way? Teams trying to get to "Rama Nine Park" will not get ANYTHING out of the locals. They know it as Seum Luang, and even then it's pronounced quite differently than the way we would...
Your foreign correspondent Neobie, reporting from Phuket.