Rural Thais Find an Unaccustomed Power

Rural Thais Find an Unaccustomed Power – NYT, June 30, 2011
…But no one is quite sure what rural means anymore.
Villagers here complain of slow Internet download speeds. On a single street that winds past rice paddies, residents tell of work stints in Taiwan, Singapore, Israel and Saudi Arabia, enough frequent-flier miles to rival the inhabitants of a tony Bangkok condominium.
Once passive and fatalistic, villagers are now better educated, more mobile, less deferential and ultimately more politically demanding…