For example, a friend in Phuket says the same thing happened when he tried to book a small guest house in Patong for a friend. Actually, he said that the big hotels are in fact discounting to the point where they are only a few hundred baht more than a modest guest house.

Bear in mind that the same story will be rpeated at every bar, restaraunt, spa, beach umbrella and jet ski. I just cannot see how a trip to Thailand will yield the expected "bargin".

What Thailand needs is more education not more tourists!

Yes, it was my bad luck. I will go back when there will be no more Monarchy. when majority of people can have their voices heard.

Right now, Thailand seems to go toward Communist I say.

PAD people are not without guilt but they are no terrorists. What happened in Bangkok Airport was nothing at all like NY 9/11 or London 7/7. Yet some people put all the blame on PAD and gave them no credit at all for all their sacrifice. Not even one bad word about the thick-skinned, wicked and corrupt government! Shame on you!!

And if some tourists don’t want to come to Thailand, fine. Stay away. True friends are those that come around in times of trouble. Thailand is not on sale anyway. We’re not street hookers. If you want cheap bargain, go find it in your own neighborhood.

I couldn’t disagree with you more about “….now, more than ever, is a great time to bag a bargain holiday!”. This article sound like a total fluff piece. I’ve been traveling SE Asia for over 15 years now. In fact I even went to Thailand after the terrible tsunami in 2004. It’s a good logic to think that the hotels , shops, ect that cater to tourists would be cheaper. But in fact it was the opposite instead of dropping prices to get more people to come they actually raised prices to make up for lost revenue.
The same thing is happening now YOU WILL NOT GET ANY DEALS the prices of hotels are the same if not more then they were before the airport closings.

I challenge you Dan to show us the deals , show us these great bargains. I have friends in Bangkok and Phucket now and they’re telling me there are NO deals to be had.

"Isn’t there a threat that Thailand will enter a civil war?"

Highly unlikely. I've lived here in central Bangkok for well over 14 years - I'm a Westerner - and even during this crisis, and even during the coup a couple of years ago, I never ONCE had the slightest problem. Heck, I live only about 4 blocks from where a couple of small bombs went off on different days (one had nothing to do with the political protests but was a landlord-tenant dispute matter, or so folks have said), and in my little alley we were all blissfully unaware of it until we saw the news. And that unawareness includes my Thai neighbors, which means practically everyone in the neighborhood.

Civil war, in the sense you mean, is very un-Thai.

I'm with Dan: come on in; the water's fine.