The 10 p.m. curfew imposed by Thailand’s new military rulers Thursday was a buzzkill for Americans and other tourists visiting the vacation hot spot.
“It was a shock and surprise. I only learned about the curfew at 9:50,” said Angus MacDonald, a University of Minnesota professor who arrived Tuesday to teach a summer course on the Asian opium-producing region called the Golden Triangle.
“I was in my hotel, and I went down to go out and grab some dinner, but the receptionist told me I couldn’t go out . . . He pantomimed guys with rifles and soldiers, so I got on the Internet and saw what had happened,” MacDonald, 46, told The Post from his room at the Baiyoke Sky Hotel in Bangkok.
Caroline Bertolin, an officer at the US Embassy, said Americans were free to travel to Thailand despite the coup, and that visitors going to and from the airport were exempt from the curfew.
Many tourists, meanwhile, snapped selfies with gun-toting Thai soldiers patrolling the streets. “No one seems to be particularly taken aback by it,” MacDonald said.