The army halted its tentative advance here, the bulk of the troops had anyway remained at the Chit Lom Road intersection with just a handful continuing as far as the Amarin Center, checking the lie of the ground. At this point I detached from them moving forward the final few hundred metres to the stage which was silent, untouched and totally deserted. The VIP area at the back of the stage was empty and silent, the stage abandoned, while in front of the stage there were just the usual gaudy-coloured neoprene mats and a scattering of plastic chairs, save for a solitary woman in her 50s, dressed in a familiar UDD T-shirt and holding a Reds' flag; she was sitting silently in the vast empty expanse of Ratchadamri Road, that had until just a few hours earlier been ringing with thousands of singing and clapping supporters for weeks and weeks on end. Finally the demonstration was over, many of the leaders were in police cells and most of the demonstrators fled to the sanctuary of Wat Pathumwanaram.