Why is it so quiet?

I couldn't get this out of my head for some time now. At a lot of my stops around Thailand I had been thinking that it was a little quieter than it should be. At first I put it down to that it wasn't really the busy season. Up north and in Laos was a real backpackers trail so I never expected to see vacationers anyway, but when I arrived back in Bangkok from Saigon it all just seemed a little too quiet - loads of room in the hotels, not that many people hanging around Khao San. We were told that we'd need to book ahead for the full moon party down south because it would get too full but this didn't seem to be the case either. Whenever we asked Thai people they just got uncomfortable and didn't want to answer. When we were chatting to the owner of the mini golf we were finally able to get a better answer. He had noticed a serious drop in his business since the coup back in November (in fact, as far as I could tell we were the only people to play golf there that day) and he said everyone else in the area had noticed the same.

Interesting when you think about it - Thailand is now under military rule, ... Dictatorship? ... And all its neighbors are too - Myanmar is a military dictatorship, Laos and Vietnam are one party communist states while Cambodia is still in the midst of a painful recovery, desperately fighting rampant corruption after the Pol Pot era.

Anyway, phrases like "coup" and "military rule" don't bode well for any country's tourism sector and I imagine Thailand must be feeling the effects as people choose the south of Spain this year instead. This military rule definitely in effect too - I read that they have imposed curfews in parts of the deep south where separatist violence has been occurring and anti coup groups and protesters are being arrested and jailed in Bangkok. The government have promised elections next November, but doesn't that sound like an oddly far away date? I wonder will an election be ever held?