Key's off to Thailand and Malaysia

I'm off to Thailand and Malaysia today with John Key, who's going to the East Asia Summit in Hua-Hin.
The last couple of times the Thais tried to hold this particular meeting it ended in farce, so it'll be interesting to see whether security has sorted itself out this time.
First they tried to hold it last December but protesters invaded Bangkok airport and shut it down for several days.
They tried again in Pattaya in April but somehow the protesters got inside the venue and again it had to be cancelled. A couple of MFAT people had to be rescued, from memory, and Key never got past the airport.
They seem more hopeful this time, partially because it's being held in the home town of the King, and Thais being a reasonable deferential lot, the feeling seems to be protests are less likely.
Why do we care about the East Asia Summit? Well it's nice to be part of the club of South East Asian nations, I guess, but more importantly EAS now represents some 16 countries (ASEAN plus six others - NZ, Australia, Japan, China, India, and Korea) and that is actually half the world's population.
There's the usual trade focus and the usual talk of the possibility of new free trade areas (if the EAS formed a trade area it would eclipse the European Union or NAFTA in its scope) but in reality any such deal is many, many years away.
More importantly, they'll talk about climate change ahead of Copenhagen and responses to the global financial meltdown. The feeling from our officials seems to be that as this region is actually leading the world out of recession at the moment, and gaining more political clout (particularly China and India) the rest of the world might just listen to what the EAS has to say.
After that, Key's off to Kuala Lumpur to sign a Free Trade Agreement with Malaysia. There's a big business delegation going as well, around 60 people, which I guess is a positive sign that New Zealand companies are looking ahead and are reasonably positive about their prospects.
Key's also spending four days in Japan, mostly on tourism-related stuff, and I'm not joining him for that leg.
I'll report in from Hua-Hin tomorrow and in the meantime, feel free to debate the relative merits of New Zealand's participation in the new regional architecture - or, if you like, Rodney "there's no such thing as a free breakfast'' Hide's pay-as-you-go attitude to public speaking..