UPDATE: Prachatai also have a story similiar to what BP writes below:

The red shirts in the clip are seen to be handing out and receiving money.  Driver’s licenses and ID cards are checked, while recipients read out the numbers of their vehicles’ license plates.  A voice using a microphone can be heard saying in the local dialect, ‘… send moral support.  Those who can’t go can give money to help.’

Red shirts giving out money? The Nation reports (together with video):

This image was captured on video by a Nation correspondent in Nakhon Phanom, where protesters were preparing to leave for Bangkok tomorrow. Around 500 red-shirt protesters, led by Pheu Thai’s Nakhon Phanom MP Chavalit Vichayasut, gathered at the city pillar and performed a rite to ensure victory before they headed to the capital. Fifty buses were arranged for the protesters.

The video clip showed a man announcing that every person joining the rally would get Bt2,000 on the way to Bangkok and another Bt2,000 on the way back.

A red-shirt leader said the money was meant to cover the red-shirt supporters’ expenses during the mass rally.

Chavalit, meanwhile, insisted that the money being given to the protesters did not come from former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, who is believed to be injecting funds into the mass rally, aimed at toppling the government.

The MP told The Nation that the money had been raised through pha pa or donations from supporters in Nakhon Phanom, some of whom are businessmen.

“We collected up to Bt300,000 in donations. The money will be spent to cover the red-shirt protesters joining the rally in Bangkok. These are funds for ‘finding democracy’,” he said.

BP: Doesn’t look good and that the mention of donations is just some post-facto excuse, right? First, the wording in the video clip used is in the Northeastern/Isarn dialect and the person speaking states:

“ผู้ไปบ่ได้ กะบริจาคเงินมาช่วย เอ้า เอาพอให้ถึงกรุงเทพ ขากลับบ่เป็นหยัง”

“Those who cannot go have donated money to help [those who can]. [This] is enough to get to Bangkok [and] for the return journey we will talk about it again.”

Below is a screenshot from an INN news story dated March 8, 2010:

innnewsmoney

Summarised translation: The chairman of the red shirts in Nakhon Phanom held a donation drive for travelling to Bangkok at a temple in Nakhon Phanom. More than 100 people turned up and the money donated was more than 200,000 Baht. There will be more than 20,000 people from Nakhon Phanom, Sakol Sakorn, and Mukdaharn. Personal vehicles will be used to transport people.

Here is Sondhi L in an interview with Asia Times on the PAD:

There has always been a pool of contributions from local businessmen, who pooled their money to rent a car, to pay for the gas, and they come over and stay overnight. And this sort of thing has been going on for 104 days.

BP: So donations from local businessman, using the money for transport and gas. Shock, horror, someone alert The Nation of this! It sounds exactly the same what the red shirts are doing…

h/t to a Prachatai webboard thread – can’t find the link anymore