Standing amid the burnt-out ruins of southeast Asia's second biggest shopping mall right in the heart of Bangkok, it becomes clear that the Land of Smiles has become, for now at least, a land of snarls.
Although some media have been accused of hyping-up the situation — or of being oblivious to the fact that the rest of Thailand has not yet been embroiled in the surreal violence hitting Bangkok in recent weeks — what took place in the capital in recent days was unprecedented and brutal.
With over 50 dead and hundreds wounded, amid an increasingly polarised political situation, the uncompromising quashing of the anti-government redshirt rally by the Thai army may have sown the seeds for more conflict later on.
The redshirts can point to the government and army as brutal killers, firing on unarmed protestors and acting to support an unelected government, which they previously helped manoeuvre into power. The Government and yellowshirts (anti-redshirt protestors who took to the streets in 2006 and 2008 while redshirt parties were in government) can point out that the redshirts were not peaceful protestors, that they sheltered or tolerated a violent black-clad armed faction, and that they laid waste to the shopping heartland of the city when they failed to get their way.
'The army wanted to kill us all,' claimed one woman as she boarded a bus leaving Bangkok on Thursday. Trying to access the burnt-out remains of the rally site, I was told by soldiers that 'terrorists' lurked inside, and wanted to kill foreign journalists.
There is right and wrong on both sides, and both stand guilty of half-truths and demonisation of the other. The recent violence and increasingly-shrill stereotyping will only sharpen a cultural and class-based mutual loathing.
The redshirts have adopted the slur phrai — which more or less means 'hick' — as a defiant and ironic appelation, much as inner-city blacks in the US call themselves 'nigger'. Phrai more or less rhymes with khwai, Thai for buffalo, another of the insults screamed at redshirts by yellowshirt rivals in recent weeks. But the redshirts have plenty of wealthy nouveau-riche types among their number. Former Thai prime minsiter and de facto redshirt leader Thaksin Shinawatra is a former telecoms billionaire for example.
On 17 March, redshirts pushed through police cordons to carry out their 'blood spilling' protest, dousing Thai PM Abhisit Vejajjiva's front gate with blood donated by thousands of the demonstrators. Redshirt leaders played