By Nirmal Ghosh, Thailand Correspondent In Bangkok

It's nice to be back in Bangkok, Indian film director Shyam Benegal said yesterday at a lunch in downtown Sukhumvit. The front page of The Nation daily yesterday morning featured a picture of the famed director receiving the Lotus Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 6th World Film Festival.

Right next to the picture was a news item headlined 'Fears of more violence'.

But Bangkok, a sprawling city of around 10 million, is deceptive. Bangkok is a microcosm of Thailand, and the centre of power - but paradoxically it is also not Thailand, a country of 63 million.

The Thailand of quiet leafy villages, green fields and lazy beaches has in Bangkok long vanished under the concrete of Sukhumvit's sidewalks, which 40 years ago used to be paths through rice fields.

And like the air which circulates through the wind tunnels of the high-rise business and residential districts on the left bank of the Chao Phraya River, Bangkok at times like this seethes in its own ferment of rumour and apprehension.

Currently, a right-wing, royalist alliance of Bangkok's old money elites, backed by sectors of the army and the middle class, is occupying Government House - demanding the resignation of the government.

The administration has refused to give in. Two pitched battles - one between pro- and anti-government groups and the other between the police and the anti-government protesters - have left at least two dead and many injured. And there is no sign of any resolution to the conflict.

But yesterday, even though the country is deeply polarised and the prospect of violence is real, and the guests at the lunch exchanged notes on the previous night when rumours of coups and bombs had flown, there was nothing about the event that suggested a city on the edge outside the walls of the upscale hotel.

''Nothing changes in Bangkok, not even the Friday night jitters,' one young Thai had told me the previous night as he lay languidly on a white couch at Bangkok's iconic Bed Supperclub, watching the packed house dance to rib-jarring hip-hop music.

Those jitters hadn't prevented the Bed's clientele from thronging the stairs into the capsule-like structure, where the obligatory muscular young Thai men briefly checked identities before letting them in for a night of partying at a cover charge of 700 baht (S$30) per head.

Across town, just around the corner from Sanam Luang and Government House, which provide a vast theatre for warring factions to carve out their space and issue challenges as they jostle to define and control the future of Thailand, is the more modest tourism enclave of Khao San Road.

At this staging point for backpackers travelling in the Mekong region, tourism numbers have dropped across the board and the full extent of the downturn will be known only when the winter peak season gets under way.

But the street was still quite full on Friday night.

American school teacher Kiera Radman, 22, told The Sunday Times: 'I'd say Thailand is not any more dangerous than China, Vietnam or Cambodia.'

But she added: 'I guess the stereotype of the clueless traveller is correct. Because so many travellers come here, we all feel there's safety in numbers. And if you asked most travellers, I think most would have no idea what's going on.'

Israeli student Yair Tabid, 23, said: 'I've heard that things are happening but I don't see anything that would make me frightened or worried.

''Anyway, we are used to fighting in the Middle East and even in the West; this little bit of fighting won't scare tourists away. If tourists don't come, then it's their loss because Thailand is such a lovely and safe country.'

Foreigners who have been in Thailand for some years have more nuanced views. Thirty-four- year-old Australian humanitarian worker Ruth Harrison, who is raising five children in Thailand with her husband, said: 'Thailand is always chaotic but it functions, so I don't think there is much cause for concern.

'We know that we have the protection of the Australian government, so we can always get out - but I don't think it will come to that.'

An Algerian identifying himself as James, who has been working in Bangkok for 14 years, was more cautionary. 'I was here during the '92 conflict - and I think this will be much worse,' he said.

In 1992, dozens were killed when troops opened fire on pro-democracy protesters. The lobby of the Royal Hotel at a corner of Sanam Luang, a short walk from Khao San Road, was invaded by Special Forces troops who beat, punched and kicked young protesters taking refuge in the building.

Despite that paroxysm of violence, James reckoned that 'people were not so divided and angry then'. He said: 'In 1992 it was simple: people against the government. Now it's people against people.

'This violence and anger is very uncharacteristic of Thailand, even though the politics is always complicated. I think this situation is out of the ordinary for Thailand and everybody is worried.'

Indeed Thai culture itself is deceptive. Famously promoted as the 'land of smiles', the country lives up to the label with its warmth, friendliness and its sabai sabai (fun-loving) approach to life.

But below the veneer is a society as or more violent than any other, where gangs of youths on motorcycles race the streets at night armed with handguns to scare off policemen; where fortune favours the rich and powerful; where grudges and vendettas are settled with frightful and sometimes almost casual violence; and where the police are the last people average Thais would call honest and trustworthy.

It is those average working Thais who make up the vigorous entrepreneurial backbone of Bangkok who have begun hurting already - and may suffer more before the political conflict is resolved.

At Bangkok's famed flower market which comes alive at night, street vendor Sommat Khapso, 23, told The Sunday Times: 'I am earning 60 per cent less than I used to.

'The protest may be far away from where I sell things but it still affects my business. It's a pity that our politics is so complicated because it really affects common people like me and we are struggling.

'Life now is not the same as before, not because of the violence of politics but because of the effect of politics on the economy.'

But most working-class Thais have little alternative but to take things in stride. Like Ms Manaa Chaidee, 24, who sells flowers at the market.

'People don't spend so much money any more,' she said, estimating that business was down around 60 per cent.

'It's funny that foreigners think that it's not safe to come to Thailand. The problem doesn't even affect them. Thai people should be feeling more scared than them.'

And Ms Saipin Chantasek, 39, said between carefully folding and arranging lotus flowers: 'They will fight for a long time, but so far, business is carrying on as usual for most Thai people.

'Unless of course you're involved in politics, because then you will feel confused and angry every day.'

Unlike her, tourists have the choice of leaving the city for the more sleepy and salubrious upcountry towns of Chiang Rai, Mae Hong Son and Pai to name just a few - or any number of islands untouched by the ferment except for a few days in September.

That was when mobs of anti- government People's Alliance for Democracy supporters briefly closed down three airports, including Phuket, stranding upwards of 15,000 tourists.

Indeed Thailand's government is also going to flee Bangkok briefly in December. In Beijing on Friday night, Thai diplomats told their Asean colleagues the annual summit of the grouping scheduled for Bangkok in December will be held in Chiang Mai instead.

While that will further hurt the capital in terms of lost business - estimated at 2,000 hotel rooms - it will be largely a wound self-inflicted by Thailand's warring elites, while hardworking common people suffer.

But it also underscores that there is more to Thailand than Bangkok.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Oct 26, 2008.

For more The Straits Times stories, click here.