By Blaine Harden
Washington Post
BANGKOK -- Thailand is gripped by a drama involving an ailing king and a monarchy in jeopardy, a topless princess and a poodle named Fu Fu. It features mysterious assassins in black suits, drugs and thugs, and a billionaire former prime minister forced into exile, where he spent more than $160 million to buy a British soccer team and bankrolls thousands of protesters occupying the heart of this steamy capital city.
Seven weeks of episodic chaos have claimed the lives of 27 people and injured nearly 1,000, while scaring off tourists and infuriating commuters. It has also spooked investors in one of the best-performing economies in Southeast Asia, a bustling import-export center that has become, among other things, the second-largest market for pickup trucks, after the United States.
In the shadow of a fancy downtown mall that calls itself Thailand's "premier lifestyle shopping destination," thousands of Red Shirts, as the demonstrators are known, have brought commerce to a halt while building medieval-looking barricades out of sharpened bamboo poles.
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