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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Singapore Asia Pacific World Retail therapy as Thai malls open after protests By KAY JOHNSON,Associated Press Writer - Wednesday, May 26 Send IM Story Print BANGKOK – Retail-starved Thais trickled back into Bangkok's glitziest shopping district Tuesday as malls shuttered for weeks by anti-government protests reopened for business, minus one landmark torched in last week's violent end to the demonstrations. Employees outnumbered customers in many shops at the upscale Siam Paragon shopping complex _ though the second-floor Porsche dealership had already rung up its first sale an hour after opening. "We sold some accessories _ a cap and a calendar _ to some longtime customers," said Sarinya Eakkarakrungrueang, 31, assistant manager of Performance Auto Gallery, which has the latest BMW, Bentley and Jaguar models parked near the top of the mall's central escalator. "They were very happy, because there was nowhere good for them to shop for so long," she said. Some of the Thai capital's highest-end shopping centers were closed for eight weeks by the latest dramatic escalation in the country's prolonged political crisis. The city's commercial heart was overrun by so-called Red Shirt protesters who set up camps and barricaded roads into the upscale Rajprasong district. At least 88 people, most of them demonstrators, died in clashes, including 16 killed in last week's military crackdown and the riots that followed. The protests dealt a severe blow to Thailand's economy. Retailers in the occupied shopping district were losing 174 million baht ($5.5 million) per day and some 20,000 employees were sent home, according to the Rajprasong Square Trade Association. The country's crucial tourism industry also suffered, with five-star hotels including the Four Seasons, the InterContinental and the Hyatt closed since April. The government's economic planning agency said tourist arrivals this year would fall 8 percent from 2009 to about 13 million. Revenue from tourism would fall short of expectations by about 113 billion baht ($3.5 billion). As a result, economists say the Thai economy will contract or at best stagnate in the second quarter compared with the first quarter. For moneyed Thais, Tuesday's reopening of Siam Paragon, the nearby Siam Discovery and other central shopping areas and restaurants, marked another step back towards normalcy, although they didn't have to look far to see the upheaval's lasting damage. From the window of Sarinya's auto showroom, customers could see the charred husk of Central World, one of Southeast Asia's largest shopping complexes, and one of 39 buildings set on fire last Wednesday after the military operation to clear the protest camp sparked riots. Central World contributed about 16 percent of annual revenue for its owner Central Pattana. The company's share price fell as much as 8 percent on Monday. The rise of the Red Shirt movement has exposed a rich-poor divide in Thailand. The protesters demanded that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva resign and call early elections. They proudly called themselves "phrai," or commoners _ in contrast with the elites they complain control the levers of power _ and claimed the Oxford-educated Abhisit heads an illegitimate government because his party did not win the last elections. Those polls, in 2007, were won by allies of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a military coup the previous year and has been convicted of conflict-of-interest charges. Though living abroad and a fugitive, Thaksin remains popular among Red Shirt supporters and the rural poor in general for the populist social welfare programs he introduced. Thailand's middle class and educated circles, however, tend to view Thaksin as a corrupt demagogue who has bankrolled the Red Shirt movement and continues to manipulate the uneducated poor. "They are ignorant," Naree Kavitanon, a retired government employee, said of the protesters as a beautician brushed makeup on her face at a Siam Paragon cosmetics counter. Naree, 68, usually comes once a month for skin care, but had to skip last month because of the protests. "I missed these girls!" she said, patting her makeup artist's hand. She concedes the Red Shirts' right to protest but says the occupation of Rajprasong went too far and lasted too long. Plus, she believes many of the protesters were either being paid or were duped. "Those people who come from the provinces, some of them have problems to ask the government to solve, but some, they came to gain money. Because they have nothing to do." For now, with most of the Red Shirt leaders under arrest and most of the protesters back in their north and northeastern provinces, Bangkok residents are returning to their daily lives, and to retail therapy. And while businesses have suffered, not everyone is feeling the pinch. The day before Sarinya returned to her shopping center showroom, she sold a Jaguar to a Thai customer at the company headquarters. "Rich people, they don't worry," she said simply. Originally from the northern city of Chiang Mai _ a Red Shirt bastion, though she declines to talk politics _ Sarinya looked out from the showroom at Bangkok's once-again busy streets and said she thinks life is returning to normal. Soon she expects to be back to selling her usual two cars a month. "It's good now. Everything is better," she said, then paused. "I hope." 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