Covering the ongoing anti-government red-shirt demonstration in Bangkok is a challenge. It’s not just the heat, although that’s bad enough. It’s 35 C right now, just two degrees shy of the temperature of the blood being drawn from protesters to throw at Government House today. Bangkok-based red-shirts can (and do) return home each evening, to bathe and sleep. Their rural comrades, who arrived by bus, truck and boat at the weekend, must bed down on Bangkok’s streets, which radiate the day’s heat long into the night. Whatever your political colours, and regardless of how much you think some red shirts might have been paid—2,000 baht ($65) each, by one account—you have to admire their stamina.

How much longer will the protest last? Hard to tell (although the blood stunt smacks of desperation). Foreign media interest in the story is waning too. It was never that strong to begin with. Thai politics is a tough sell. That’s partly because the social upheaval underway here is much more complicated than the handy colour-coding of protesters—yellow-shirted ultra-royalists one year, red-shirted Thaksinistas the next—seems to suggest.

It’s also because, for many readers, Thailand is not supposed to be a political place. It’s where you come on holiday. Some editors have only a narrow concept of what this country is about. “Pussy and elephants,” an old Thai woman complains about foreigners in one of Rattawut Lapcharoensap‘s short stories. “That’s all these people want.”

What do the reds want? A new election and the prime minister’s head on a stick. They also want and need a foreign audience (and therefore foreign reporters), since threatening to frighten off investors and tourists is one of the few weapons in their arsenal. Throwing blood at Government House has all the symbolism. But spilling it along Khao San Road—the backpacker enclave less than a mile away—might be more effective.

PS: Thailand has a blood shortage. To donate please contact the Thai Red Cross.