Postcard: Chiang Rai

She mailed the letter but didn't hold out much hope. After all, Mati Sae-Ang was just a noodle-soup vendor, with a heroin addict for a son. Still, after watching her boy stick needles in his arms for a decade, what harm could there be in sending then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra a note identifying her son's dealer in the northern Thai town of Chiang Rai? A billionaire tycoon turned politician, Thaksin had just launched a war on drugs. The campaign would be assailed by human-rights activists for claiming more than 2,000 lives in just three months in 2003. But for this single parent, tough action was just what was needed.

A few weeks later, Mati was dishing out bowls of beef noodles when she noticed police cars crowding her street. A man sauntered toward her restaurant and ordered some soup. It was the Prime Minister, who said he had come to personally promise her that he would combat the Chiang Rai drug trade. Today Mati's son, at least, is clean. "Thaksin is my hero," says his 53-year-old mother, wiping away tears with her apron. "He is the only Prime Minister who ever cared about normal people."

Thaksin returned to Thailand on Feb. 28, ending 17 months of exile that began when he was deposed in a bloodless military coup. Thousands of jubilant Thais greeted him at the airport. The former PM faces charges of corruption and abuse of power, which he has denied. But the court cases matter little to Thaksin's many supporters. Even though he has vowed to stay away from politics, a local polling center found that Thaksin is still Thailand's most popular politician. "Everyone says, 'Oh, half of Thailand hates Thaksin,'" says Soonthon Prueksapipat, a website employee who went to the Bangkok airport to welcome the ex-PM. "But all the leaders before had people who hated them. Thaksin is the first to have half the country love him."

That love is strongest in Thailand's rural north, where Thaksin grew up. Bangkok residents may rattle through a litany of Thaksin's alleged faults — corruption, a disregard for human rights, even an attempt to build his reputation at the expense of Thailand's beloved King — but, for people upcountry, as the Thais like to call it, Thaksin's populist health-care initiatives and village funds were manna. "When the soldiers took over, people were scared to say they liked Thaksin," says Nuntana Sommun, a teacher of Thai dance in Chiang Rai. "But in our hearts we still supported him." Such sentiments propelled the People Power Party (PPP) to victory in the first postcoup elections last December. A proxy for Thaksin, whose own party was disbanded by the junta, the PPP is led by Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej. His new Cabinet teems with Thaksin loyalists: the Foreign Minister is Thaksin's former lawyer, while his brother-in-law has been named Education Minister.

Even so, the government's survival isn't assured. On Feb. 26, Thailand's election commission found the PPP's deputy leader, Yongyuth Tiyapairat, guilty of vote-buying in Chiang Rai. Under Thai electoral law, the ruling could lead to the PPP's dissolution. Nor can Thaksin run for office, since he was banned from politics for five years by the junta. Any attempts by Samak's government to ease Thaksin back into politics could ignite protests by upper- and middle-class Bangkok residents, who took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands shortly before the former PM was ousted.

For noodle seller Mati, just having Thaksin back in Thailand is enough. A few days before he returned home, Mati and other members of the self-proclaimed Thaksin Loyalists' Club organized a "We Miss Thaksin" day. Around 2,000 people showed up, although it's not entirely clear whether the lure was the former Prime Minister or free bowls of Mati's tasty beef soup. Either way, she was satisfied. "Feeding noodles to 2,000 people," Mati says, "is a lot cheaper than sending my son to another expensive rehab program."