The Thais will love you when you come to spend money as a tourist, hence the smiles. However, live here and they no longer like you because expats have the money, houses and nice cars.
They tend to forget that it was many of us expats who were donating money to enable the hotels to give food to those long lines of unemployed starving Thais.
It was expat spending which basically kept this place afloat.
If they do anything to disturb the status quo they will slowly kill the goose that laid the golden egg.