Northern Thailand News
Northern Thailand news, Chiang Mai news, business, tourism, and culture—stay updated with breaking stories, local events, and travel insights from Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Pai, and beyond. Get the latest from The Thaiger, your trusted Northern Thailand news source.
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After 60 years, electricity arrives in Ubon Ratchatani villages
PHOTO: Thai Residents Let there be light! After waiting 6 decades. More than 200 families in two villages in Ubon Ratchatani in north-eastern Thailand are celebrating the arrival of electricity in their homes. Residents in Si Muangmai district can now enjoy the delights of television and laptop computers for the first time in 60 years. Located along a 17 kilometre…
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Department warns of possible floods and landslides for 12 provinces
FILE PHOTO Officials and emergency responders in 12 provinces have been instructed to be prepared, and put equipment on standby, to cope with possible floods and landslides until August 20 (Tuesday). Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation director-general Chayaphol Thitisak says the alert was issued because of heavy downpours in the North, the Central and southeastern coastal areas. Officials were…
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Thai farmers reluctant to scale down use of ‘toxic’ herbicides
Thai farmers say they oppose the proposed bans on herbicides paraquat, glyphosate and chlorpyrifos. The Thai government plans to phase out three chemical weed killers, widely used by Thai farmers, by the end of this year. Farmers say they oppose the restrictions of use because the chemicals provide higher crop yields, according to Thai PBS who headed out into the…
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Relatives of ‘slapped’ student say they will file complaint
Relatives of a Mathayom 2 schoolboy, who was slapped in the face by his teacher at the Sa Kaew’s Aranyaprathet district school, say they will still take action against the teacher. Sa Kaew is to the east of Bangkok on the Cambodian border. They have told local police that they, and the boy, have allegedly been harassed and threatened by…
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Thai woman threatens to strangle child on Facebook Live
PHOTOS: Manager Online Concerned provincial officials have visited a village in Khon Kaen, north-east Thailand, after a woman posted on Facebook live threatening to kill her one year old child. 41 year old Suphaporn Prab-arin, threatened to strangle the child with a belt then hang herself. During the video the baby was crying in a hammock nearby. After the story…
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Electronic cigarettes valued at 11.25 million baht seized in Mukdahan province
PHOTOS: Workpoint News Electronic cigarettes valued at 12.25 million baht, plus various vaping paraphernalia, has been seized in Mukdahan, in far north-east Thailand. E-cigarettes and vaping products are prohibited to import into and use in Thailand. The Mukdahan Provincial Customs Department report that they received information from related officials and planned a raid of an import shipment for a company called…
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Convicted US pedophile caught teaching children at his home in northern Thailand
Immigration police have nabbed a convicted American pedophile in Phayao in the north of Thailand. 66 year old “Mr Eric” had a language school set up at his own home in the main city district of Phayao and was allegedly teaching children English without a work permit. The man’s full name was not provided in the Siam Rath story. Siam Rath…
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Farmers fall for fake fertiliser in Kalasin
PHOTOS: INN News A gang selling fake fertiliser had been travelling around Kalasin in Thailand’s north-east selling their products to unsuspecting farmers. Kalasin Police arrested 5 suspects that were selling the unregistered fertilisers to farmers in the area. All of the suspects are originally from Roi Et Province, also in the north-east. They were delivering large bags of fertilisers to…
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Lovestruck 22 year old Thai has a ‘very bad day’
PHOTOS and STORY: Sanook.com & WorpointNews.com Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but not a diamond thief’s. A man has stolen two diamond rings from a shopping mall in Nakhon Ratchasima. He told police he wanted the rings to show his girlfriend his ‘true love’. The two rings were valued at 84,000 baht. But true love would have to wait…
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Japanese man arrested by Thai Immigration police for alleged sex with underage girls
FILE PHOTO A 69 year old Japanese businessman has been arrested by police in Khon Kaen for allegedly having sex with at least three teenagers, multiple times. The teenagers were aged under 18 years of age. The Khon Kaen Immigration Bureau reported that that “Kazuo” (full name withheld) was arrested at a hotel in the province on Tuesday. The Nation…
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Fishermen stranded at sea off Somalia returning to Thailand
PHOTO: mcot.com Some of the Thai fishermen, that have been stranded on two foreign fishing trawlers off the coast of Somalia over the past two weeks, have now returned to Thailand. The rest are expected arrive in the next few days, thanks to work by the Labour and Foreign Affairs ministries. Thai Labour Minister Chatumongol Sonakul and Chatree Athananan, director-general…
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Three Thai airports being renovated to double passenger volumes
PHOTO: Surat Thani Airport will be doubled in capacity Krabi, Buriram and Surat Thani provincial airports are getting a makeover to double their capacities in 2020, with a combined budget of 11.3 billion baht. Krabi airport will be renovated and expanded to handle double its capacity. The new terminal will be able to handle 8 million passengers a year. A…
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Tropical storm Wipha causes landslides in Tak
A heavy rainstorm passing through the north has triggered landslides that closed down a two kilometre long stretch of the Mae Sot-Mae Sariang highway in Tak yesterday, according to Khao Sod. Tak is west of Chiang Mai on the border with Myanmar. Five houses and one car were severely damaged but luckily nobody was hurt. Tha Songyang District Officer Prateep…
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‘Wipha’ whips up some storms and floods around Chiang Mai
PHOTOS: Entry to a local school turns into a river – The Nation Flooded roads are slowing down traffic and movement around the Chiang Mai area as a result of the fallout from tropical depression ‘Wipha’ which crossed the North Vietnam coast, heading westward towards Thailand, over the weekend. Om Koi district saw flooded road sections, while a large tree…
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Thai man sets fire to his Mercedes Benz because Daddy won’t pay bar tab
PHOTOS: Thai Rath What do you do if you run up a 5,000 baht bar tab and Daddy won’t pick up the cost? Incinerate the Mercedes Benz that Daddy had gone guarantor. That’s precisely what Kittisak Kritklao, the son of a property developer in Udon Thani, did after running up a bill of 5,000 baht at the Tawan Daeng Pub. He told…
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Department ramps up cloud-seeding to ease drought in the Thailand’s northeast
“…he noted that drought in the middle of a wet season is very unusual.” The Department of Rain-making and Agricultural Aviation is stepping up cloud-seeding efforts to help generate much-needed rain for drought areas in the central-north and north-east regions of the country. Some areas need urgent rains to replenish the region’s eight major and 11 medium-sized reservoirs, where water…
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Four teenagers arrested for attacking police
4 teenagers were arrested and charged on Sunday with attacking 2 policemen in front of a nightclub in the north-east province of Nakhon Phanom, near the banks of the Mekong River. Sanook reports that the incident occurred happened around midnight on July 28 after an argument broke out between the teenagers and police. After the argument started to get physical,…
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“No water crisis in the Chao Phraya basin” – Irrigation Department
PHOTO: Bhumibol Dam in Tak when full, now holding only 4% of capacity The Royal Irrigation Department is assuring farmers and residents in the central and north-east that there is no risk of Thailand of severe water shortages. This is despite little rain in some areas during the annual wet season and the low levels of the Chao Phraya River…
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More rain on the way for the north and north-east
The Thai Meteorological Department has issued a weather warning that on July 29 and 30 a monsoonal trough will lie across Myanmar, Laos and upper Vietnam, while the moderate southwest monsoon prevails over the Andaman Sea, Thailand and the Gulf. In other words, more rain on the way. They forecast that this will lead to more rain in the North and…
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Resort used by Palang Pracharat over weekend may be on encroached land
PHOTO: 88 Garmonte Resort, Nakhon Ratchasima – Foursquare Thailand’s Department of National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation is mulling the demolition of a venue where Palang Pracharat held a seminar at the weekend. The party has come under fire from opposition MPs about using the forest resort which has allegedly encroached on forest land. Located in Wang Nam Khieo district in…
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Fake goods valued at 11 million baht go up in smoke in Chiang Rai
Chiang Rai Province’s Customs Department in Mae Sai has incinerated illegal and fake items valued at over 11 million baht. The illegal items are goods that “do not follow the customs law of Thailand”, aka. fakes and brand copies. Most of the items were seized from the Thai-Burmese Border Gate in Mae Sai. The illegal goods were gathered and burned at…
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North-central Thailand’s Yom River in Phichit runs low
Stories keep emerging about river systems, the lifeblood of agriculture in northern and north-eastern Thailand, drying out or dropping dramatically in level. A section of the Yom River that runs through the Sam Ngam in district in Pichit, north-central Thailand, has almost run dry following months without rain. The river was already reported as unseasonally low during April this year.…
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“Worst drought in living memory”, Thai farmers in the north
Parts of Thailand are facing their worst drought in 50 years. Farmers in some parts of the north and north east say that the situation is the “worst in living memory”, as reported in Sanook. Meanwhile, The Meteorological Department says Thailand will experience the worst drought in at least a decade, with average precipitation across large regions of the country falling…
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Wild animals and wild flowers – tulip season at the Khon Kaen Zoo
PHOTO: Khon Kaen Zoo Blooming fields of colourful Siam tulips are now competing fort attention with white lions, tigers, orangutan, camels, white rhinoceros and exotic animals at the Khon Kaen Zoo. Th zoo, in Khao Suan Kwang district, has a new seasonal attraction to its collection of wild animals. The combination of wildlife and wild flowers makes for an unbeatable…
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‘Irishman’ nabbed after 11 year overstay in north-east Thailand
PHOTO: Naew Na Nakhon Ratchasima Immigration, along with local tourist police, have arrested an Irishman,Samuel Caleb Birch, who has been on an overstay of 4,192 days. That’s nearly 11 years and six months! According to Naew Na, the man was arrested at a restaurant in Soi Moo Ban Yamo 5, Ban Mai, Nakhon Ratchasima, north-east Thailand. According to his visa, he arrived…
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An 80 million year old carnivorous dinosaur from Thailand identified
PHOTO: Thai PBS A Thai PhD student, studying overseas, has identified some bones of a dinosaur wandering around the mountains of Khon Kaen 80 million years ago. Fossilised bones, unearthed on a mountain in Khon Kaen nearly 30 years ago, have been identified as belonging to a previously unknown carnivorous dinosaur. Thai PBS says the the bones were unearthed on…
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Return to Tham Luang Cave – a personal perspective
by guest writer Mikko Paasi Now that is has been a year since the successful rescue of the Thai football team and their coach from the Tham Luang cave, I think it would be appropriate to share some footage from inside the cave to show how it looks like after the operation and without the muddy water. As we know, the…
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Thailand’s Dengue Fever infections highest in five years
The Thai Bureau of Epidemiology, at the Department of Disease Control, reports that there have been 44,671 cases of dengue fever reported in the country, the highest number in five years, indicating that there have been 67.62 dengue patients in every 100,000 of the Thai population, which is 1.6 times higher than last year. The numbers take into account 2019 up…
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19 million baht put aside to rehabilitate controversial Doi Suthep land in Chiang Mai
The Thai Judiciary Office says they will allocate 19 million baht for the rehabilitation of land at the foot of Chiang Mai’s Doi Suthep – recently the subject of controversy and protests from local activists and environmentalists. The plot was initially set aside, then developed as a site for court officials’ residences, but Chiang Mai locals said the development was…
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‘Mun’ makes landfall as heavy rains head towards Thailand’s northern provinces
The Meteorological Department is warning residents in Thaialnd’s north and north east to brace for heavy for heavy rains influenced by tropical storm ‘Mun’ that made landfall in Vietnam this morning, heading west. In a special warning issued at 5am this morning (Thursday), the department says the storm was over the Gulf of Tonkin at 4am and heading for upper…
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