South Thailand News
Stay updated with the latest Southern Thailand news at The Thaiger, your ultimate source for regional information. Keep informed on local events, business developments, and lifestyle stories in popular locations beyond Phuket, Koh Samui, and Krabi. We’ve got reports of the latest goings on in Trang, Songkhla, Yala, and more.
Whether you’re a resident or a visitor, The Thaiger’s Southern Thailand news page is your essential guide to exploring this stunning tropical region. Dive into the vibrant community and rich culture with our expertly curated content, designed to keep you connected and well-informed.
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Why is Bangkok's air quality so bad?
Imagine waking up early in Bangkok and you see all the beautiful morning fog from your balcony, but as you sip your coffee you realise it's just Bangkok's air pollution that's making the sun rise aesthetic. Ranked as the 36th...
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Wedding turned into a bloodbath after groomsman shoots his friend
A wedding is supposed to be one of the happiest days of your life but for one couple it will be memorable for another reason after a groomsman turned the ceremony into a bloodbath by shooting another groomsman after their girlfriends started fighting. The gunman and his girlfriend are now on the run in Trang, southern Thailand An officer from…
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Police arrest boyfriend of murdered girlfriend dumped in a garbage bin
The man accused of murdering and dumping his girlfriend’s body in a garbage bin at the Khao Sok National Park at the border of Phang Nga and Surat Thani, surrendered to police yesterday. He allegedly admitted that jealousy drove him to lose his temper and commit murder. The murderer, Sukhon Kaewprapas, surrendered at Kapong Police Station in Phang Nga three…
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Police track down suspect in murder of woman dumped in garbage bin
Police believe the person responsible for the death of the woman dumped in a garbage bin in the Khao Sok National Park at the border of Phang Nga and Surat Thani is her boyfriend. Police reported they found evidence in the boyfriend’s home related to the murder of the woman, Suphattra Yodkaew, and is now on the run. Police identified…
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Patani Colonial Territory not played in Chiang Mai
Law students at Chiang Mai University cancelled a game night during which they planned to play the card game Patani Colonial Territory, following a visit by a mysterious “officer.” Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR) report that a plainclothes “officer,” visited the Faculty of Law and other university administrators on December 26 after a student group announced that they were…
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Body of dead woman dumped in garbage bin in southern Thailand
Kura Buri Highway Department officers in the southern province of Phang Nga found a dead woman’s body dumped in a garbage bin on the roadside near the Khao Sok National Park at the border of Phang Nga and Surat Thani yesterday. The murderer is still on the run. Highway department officer Makesuwan Suphannamok told the media that he and his…
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Petrol pump blown up in Yala terrorist attack
A petrol pump was blown up by suspected insurgents at a PTT petrol station in the southern province of Yala on Saturday night. There were no casualties. Shortly before midnight on Saturday, an explosion was heard at the PTT petrol station by Highway 410 in tambon Thanto, according to Pol Capt Palakorn Srichai. Police were dispatched to the scene to…
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Backpack found on Koh Tao from sailor on HTMS Sukhothai
As search and rescue efforts enter their seventh day after the wreck of the HTMS Sukhothai, a tourist on Koh Tao found a grim relic of the tragedy. A Norwegian tourist on holiday on the tiny island in the Gulf of Thailand stumbled upon a backpack on the beach belonging to one of the missing sailors from the shipwreck. The…
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Southern Thai woman caught with 70 bizarre animal carcasses
Police arrested a woman from Songkhla province in southern Thailand for selling protected wildlife carcasses as ingredients for “exotic dishes.” Officers seized nearly 70 animal carcasses including monitor lizards, pangolins, langur monkeys, squirrels, mouse-deers, and civets. Yesterday, the Natural Resources and Environmental Crime Division was tipped off that a passenger was carrying protected wildlife on a train from Sukirin district in…
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Hard rain stops train services in Thailand’s south
Heavy rain and high tides are bringing widespread flooding to Songkhla, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Narathiwat. Red flags in Songkhla’s Chalatat Beach advise people not to venture into the 4-metre waves that are pounding the coast. In Narathiwat province, those living close to the Kolok River are ready to move themselves and their valuables to higher ground as the water…
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UPDATE: Irish kayaker Odhran O’Neill’s body found
Though not a lot of information has been confirmed or released yet, the body of a 22 year old Irish traveller has been recovered from the waters in Khao Sok National Park. He had been kayaking, a popular activity in the region, though the weather has been windy and rainy in the south of Thailand recently, making the waters more…
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Heavy rains close Gulf ferries, Surin Islands for 2 days
Heavy rains, high winds and thunderstorms have ferries cancelled and areas closing down for the next few days in the south of Thailand. In the Gulf of Thailand, all ferry services between the mainland and Koh Samui, Koh Phangan, and Koh Tao have been suspended for two days. On the Andaman Sea, the national park on the Surin Islands has…
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Northern Irishman missing in Khao Sok after kayak capsized
[UPDATE: His body has been found.] The family of a missing Northern Irishman is desperately seeking help on social media after his kayak capsized and he hasn’t been seen since. Odhran O’Neill has been travelling in Thailand and went kayaking in Khao Sok National Park yesterday afternoon. His boat capsized around 1pm and Facebook posts suggest he said that he…
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Bangkok runs Hidden Temples tour while Deep South restores temples
With so much talk during the pandemic about closing nightlife and the effect on tourism, one might forget that millions of people flock to Thailand to enjoy other facets of the kingdom aside from beaches and parties, booze, and women. Now, various government agencies are coming together to highlight the beautiful architecture and culture of the temples of Thailand. In…
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Whale washes up on beach in South Thailand
A whale washed up on a beach in South Thailand’s Narathiwat province on Monday. Locals, rescuers, and police helped to push the whale back into the sea at Naratat Beach. However, the whale washed up again two hours later about 500 metres away. Officials from the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources believed that the whale might have been sick,…
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Patani Colonial Territory designer summoned for game of truth or dare
The designer of Patani Colonial Territory, a game based on the recent history of Thailand’s southern regions, is believed to have been summoned by police after the game was confiscated from a café in Yala. Chachiluk Games said that the game designer was not involved in the conceptualisation and production process. Reporting on Thailand involves at least one truly absurd story…
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VIDEO: Desperate Rohingyas dying on boat off South Thailand
A video is circling on social media of a group of desperate Rohingyas crowded onto a boat off South Thailand’s Ranong province. Over 200 people were on the boat, and 18 people died on the harrowing journey, a Rohingya aid coordinator told Thai PBS. The boat first left Bangladesh in late November. The aid coordinator, Rayid Ali, said the boat has…
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Flood warning for 11 southern provinces
Southern Thailand has been soaked with rain over the past week. Now, the National Water Command Centre is warning 11 provinces of possible floods this coming weekend. They are expecting heavy rains from Thursday, December 8 through Sunday, December 11. Strong storms have been flickering power in some provinces in the south of Thailand, with high winds blowing debris and…
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Insurgent bomb derails train in Songkhla
A train was derailed in the deep south of Thailand, and security officials believe it was a result of a bomb set off by southern insurgents. Train number 707 was making a short run from Hat Yai to the border town of Padang Besar in the Sadao district in the southern province of Songkhla. The train was a freight train,…
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Unexploded MK-82 bomb found in Songkhla forest
Rangers found an unexploded MK-82 bomb in the forest of Ton Nga Chang Wildlife Sanctuary in the southern province of Songkhla. The authorities believe the bomb was left over from the Communist insurgency in Thailand over 40 years ago. The Communist insurgency in Thailand was a guerilla war lasting from 1965 until 1983, fought mainly between the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) and…
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Thailand’s southern islands are reeling in tourists
South Thailand’s holiday hotspot islands are reeling in tourists once again. The islands of Koh Samui, Koh Tao, and Koh Pha Ngan have seen 2.3 million tourists arrive on their shores in the past 10 months, according to the director of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT)’s office for the islands. This has generated over 40 billion baht in revenue.…
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Police seize board game after claims it could cause insurrection in Thailand
Police officers in Yala yesterday seized a fun board game called Patani Colonial Territory from a coffee shop after a government official claimed that it could cause insurgency throughout the kingdom. For conspiracy theorists, this is up there with Elvis still lives. Officers in the southern Thailand province confiscated the offending game at the Life Coffee Slow Bar in the…
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Buddhists and Muslims rally for peace together in South Thailand
In one South Thailand province plagued by violence, Buddhists and Muslims are overcoming religious differences to fight for peace. Buddhist and Muslim leaders conducted demonstrators in a rally for peace in Narathiwat province’s city district this morning. Islamic leaders led prayers for peace. Meanwhile, the chairwoman of the Federation of Buddhist Thais in Narathiwat led the demonstrators in shouting demands…
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Russian crewman’s hand cut off in Songkhla ship accident
A Russian crewman’s hand was cut off in a brutal cargo ship accident off Songkhla. A team of doctors and emergency nurses rushed to help the man on Saturday, according to a Facebook post by the Maritime National Interest Administration Center- Sor Chon. The Russian man, 47 year old Evgenii Kriukov, was transferred to the Songkhla Naval Base Hospital. He…
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Man arrested in South Thailand for attempted murder in Phuket
A man has been arrested in South Thailand’s Phatthalung province for attempted murder in Phuket four years ago. The man, 23 year old Thanakorn Phontha, was wanted on arrest warrants issued in January and August 2018. Officers found Thanakorn in his house on Moo 7 in the Srinakarin district, after finding through an investigation that he had been hiding in…
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Deep South emergency decree extended 3 months
After a recent car bombing of police apartments in the Deep South province of Narathiwat, the Emergency Situation Administration Committee decided to extend the state of emergency decree in the troubled Southern provinces. The extension means that the current state of emergency will not end on December 20 as scheduled, but will instead continue until March 19 at the earliest.…
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3 children aged 8 escape a school kidnapping plot in Thailand
Three children in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat escaped a school kidnapping plot. Two suspects, a man and a woman, entered a schoolyard in the Thung Song district of Nakhon Si Thammarat in southern Thailand and tried to snatch three eight year old children. The children, one girl and two boys, told the police and their parents that…
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Car bomb explodes at police apartments in southern Thailand, 1 dead, 20 injured
At least one police officer was killed in a car bomb explosion at a housing compound for police in Narathiwat province in southern Thailand at midday today. At least 20 more people were injured in the blast. A man dressed as a police officer was seen driving a pickup truck into the compound before the car bomb exploded at around…
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Two petrol stations bombed in southern Thailand
Two petrol stations in Pattani province in southern Thailand were bombed yesterday evening. No one was killed or seriously injured. Police believe the attacks were carried out by insurgents and possibly in retaliation to an incident on November 7 when the police killed an insurgent who bombed a petrol station in Pattani. There were seven warrants out for his arrest…
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Frenchman missing after hiking in Khao Sok National Park
The search is on for a French tourist that has been missing for five days since going on a hike around Khao Sok National Park. The man said on Saturday morning that he was going for a walk in the jungle and has not been seen since. The man was officially reported as missing yesterday. The 30 year old Gollio…
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Residents furious 20 million baht rest area on Thailand Riviera Road abandoned
Residents are up in arms about a motorway services station and rest area that has been abandoned on the Thailand Riviera Road in the southern province of Chumphon. The Riviera Road was part of a government project in 2009 which tried to level up the coast of the southern provinces of Thailand and make it a must-visit destination for tourists…
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