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    Why health insurance costs more each year and how expats in Thailand can save more money

    Each year, many expats living in Thailand see their health insurance premiums go up and often without a clear reason. This can be frustrating, especially when you're trying to plan your budget. But by understanding why prices rise and learning...

  • Thanathorn says he’s confident he won’t be penalised by the EC | Thaiger

    Thanathorn says he’s confident he won’t be penalised by the EC

    Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the leader of Future Forward Party, says he’s confident he won’t be penalised by the Election Commission over allegations he breached the Constitution and the election by holding shares in a media company, V Luck Media, when registering for the March 24 election. Thanathorn says he will submit his defence with the commission by next Monday and insists on…

  • Freak storm batters Don Mueang Airport, Bangkok | Thaiger

    Freak storm batters Don Mueang Airport, Bangkok

    A random summer storm has struck Bangkok’s Don Mueang Airport this afternoon. The freak storm affected more than 18 flights and stranded 3,000 passengers whilst the storm battered the area north of the main city. At least one flight was re-directed to the nearby Suvarnabhumi Airport and another to U-Tapao Airport. Strong winds caused a Lion Air mobile airstair to…

  • Thanathorn faces more charges from EC over media shares | Thaiger

    Thanathorn faces more charges from EC over media shares

    Future Forward’s Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the 40 year old leader of the new party, has cut short his trip to Europe over an ‘unexpected incident’ The Thai Election Commission yesterday unanimously resolved to press charges against Thanathorn over an alleged violation of Thai media shareholding rules. Citing investigations by two EC panels, Sawang Boonmee, the EC deputy secretary-general, told a press…

  • Phuket faces critical water shortages if the monsoon doesn’t arrive soon | Thaiger

    Phuket faces critical water shortages if the monsoon doesn’t arrive soon

    Phuket is now, officially, experiencing water shortages, with water in the province’s three catchments just enough for the supply of tap water until the end of May, and the condition is expected to get worse if the annual monsoon doesn’t kick in soon. The annual south-west monsoon usually starts dragging in moist air and the ‘wet season’ begins sometime around…

  • Phuket’s water supply in a critical situation | Thaiger

    Phuket’s water supply in a critical situation

    Phuket’s water lords are now admitting the island’s water situation is in a critical situation – a situation they have had the power to avert but have chosen instead to ‘hope’ for monsoonal rains and go in search of alternative water sources to top up the dwindling catchment resources. Phuket is now in the throws of a water shortage. The…

  • SUV catches fire sitting in Trang’s hot sun | Thaiger

    SUV catches fire sitting in Trang’s hot sun

    PHOTOS: Earn Benjakun A SUV has caught fire while it was parked in the hot southern sun in Trang over the weekend. Fire fighters in Trang were notified of the burning SUV in Yan Ta Khao District in Trang at 2pm on Sunday. Fire fighters arrived to find the SUV ablaze. It took about 15 minutes to control the fire.…

  • Massive fire at Koh Samui incinerator – VIDEO | Thaiger

    Massive fire at Koh Samui incinerator – VIDEO

    PHOTOS/VIDEO: The Government Public Relation Department Region 5 An incinerator caught fire on Koh Samui, off the coast of Surat Thani last night. “That’s what incinerators are meant to do,” we hear you cry. But this one was totally out of control destroying the entire structure. The Government Public Relation Department Region 5 reports that the fire started at the…

  • Beware exploding phones – warning about leaving phones in hot cars | Thaiger

    Beware exploding phones – warning about leaving phones in hot cars

    PHOTOS: Facebook/Ying Yupa Anan Don’t leave your mobile phone in your car if it’s going to be parked outside in the hot Thai sun. That’s the take-away message after an exploding mobile phone punched a hole in this woman’s pick-up truck windscreen after leaving the phone sitting on the dash. Samut Prakan, south of Bangkok city, resident Ying Yupa Anan…

  • Mae Hong Son continues to be plagued with fires | Thaiger

    Mae Hong Son continues to be plagued with fires

    Mae Hong Son province continues to be plagued by forest fires despite the ban and the raging haze and smoke problems. In recent months, Mae Hong Son has been struggling with haze most of the time with flights to its airport limited at the height of the crisis. Exposure to the serious air pollution has become a threat to the…

  • The 5th Annual Stargazer talent contest returns to CC’s Hideaway | Thaiger

    The 5th Annual Stargazer talent contest returns to CC’s Hideaway

    This year the winner will receive 35,000 baht in prize money! CC’s Hideaway, located in Kata, proudly presents its fifth ‘Stargazer Talent Contest’ which will take place on April 27 between 6 pm and 11 pm. The goal of Stargazer is to create an opportunity for new individuals and groups to perform and promote their special talents and, with media…

  • Summer storms leave 6,900 homes damaged this month | Thaiger

    Summer storms leave 6,900 homes damaged this month

    More than 6,900 houses, mostly in a patch through the central-north regions of Thailand, have been hit by summer storms since the beginning of April, according to the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department. Chayapol Thitisak, the director-general, says the department has received reports that 6,940 houses in 1,010 villages in 307 tambon of 115 districts had been damaged by storms…

  • New Economics Party clarifies their support for pro-democracy coalition | Thaiger

    New Economics Party clarifies their support for pro-democracy coalition

    PHOTO: Mingkwan Sangsuwan, New Economics Party leader – The Nation Leader of the New Economics Party Mingkwan Sangsuwan hasy reiterated his party’s intention to join with the pro-democracy coalition (Pheu Thai, Future Forward) and against the pro-junta party, Phalang Pracharat. Amid uncertainty over which camp New Economics would work with after the election, Mingkwan has clarified he would not join…

  • Phuket’s water lords confident of supplies and back-up plans | Thaiger

    Phuket’s water lords confident of supplies and back-up plans

    PHOTO: Welcome to the moonscape – Bang Neow Dum off Srisoonthorn Road Well in to the second half of April in Phuket and the water situation is still dire, despite repeated assurances from the Provincial Irrigration Office and the Phuket Water Authority. The most recent assessment of the island’s three main catchments were that there was 2.8 million cubic metres of…

  • Twitter shares the Songkran experience – 2.8 million tweets | Thaiger

    Twitter shares the Songkran experience – 2.8 million tweets

    Thais flocked to Twitter during this year’s Songkran to share their experiences. This year’s #Songkran’s festivities generated 2.8 million Tweets from April 12-16 and the conversation peaked on April 13, around 6pm, with 71,000 Tweets per minute. The celebration of the Thai Buddhist New Year, Songkran, is a time for family. It’s the time for reflection on the past year, for…

  • Total five deaths in Phuket Songkran ‘Seven Day of Danger’ campaign | Thaiger

    Total five deaths in Phuket Songkran ‘Seven Day of Danger’ campaign

    PHOTO: Kathu Police As reports are tallied for the seventh full day (April 17) of the ‘Seven Days of Danger’ road and marine safety campaign, there were 3 road accidents, including 1 injury and two deaths on the final day. Those two dead were from separate motorbike accidents. A motorbike driver, 68 year old Filipino man Regoberto Igaciq, died at…

  • Junta warned to be careful targeting rivals with petty litigation | Thaiger

    Junta warned to be careful targeting rivals with petty litigation

    PHOTO: Piyabutr Sangkanokkul reports to police yesterday using the, now popular, anti-government three-finger salute – The Nation by Kai Chanwanpen While members of pro-democracy parties continue to be targeted with politically-motivated lawsuits, a political scientist is warning this tactic of eliminating political rivals through trivial matters of law could backfire and lead to a legitimacy crisis down the track. In…

  • Developer pulls the plug on 500 million baht retirement project in Chiang Mai | Thaiger

    Developer pulls the plug on 500 million baht retirement project in Chiang Mai

    PHOTO: Sunshine International Retirement Residence & Serviced Apartment, Hua Hin Sunshine International, Thailand’s leading brand of retirement residences says that their project which was due to be constructed near Chiang Mai’s city centre has now been cancelled. Sunshine International, a retirement property that included around the clock medical facilities, on site doctors and nurses, and state of the art facilities,…

  • HM Queen Sirikit advised to stay in hospital for treatment | Thaiger

    HM Queen Sirikit advised to stay in hospital for treatment

    Her Majesty Queen Sirikit has been admitted to Chulalongkorn Hospital in Bangkok suffering cystitis, which is an inflammation of the bladder, according to the Bureau of the Royal Household today. Queen Sirikit is the ‘Queen Mother’ of Thailand, the mother of the current King Maha Vajiralongkorn and was married to King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The Queen’s doctors examined her at 6pm…

  • Day Six: Total remains at three deaths in Phuket – ‘Seven Day of Danger’ | Thaiger

    Day Six: Total remains at three deaths in Phuket – ‘Seven Day of Danger’

    PHOTOS: Kathu Police As reports are tallied for the sixth full day (April 16) of the ‘Seven Days of Danger’ road and marine safety campaign, there was only 1 road accident, including 1 injury. The injured person was 23 year old Pantira Tansom, a motorbike passenger. She was travelling on the motorbike on Chao Fah West Road. When the motorbike…

  • Central Thailand hit by Songkran storms | Thaiger

    Central Thailand hit by Songkran storms

    Over 300 houses have been damaged after thunderstorms lashed seven districts of Kamphaeng Phet province, in central west Thailand, at about 8pm last night. Officials have visited the districts this morning and found 25 damaged houses in six tambon of Muang district. The storms also damaged 162 houses in seven tambon of Phran Kratai district and 92 more damaged in…

  • Bitcoin Seastead backer in battle with Thai authorities | Thaiger

    Bitcoin Seastead backer in battle with Thai authorities

    A ‘seastead’ project, launched by an early bitcoin adopter off the coast of Phuket island in Thailand’s south is running into trouble with local government authorities. The Royal Thai Navy and Phuket Maritime authorities boarded the structure on Sunday, saying that the structure violates criminal law and poses a navigation hazard. ‘sea-stead’, noun – a permanent settlement on a structure…

  • K-Pop dominating YouTube records – BTS and Blackpink | Thaiger

    K-Pop dominating YouTube records – BTS and Blackpink

    BTS, Blackpink, YouTube, Boy With Luv Last week’s Blackpink single-day YouTube viewing record has been beaten by fellow K-Pop supremos BTS notching up 78 million views for their “Boy With Luv” music video within its first 24 hours of hitting the video site. (Three days later it’s on 129 million with 7.8 million ‘likes’ and still going…) K-pop rival Blackpink…

  • Pro-democracy coalition remains positive following weekend glitch | Thaiger

    Pro-democracy coalition remains positive following weekend glitch

    by Kai Chanwanpen The see-saw continues as the anti and pro-junta groups continue to tussle to form a coalition government. Meanwhile the Election Commission (EC) is no closer to announcing the allocation of Lower House seats… three weeks after the vote! They maintain that May 9 is the day they will announce the results although this deadline has been muddied…

  • American Alex Dion in custody over murder of Thai national – Sydney | Thaiger

    American Alex Dion in custody over murder of Thai national – Sydney

    PHOTO: Wachiro “Mario” Phetmang – Facebook An American father, charged with the murder of a Thai man in western Sydney last year, is set to remain in custody until his next court appearance in June. Australian police have charged 38 year old Alex Dion with murder of a Thai national – the body found bound and gagged on a Sydney roadside. He…

  • Report filed against Italian expat following Phuket boat collision | Thaiger

    Report filed against Italian expat following Phuket boat collision

    Relatives of a seriously injured fisherman have filed a report with the Chalong Police relating to an Italian expat who was allegedly helming a boat that collided with a long-tail fishing boat yesterday off Rawai, Phuket. Emergency responders were notified of the accident near Koh Bon off Rawai at 10am yesterday. The injured fisherman is 45 year old San Malee,…

  • The Great Worldwide Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp outage | Thaiger

    The Great Worldwide Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp outage

    OMG! Will we survive the great outage of April 14? Been turning your phone on and off? Resetting your wi-fi? Sweating that you can’t post your photo of the pad thai? It’s a worldwide Facebook outage and it’s affecting everywhere in the world. It’s also affecting the rest of the Facebook family of Apps. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are all…

  • Day Three: Songkran road deaths show a dramatic drop | Thaiger

    Day Three: Songkran road deaths show a dramatic drop

    There has been 1,665 traffic accidents, with 174 deaths and 1,728 people injured in the first three days of the Songkran ‘seven days of danger’ (Thursday, Friday, Saturday). This equates to a significant drop from the 2018 road toll and lower even than Thailand’s average daily road deaths throughout the year. According to the WHO an average 66 people die…

  • Day Three: Songkran ‘seven days of danger’ in Phuket | Thaiger

    Day Three: Songkran ‘seven days of danger’ in Phuket

    PHOTOS: Newshawk Phuket As reports are tallied for the third full day (April 13 – official Songkran Day) of the ‘Seven Days of Danger’ road and marine safety campaign, there were a total of 12 road accidents which included 16 injuries. No deaths were reported. There have been no marine incidents to report over the three days so far. The six…

  • Day Two: Songkran Seven Days of Danger | Thaiger

    Day Two: Songkran Seven Days of Danger

    PHOTO: Thai PBS The Songkran road toll has now jumped to 105, with more than 1,000 injured on Thailand’s roads. The latest stats reported by the Centre for the Prevention and Reduction of Road Accidents. This includes incidents from days one and two in the seven day annual accident reporting campaign. Thai PBS reports that the centre reports 57 people were killed…

  • Sacred water drawing ceremony led by Bangkok Governor | Thaiger

    Sacred water drawing ceremony led by Bangkok Governor

    PHOTO: The grand parade was just part of the lead up ceremonies for the forthcoming Coronation of His Majesty – Thai PBS Bangkok Governor Aswin Kwanmuang has led city officials in a ceremony to draw water from a pond at the Haw Sastrakhom, a small building inside the Grand Palace. The ceremony is part of the lead up to the forthcoming royal…