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Thailand hot news, breaking stories, crime, politics, tourism, and business—stay updated with in-depth reports and exclusive interviews on the latest events across the country. Get the latest from The Thaiger, your trusted Thailand news source.
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Sponsored Do foreigners get free healthcare in Thailand?
Thailand’s healthcare system is well-regarded across Southeast Asia, with options ranging from public hospitals to world-class private facilities. But when it comes to foreign residents or tourists, healthcare access isn’t as straightforward. So, do foreigners get free healthcare in Thailand?...
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Is poor English proficiency holding Thailand back?
The government of Thailand has been working hard to make it a world-class destination for not just tourists, but digital nomads and business and technology innovators. But do the people of Thailand speak English well enough to fully attract these business opportunities? Thailand is ranked second to last among the countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations…
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Shopee stops all bank payments after hackers steal from customer in Thailand
E-commerce platform Shopee announced a permanent end to purchases made by bank payment starting today onwards. The decision comes after a customer in Thailand was hacked via Shopee and lost tens of thousands of baht from a bank account linked to the app. The hackers allegedly used the Shopee app to get into bank accounts and transfer money without even…
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Cat killer feels no guilt over sadistic act
A sadistic Thai man faces up to three years in prison and a fine of up to 100,000 baht for the barbaric killing of a neighbour’s cat in Lak Si district in Bangkok. But rather than be embarrassed by his cruelty, cat killer Tian Arunjit declared no guilt to reporters. The 68 year old said he was proud his behaviour…
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Thailand PM wants to groom successor in two years
Thailand Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha is not throwing in the political towel just yet, he wants another couple of years at the helm before grooming a successor. PM Prayut seized power in a 2014 military coup, was reelected in a disputed election in 2019, and bizarrely had to stand down in August this year after the Constitutional Court of Thailand…
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Father dies trying to save son from teenage gang
Father’s Day for one Thai family turned into a tragedy this year after a father died trying to save his son from an attack by a teenage gang in the Klong Luang district of Pathum Thani province. Officers from Klong Luang Police Station and a rescue team rushed to the Liap Klong Song Road in Pathum Thani at 3.30am yesterday,…
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Frenchman arrested for scamming Thai woman out of 2 million baht in Bangkok
A Frenchman was arrested in Bangkok yesterday after he swindled nearly 2 million baht from a Thai woman who invested in his fake import-export business. The victim reported she found many other Thai people had been tricked by the scoundrel. The victim told police that she met the 41 year old Frenchman, Jacouel Clemen, at a bar in the Sukhumvit…
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CAAT warns Thai VietJet for cancelling three Phuket – Bangkok flights in one day
UPDATE The Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand (CAAT) has warned Thai VietJet that the airline will be punished if it doesn’t start complying with aviation rules. The warning comes after Thai VietJet cancelled three services on its Bangkok – Phuket route on Thursday. A flight from Bangkok to Phuket was cancelled due to accumulated delays at Suvarnabhumi Airport, says Thai…
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VIDEO: Policeman fined 500 baht for blocking ambulance in northeast Thailand
Thai netizens are outraged by a video circulating on social media of a pickup truck blocking the way of an ambulance carrying a patient in critical condition to a hospital in Nakhon Ratchasima province in northeast Thailand. An investigation revealed that the pickup driver is actually a Police Captain at Dan Khun Thot Police Station. Officers at Pak Chong Police…
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Everything stolen from Danish man’s 3 homes on Koh Samui
A Danish expat living in Koh Samui returned home from a five-month holiday to a most unpleasant surprise. Someone had ransacked his three homes and stolen nearly everything inside. The 43 year old man had been travelling abroad for nearly half a year with his Thai wife. Their homes are in Maenam on the northern coast of the popular holiday…
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Whole new world of censorship pain on its way to Thailand
A whole new world of censorship pain is on its way to Thailand, with the latest act by the thought police becoming law on Christmas Day. Online platforms must abide by a new regulation to deal quickly with complaints about content deemed to violate the Computer Crimes Act. A new regulation issued by Digital Economy and Society (DES) Minister Chaiwut…
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Apple plans to move production out of China and into Thailand
Apple Inc. plans to move production out of China, by far the dominant country in the company’s supply chain. Suppliers are being to asked plan for moves elsewhere in Asia, particularly India, Thailand, and Vietnam, to reduce the influence of Foxconn Technology Group. In a series of tweets, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the main production location outside of China for…
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Arrogant Thai construction company rips off Myanmar migrant workers
An arrogant Thai construction company has been ordered to cough up wages it refused to pay to its migrant workers earlier this year. The arrogance of the unnamed building firm is underlined by the fact that no representatives came to court to defend or justify its action. The Labour Court in Phuket told the construction company to settle three months’…
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RTP urges Thai drivers not to ignore e-tickets, they’re real, not fake
A Royal Thai Police (RTP) spokesperson confirmed e-tickets for traffic violations have been in use since May this year and they are not fake despite claims to the contrary. Pol Maj Gen Achayon Kraithong announced on Facebook that the RTP e-tickets are real after a well-known neurologist and professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University warned motorists of a…
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A few good apples – Taxi drivers are not all bad
Taxi drivers are not all bad. A Pattaya motorbike-taxi driver handed into police a foreigner’s wallet he found. The wallet contained about 18,000 baht. Identification found inside the purse was Franz-Joseph (surname withheld), a German national. The wallet contained 320 euros (12,000 baht) and 6,150 baht (US$180). The honest taxi driver, Amnuay Plungklang, contacted the media last week to publicise…
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Pro-monarchy ‘dictator’ must be stopped from retiring in Australia, say Thai asylum activists
Exiled Thai activists are living in fear that a self-proclaimed “Van Helsing” “dictator” and pro-monarchy vigilante could be pursuing them in retirement. Rienthong Nanna, a doctor and former army general, announced on Facebook that he plans to retire in Perth, Australia causing fear among those who now live there after fleeing the country after his vicious campaign. Rienthong set up a…
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Father’s Day celebrated throughout Thailand today
Today, the people of Thailand celebrate Father’s Day. It is a national public holiday for schools and many businesses are closed. The holiday is celebrated on this day to honour and commemorate the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej, father to the current king and a leader whom many revere as a symbolic father to all the people of Thailand. The holiday…
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6 months in, Bangkok Governor Chadchart rated highly
A new poll shows that after six months in office, Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt remains popular with a high approval rating. An impressive 81.55% of people polled said that they were satisfied with Chadchart’s performance as governor so far. Only 18.47% of those who answered the poll said they were not satisfied. Chadchart was elected as governor in May in…
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Raid roundup: Pattaya pubs, cannabis shops scrutinised
Police in Pattaya are continuing their crackdown to clean up unseemly and illegal activities in an attempt to polish the tourist city’s reputation. Over the past few days, officers carried out inspections of cannabis shops around the city as well as raids on several entertainment venues that now face closure. Early this morning, two pubs in Pattaya were shut down…
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‘Big Joke’ goes back to school to hunt visa crooks
As Big Joke leads his investigation into Chinese gangs operating in Bangkok, the probe is expanding so fast that it is only a matter of time before the cops are investigating every business in the nation’s capital. There are no untouchables as criminal Chinese businesses appear to have pervaded almost every corner of Thai life from the scum floating at…
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Disruptive Phuket-bound passenger thrown off flight in Karachi
A disruptive Phuket-bound passenger on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul was thrown off the aircraft yesterday and arrested after the flight diverted to Pakistan’s Jinnah International Airport in Karachi. After the passenger was taken into custody by local law enforcement, the flight continued to Phuket. Turkish Airlines flight TK-172 on an Airbus A330 diverted to Karachi three hours into the…
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Anutin responds to photo of cannabis smoking kids on Pattaya Beach
Minister of Public Health Anutin Charnvirakul has responded after photos of a group of 10 year olds smoking cannabis from a bamboo bong on Pattaya Beach went viral on social media. The legalisation of cannabis came with very little regulation, but a prohibition on sales or consumption by anyone under 20 years old was put in place almost immediately. Anutin has been…
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Thai student allegedly raped by Hyderabad U professor
Students at the University of Hyderabad are staging protests in support of the Thai student allegedly raped by her professor yesterday. The Thai student claimed that she was raped at the home of a senior professor last night. Local police arrested the suspect, Ravi Ranjan, said to be in his sixties. Ranjan is a faculty member in the department of…
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Phuket welcomes 6,730 flights in December
High season has arrived in Phuket, as the airport schedule lists 6,730 flights this month. The average number of flights per day throughout the month of December will reach 217, up from about 200 in November. (The busiest day in November saw 219 flight land with 10,467 passengers arriving.) Some 3,000 of those flights are international arrivals, while 3,730 flights…
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Thailand tourism predicted at 80% of pre-Covid in 2023
Tourism Authority of Thailand Governor Yuthasak Supasorn just predicted that next year, revenue from tourism will hit 80% of the level it was before the Covid-19 pandemic. He made the bold prediction at the 22nd World Travel and Tourism Council Global Summit, being held in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh. At that summit, the TAT was invited to take…
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Child Protection Foundation leader faces child labour charges
Authorities in Thailand are claiming there’s a fine line between protecting children and exploiting them. Amphawa District Police in the Samut Songkhram province filed human trafficking charges against the Secretary-General of the Child Protection Foundation. The foundation has protected the rights of children, but charges accuse them of using those children as labour in a resort owned by Secretary-General Montri…
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Red-Bull hit-and-run prosecutor dismissed
Red-Bull hit-and-run prosecutor Chainarong Saengthong-aram has been dismissed by the Public Prosecutors Commission. The former senior prosecutor at the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) was discharged after tampering with evidence in the case involving Red Bull heir Vorayuth Yoovidhya. An initial report showed that Vorayuth was driving his Ferrari at 177 kilometres per hour when he hit and killed…
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Phuket flight cancellation due to earlier cancelled flight, runway maintenance
After pandemonium at Phuket International Airport on Thursday night with a flight cancellation stranding 300 passengers overnight, airport and tourism authorities say they’re more prepared and it won’t happen again. It all started when budget airline Thai VietJet cancelled a flight from Phuket to Bangkok minutes before take-off last night because staff couldn’t find a seat for one passenger. But…
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Pheu Thai Party under fire as Tuhao-Shinawatra connection exposed
Opposition Pheu Thai Party is under fire after police found that many houses connected to suspected Chinese gangster Chaiyanat “Tuhao” Kornchayanant were built by a company owned by the Shinawatra family. The Pheu Thai Party is the third incarnation of the party founded by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2007. On Wednesday, the Royal Thai Police raided 11 locations…
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Thai baht soars to six-month high against US dollar
The Thai baht opened at 34.78 against the US dollar today, strengthening from yesterday’s close of 35 to a six-month high. The baht’s sudden rise is down to the Bank of Thailand’s (BOT) hiking the policy rate by a quarter point earlier this week. The BOT remains committed to a gradual monetary tightening policy, raising the policy rate from 1%…
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Motorcycle taxi riders rally against unlicensed ride-share app drivers in Pattaya
Over 100 Pattaya motorcycle taxi riders showed up at Pattaya City Hall yesterday to make some noise about unlicensed ride-share app drivers. The motorcycle taxi riders are calling for a crackdown, saying that these unlicensed drivers are stealing their passengers. In an open letter to Pattaya Deputy Mayor Wuttisak Rueimkitkan, the riders accused app drivers of: Not having had their…
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