Chiang Mai News

Chiang Mai news, politics, business, culture, and tourism—stay updated with breaking stories, local events, and expat insights from Thailand’s northern hub. Get the latest from The Thaiger, your trusted Chiang Mai news source.

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  • Production staff coughs up blood during filming in Chiang Mai | Thaiger

    Production staff coughs up blood during filming in Chiang Mai

    PHOTO MONTAGE: Daily News A Chiang Mai filmmaker is calling on authorities to urgently tackle the problems of smoke haze and air pollution around the northern capital because it’s posing severe health problems. The filmmaker, frustrated with problems associated with production in Chiang Mai this week, has posted photos of a trainee from his company coughing up blood. He says…

  • Chiang Mai panty sniffer nabbed | Thaiger

    Chiang Mai panty sniffer nabbed

    PHOTO: Manager Online Police in Chiang Mai have arrested a ‘panty thief’ who had gone to a coin-operated laundery to steal ladies’ underwear. One woman reported ten items had gone missing from the Tha Phae branch of “Hot Wash & Dry”. She claimed the items were valued at 6,000 baht (obviously womens’ underwear costs a lot more than mens!). Police checked…

  • American all smiles after getting nabbed over convenience store theft | Thaiger

    American all smiles after getting nabbed over convenience store theft

    A 54 year old American has been caught stealing from a convenience store in Chiang Mai. Gregory Paul Burke was captured on camera at the Muang police station grinning over the matter. Staff at the store in Khotchasan Road, Chiang Mai, caught him stuffing two big bags of instant coffee, some chewing gum and a pack of sushi into his…

  • Three died, three injured in Chiang Mai road crash | Thaiger

    Three died, three injured in Chiang Mai road crash

    Three people were killed and three others injured when their car hit a power pole on the Chiang Mai-Hod road in Chiang Mai’s Doi Lor district early today (Saturday). The vehicle overturned after it hit the pole. Emergency responders and rescuers from the Putthasawan Nopparat Foundation had to use iron cutters (Jaws of Life) to extract the bodies from the vehicle.…

  • Tourists head to Nan for stunning yellow blossoms | Thaiger

    Tourists head to Nan for stunning yellow blossoms

    PHOTOS: Tourism Authority of Thailand’s Nan branch office Tourists are enjoying the stunning blossoms of the Golden Trumpet Tree around Nan province. The yellow flowers of the Tabebuia Chrysantha are now in full bloom in Nan’s Thung Chang district. Nan is east of Chiang Mai on the Laos border. A local group this week invited people to take photos of…

  • Wheelchair-bound man shot dead under a flyover in Chiang Mai | Thaiger

    Wheelchair-bound man shot dead under a flyover in Chiang Mai

    A man has been found dead with two gunshot wounds under a flyover in Chiang Mai’s Meuang district. He was an amputee and still seated in his wheelchair when police attended the scene. Police were alerted at 7.30am this morning that a body had been discovered in a wheelchair beneath a flyover on the Chiang Mai-Lampong road in Tambon Tha…

  • Event Round-Up – March 2019 | Thaiger

    Event Round-Up – March 2019

    The month kicks off with one of Thailand’s most unique and bizarre festivals and celebrations, that of the Tattoo Festival in Nakhon Chaisi in the province of Nakhon Pathom, around 50 kilometres west of Bangkok. Held at the Wat Bang Phra temple on 2 March, the festival also goes by the name Wai Kru Sak Yant after the spiritual tattoos…

  • Chiang Mai massage worker has baby in the police toilets, abandons the child | Thaiger

    Chiang Mai massage worker has baby in the police toilets, abandons the child

    Thai Rath reports that police in Chiang Mai have located and arrested a 43 year old woman who snuck into the city district police station and had a baby in the toilets there. After giving birth last weekend, the mother left with her child still in the toilet bowl. The baby was found soon after, survived, and is now stable and…

  • American man and Thai woman arrested in Chiang Mai cannabis factory raids | Thaiger

    American man and Thai woman arrested in Chiang Mai cannabis factory raids

    PHOTOS: The Nation Narcotics police in Chiang Mai have arrested a 44 year old American man and a 37 year old Thai woman in separate raids on two houses in Mae Rim district. Police alleged the houses were used as cannabis production facilities. Police allegedly found cannabis in multiple forms – dried, liquid, tablets as well as plants. Inside one…

  • Two kindergarten students crushed under school bus | Thaiger

    Two kindergarten students crushed under school bus

    PHOTO: Thai Rath Two six year olds have died whilst heading home from kindergarten after their school bus reversed over them. Thai Rath reports that the 66 year old driver was in police custody charged with negligence causing death. Surachai Rakmanut had picked up 20 children in the truck used as school transport from the Mae Pang kindergarten in the…

  • Rolling his way to Narathiwat raising funds for southern hospitals | Thaiger

    Rolling his way to Narathiwat raising funds for southern hospitals

    PHOTO: ‘Uncle Mee’ during one his fund-raisers last year – The Nation A wheelchair user is on his way in a mega southern journey from Chiang Mai to Narathiwat in the south to raise funds for three hospitals in the southern border provinces. 56 year old Sathit Jantharangsi, or Uncle Mee, reached Phitsanulok last night and was heading to Nakhon…

  • Foreign couple drinking on top of Chiang Mai’s historic wall | Thaiger

    Foreign couple drinking on top of Chiang Mai’s historic wall

    PHOTO: Chiang Mai News Chiang Mai, tourists and historic sites just don’t seem to mix well. This time, two people are in trouble after they were photographed having a drink sitting casually on top of one of Chiang Mai’s historic walls. The Chiang Mai News Facebook page is calling on the authorities to take action. As usual, netizens saw the…

  • American backpacker refuses to pay for girl he brought back to hostel, punches staff | Thaiger

    American backpacker refuses to pay for girl he brought back to hostel, punches staff

    An American backpacker tourist, visiting Chiang Mai, had to be restrained after getting into a squabble with hostel staff after being asked to leave the premises. The video of the altercation was shared on Reddit by ‘EatPrayFart’. Following a night out, the backpacker brought a girl back to the mixed dorm room that he shared with nine other people. The report…

  • Experts warn of northern faultlines as aftershocks rock Lampang | Thaiger

    Experts warn of northern faultlines as aftershocks rock Lampang

    PHOTO: Wat Phra Kerd’s abbot leads officials to inspect the damage to the pagoda’s visibly tilted tiered umbrella top after Lampang’s Wang Nua district on Wednesday suffered a 4.9magnitude quake. The recent tremors around Lampang slightly damaged a few dozen homes in six tambons, including the tiered umbrella of the Wat Phra Kerd pagoda in tambon Thung Hua. The 4.9…

  • No fatalities or injuries reported in Lampang earthquake | Thaiger

    No fatalities or injuries reported in Lampang earthquake

    PHOTOS: NNT No fatalities or injuries have been reported as a result of yesterday’s earthquake in northern Thailand. The tremors occurred 15 times and registered 4.9 magnitude with a 21 kilometre deep epicentre in the Wang Nua district of Lampang province, but caused no serious effect to villagers, according to a report of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation.…

  • Chiang Mai’s sword-wielding song thaew driver charged over intimidating tactics – VIDEO | Thaiger

    Chiang Mai’s sword-wielding song thaew driver charged over intimidating tactics – VIDEO

    Story from Sanook. Video from Thai Rath The red song thaew driver, who followed a white sedan around the moat road waving a sword in Chiang Mai, has now been charged by the police. Sanook reports that 69 year old ‘Son’ has now been charged with having a knife in public and behaving in an intimidating manner that could scare…

  • Bangkok Airlines schedules more flights out of Chiang Mai | Thaiger

    Bangkok Airlines schedules more flights out of Chiang Mai

    Competition is heating up on two direct airline routes out of Chiang Mai – to Krabi and Luang Prabang in Laos. But Bangkok Airways is facing tough competition on the direct Chiang Mai – Krabi route, already served with three daily Thai AirAsia flights, while Bangkok Airways will schedule only three flights in March and up to the the end…

  • 72 year old jumps for her life from the second floor during home inferno | Thaiger

    72 year old jumps for her life from the second floor during home inferno

    An elderly woman has suffered head injuries whilst escaping a blaze that burned down her home in Chiang Mai. The fire broke out at a two-storey teak house on Ban Pae road in Tambon Tha Sala of Chiang Mai’s Muang district. Five fire engines took an hour to get the blaze under control after it swept through the entire timber…

  • Father and daughter killed traveling to Bangkok to apply for masters degree | Thaiger

    Father and daughter killed traveling to Bangkok to apply for masters degree

    A father and his daughter were killed after their car careered off the road in Lampang and hit a tree. Police say 58 year old Rongthep Ratanapipit was driving his daughter 22 year old Latthawan Ratanapipit from Chiang Mai to Bangkok to apply for master degree, when he apparently dozed off behind the wheel. The car crashed into a tree in…

  • Chiang Mai hotel staffer admits to faking gang attack story | Thaiger

    Chiang Mai hotel staffer admits to faking gang attack story

    PHOTO: Thairath A story about a gang of three armed men attacking an employee and stealing money from a Chang Mai Hotel appears to have been a false report. The employee has eventually confessed to making the story up. The original story alleges that the men had held up the Airport Resident Hotel on Mahidol Road at 5:45 am in the…

  • Chiang Mai top cops transferred after gambling den raid | Thaiger

    Chiang Mai top cops transferred after gambling den raid

    Five leading police officers at the Muang Chiang Mai Police Station have been immediately side-lined to inactive posts. The transfers are pending a fact-finding probe of whether they had been negligent in their duties by allowing a gambling den to operate within the precinct. The police were transferred today and the probe result is expected within two weeks. Transferred are…

  • “Red buses are a rip-off. We’d rather use Grab or Uber” – Chiang Mai | Thaiger

    “Red buses are a rip-off. We’d rather use Grab or Uber” – Chiang Mai

    A poll among Thai tourists in Chiang Mai is giving a big preference to local Uber and Grab services and the thumbs down to the northern city’s notorious ‘Rot Daeng’ or red buses. The Mae Jo poll shows that 76% of Thai tourists want to see the red vehicles reined in. While 78% say they’d rather use Grab or Uber for…

  • Chiang Mai sting lands family of smugglers in custody | Thaiger

    Chiang Mai sting lands family of smugglers in custody

    PHOTOS: The Nation A family that smuggles together, stays together. In jail. A family of six is under arrest in Chiang Mai after allegedly handing over 15 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine and 170,000 methamphetamine pills to undercover police in the province. Police arrested all the members of the ethnic Lahu family. All were aged between 32 and 51 years. Police say…

  • Chiang Mai temple roasted for charging foreigners to enter | Thaiger

    Chiang Mai temple roasted for charging foreigners to enter

    There’s two-tier charging then there’s the next step of allowing Thais in for free and only charging foreigners. That seems to be the case when a Chiang Mai temple has been caught out charging a 50 baht fee, but only for foreigners. A Facebook post from Aronong Silvestra claims he found the box at Wat Suwan in the Muang district…

  • Chiang Mai woman charged after describing police as ‘hungry ghosts’ | Thaiger

    Chiang Mai woman charged after describing police as ‘hungry ghosts’

    A 55 year old Thai woman in Chiang Mai has been charged with ‘defamation’ after she accused the police of being ‘hungry ghosts’. cm108.c0m website reports that Pol Capt Manit Khampan made an official complaint about the woman and says she had “brought him and the staff under his charge into disrepute”. The woman, named only as “A”, had filmed…

  • Chiang Mai 71 year old kills 26 year old lover in murder-suicide | Thaiger

    Chiang Mai 71 year old kills 26 year old lover in murder-suicide

    A 71 year old man is believed to have killed his 26 year old lover, a married woman, before hanging himself in Chiang Mai. The bodies of 71 year old Sompong Chuenjai and 26 year old Sasithorn Ruantha were found in the man’s townhouse in Ban Praewa village in Tambon Tonpao, San Kamphaeng district, east of Chiang Mai city, last…

  • Chiang Mai policeman caught accepting bribe on Facebook post | Thaiger

    Chiang Mai policeman caught accepting bribe on Facebook post

    A Chiang Mai traffic policeman has been transferred “to inactive duties” (whatever that means) after allegedly being caught on a Facebook post accepting a 200 baht bribe from a Chinese tourist. The tourists’s motorcycle had been locked up for parking illegally. The post appears to show the policeman pocketing the 200 baht and then unlocking the tourist’s bike on Phra…

  • Company rolls out new computers for Chiang Mai school | Thaiger

    Company rolls out new computers for Chiang Mai school

    Top executives from Thailand property development company Boutique Corporation recently visited the Intanon Wittaya School in Chiang Mai and presented them with ten desktop computers to the school. Inthanon Wittaya School is located in Amphur Mae Jam, 111.2 kilometers from Chiang Mai, with 192 kindergarten and primary school students. The school offers a computer class but only had 11 computers…

  • Chiang Mai man arrested after raping his own mother | Thaiger

    Chiang Mai man arrested after raping his own mother

    A Chiang Mai man has been arrested after just being released from jail for killing his step father only to rape his own mother. 31 year old Chaiya Tanaa from Chiang Mai had caused distress to locals after he fled the area following the rape last month. Police discovered that he was hiding out in the forest and moved to…

  • Chiang Mai: The good, bad and ugly | Thaiger

    Chiang Mai: The good, bad and ugly

    PHOTO: TakeMeTour Post Magazine has published it’s ‘review’ of Chiang Mai, with the “good, bad and ugly sides to Thailand’s second city”. Here are some of their main points… The good There are more than 300 temples in Chiang Mai; they outnumber 7/11 stores, which takes some doing in Thailand. Situated in the heart of the old city, Wat Phra…