Thailand News
Thailand news, politics, business, crime, and lifestyle—get breaking updates from Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pattaya, and beyond. Stay informed on Thai society, economy, tourism, and expat life with The Thaiger.
-
Sponsored Limited-time deal: Save 20% on Cigna's expat health plans forever
Starting a new life abroad is exciting—new culture, new lifestyle, and new chances to grow. But living far from home also means taking steps to protect your health in unfamiliar surroundings. Without the right coverage, even small health issues can...
-
Bad moon writhing
SURAT THANI: Tourists arriving on the island of Pha-ngan in Surat Thani Province are to be issued with stickers reminding them that “free sex” is illegal, following government concern over visitors having sexual intercourse in public places. The decision follows pleas by Khon Kaen Senator Rabiabrat Pongpanit to stop tourists on the island from humping in public during the island’s…
-
Going Coconuts
RAWAI: A young welder from Nakorn Sri Thammarat died of a broken neck on April 27 after he fell from a coconut tree in Rawai. Sompoj Petcharat, 23, was part of a team working at a bungalow colony off Yanui Rd. Being thirsty, he decided to scale one of the many coconut trees in the area to quench his thirst.…
-
Larvae carve an itchy niche
CHIANG MAI, PHUKET: Pity the poor housefly. Free of the ethical dilemmas facing humans, all it can aspire to in its short, frenetic life is to pass its genes onto the next generation. But with drought conditions lingering on in much of the country, flies are apparently finding it more difficult to locate piles of moist excrement in which to…
-
In very poor taste
KATHU: Police arrested a 66-year-old English language teacher from Canada on charges of sexually molesting a minor, after the man allegedly enticed his five-year-old student to perform oral sex on him by covering his penis with honey. At 9:40 pm on April 18, a team of Kathu District Police officers led by Pol Capt Serm Kwanimit entered the home of…
-
Abbot defrocked for bad habit
NAKHON PATHOM: An abbot and well-known fortune teller was defrocked after offering to perform a lewd “good-luck” ritual on a young woman in a short-time hotel. The woman, 20, told police she had gone with her boyfriend to pay respect to the monks at Wat Maeng Mum Hill Temple (Temple on Spider Hill). While there, the woman’s boyfriend had his…
-
Not-so-lucky charm
PHAYAO: A Phayao man is behind bars after allegedly stealing the preserved corpse of a stillborn baby boy from Phayao Hospital to use as a lucky charm. Jakree Tiemkaew, a 35-year-old builder from Tambon Ban Dam in Muang District, was taken into custody on February 22 after he took the tiny corpse to a local glass cabinetmaker and asked to…
-
Prognosis is knot good
PHUKET: Doctors at Patong Hospital were left scratching their heads over the mysterious case of a teenage construction worker who was admitted to hospital after vomiting a three-inch nail and a knotted length of string. After vomiting up the string and nail, 17-year-old Samorn Ngamphosri, from Buri Ram Province, was taken to Wachira Phuket Hospital, where an X-ray determined that…
-
Target practice
PATTAYA: Though few people may know this, it’s actually against Thai law for three people to ride on the same motorbike. Three young men on a drinking spree in Pattaya learned the hard way that even if the police tend not to enforce the law rigorously, there are other perfectly good reasons not to pile so many on a single…
-
For your nose only
BANGKOK: Doctors performing the wrong operations on their patients are the stuff of medical malpractice lore, so perhaps it was inevitable in plastic-surgery-obsessed Thailand: a woman who went in for cosmetic eye surgery emerged from the operating theater with a nose job instead. Nattha Masa, 40, paid the Ruamphaet Clinic in her home province of Samut Prakan 8,000 baht to…
-
Bargirl swallows rock
RAWAI: A Patong bargirl swallowed a Frenchman’s diamond ring after he refused to pay her and a friend for services rendered after an all-night menage-a-trois in Rawai. Chalong Police received a complaint from a 62-year-old Frenchman identified as Mr Patrick, who fingered Tawan, a 28-year-old bar girl, as the jewelry-gulping culprit. Mr Patrick told the police that on the evening…
-
Phone fury
PATTAYA: Four innocent bystanders were injured by ricocheting bullets when a bagman for a Pattaya loan shark opened fire on his mobile phone. Witnesses to the slaying of the mobile phone said the man, identified only as “Woot”, was seen at about 3 am yelling into his mobile phone on the ground floor of Niran Condo on Soi Arunothai. He…
-
Another fine mess
BANGKOK: Unscrupulous police officers extorting money from the public hardly constitutes news in Thailand – but it is noteworthy when the police themselves become victims of malfeasance. Between March and October this year, Pol Sgt Tarntip Preak-kratok managed to skim off nearly 3 million baht in fines collected by the Nongkam Police Station, where she was employed as a desk…
-
The final upshot
BANGKOK: Police arrested a 27-year-old man after he was caught taking photos up a girl’s skirt at a motor show at Central Plaza on Phra Ram III Rd last month. Worakarn Jaruphat was collared by security guards after “Amp”, a young woman taking part in the Miss Motorshow Contest, grabbed his wrist when she felt something touch her legs. When…
-
The hunt for Beer
NATHON PATHOM: A gang of teenage thugs picked the wrong guy to attack and rob in the early hours of October 21. Their intended victim turned out to be an off-duty police officer with a loaded pistol. At 3:30 am, the four gang members were riding their motorbikes slowly along Rajamankha Rd in Nakhon Pathom municipality, waiting for a victim…
-
Thief sparks investigation
BANGKOK : The remains of a would-be thief were found lying on the floor of a new home being constructed for Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and one Thailand’s wealthiest women. A construction worker arriving at the worksite on the morning of October 21 made the gruesome discovery near the back of the partly-constructed mansion, located on…
-
A cut above
CHON BURI: An enraged woman in Chon Buri’s Banglamung District cut off her partner’s penis at about 2 am on October 18, the second such incident in a month in the same province. The victim, 24-year-old furniture shop employee Songram Yospanya, explained that his long-term partner Rungnapa Pongaree, 32, felt neglected after he took on a “minor wife”. It should…
-
The demon seed
NONG KHAI: An elderly man turned himself in to Srivilai District police on the morning of September 4 and shocked officers by confessing to the August 20 murder of his own son. Kane Manorat, 70, left the monkhood after seven years to protect his family from his 38-year-old son Boonpeng, a glue-sniffing addict from the age of 15, whose sick…
-
Cut and run
CHONBURI: In the latest incident involving a philandering lover, a jealous girlfriend and a sharp knife, a young man from Petchaboon province awoke on the morning of September 4 to find to find a very private part lying in a pool of blood on the floor next to his bed. The victim, identified as 20-year-old Amnart Pinkratok, was rushed to…
-
A very rich diet
PHAYAO: Doctors performing emergency abdominal surgery were dumbfounded when they found more than two kilograms of coins and other objects inside the patient’s gut. Sanguan, 37, was taken to Phayao Hospital by relatives after complaining of severe stomach pain on August 31. Doctors knew something was amiss when they looked at X-ray images of Sanguan’s stomach – it looked like…
-
The love that lasts
SUPHAN BURI: Love is sweeter the second time round for Suphan Buri newlyweds Sunthon Thanabutr, 74, and Sumrith Aom-aerm, 75. The love-struck third-agers, both of whom have been married and widowed, knew each other more than half a century before their chance meeting at an “Elders’ Day” event held at Wat Pho Takuan earlier this year. K. Sumrith said that,…
-
Repellent behavior
CHERNG TALAY: A 17-year-old boy high on a cocktail of cola and crushed mosquito-repellent coils attacked a Buddhist nun with a meat cleaver in her quarters in the morning of August 19. The nun received 205 stitches for 16 wounds to her head and upper body and is said to be in a “worrisome” condition at Wachira Phuket Hospital. The…
-
Crack worship
SUKHOTHAI: Villagers who discovered a long crack in a wall surrounding Khong Pong temple in Sri Samrong District believe it was made by an angry naga, or serpent-god. The crack was first noted on July 22, when pupils came to ask temple administrator Sawai Pradit why the 200-year-old temple had cracks resembling a serpent’s track around its exterior wall. Dumbfounded,…
-
Death by aromatherapy
BANGKOK: A woman in Bang-wa District died of asphyxiation after turning her bathroom into a makeshift sauna and aromatherapy chamber in an attempt to shed unwanted flab. Tanakrit Kianthong, a grilled pork vendor, told police he returned home on July 3 to find his wife Pattaporn, 43, lying dead on the floor of the second-story bathroom of the couple’s three-story…
-
Pig farmer’s matrimonial madness
SURAT THANI: A mentally disturbed pig farmer threatened to hang himself and his baby daughter from a flagpole if the police did not comply with his demands to be locked up in a prison cell for 18 months. It was later learned that the crazed man was desperate to find a retreat from his long-term lovers. The incident occurred just…
-
Enraged jealousy of a jilted janitor
PATHUM THANI: On the morning of June 4, a group of secondary school teachers sat at some school desks chatting at the Suan Gularb Secondary School in Tambon Pheut-udom, as hundreds of students sat doing their work. The situation is common – and even passes for education – in countless government schools across the country. What wasn’t common was when…
-
Great ball of fire!
KOH SIREH: When firefighters responded to a call from the 100-year-old Muslim community on Koh Sireh at about 4:30 on the morning of May 24, little did they know that they were about to witness a gaseous and ghostly apparition. It took city and provincial firefighting units about 30 minutes to extinguish the blaze at 12/24 Soi Si Sena and…
-
Crapuccino, anyone?
THAILAND: Name any addictive drug and you will find users seeking ever-more efficient ways of getting it into their bloodstreams. The latest case is caffeine, the state-sanctioned stimulant found in coffee. Under the guise of “alternative medicine”, caffeine junkies are now taking coffee enemas. They claim that a good dose of java administered directly into the colon can have a…
-
Dark times for black dogs
SRISAKET: Black dogs in Nongsimai Village 2 were slaughtered recently after a local shaman convinced villagers that soaking string in the blood of a black dog and wrapping it around their homes would offer protection from the dreaded phi porp – a female ghost that kills married men and eats their innards. After two village men died in mysterious circumstances,…
-
The iceman cometh
NAKHON PATHOM: One of the primary targets in the Government’s war on drugs are dealers of ya bah (methamphetamine), one form of which is the highly addictive recrystalised form, known as “ice”. But if the tale told by a man in Nakorn Pathom’s Muang District is to be believed, dealers in ice made from water are now being targeted by…
-
Beach blanket bingo
KARON: In an effort to find beer for himself and his new best friend from Burma, the transvestite cashier of a local bar broke into two mini-marts and helped himself. But, high as he was on the twin passions of beer and very close friendship, he left his address book on the beach among the empty beer bottles – allowing…
Don't forget to check out some other things to do in Thailand - get help starting a business or finding a job in Thailand, buy Thailand property, rent a yacht or book a medical procedure worldwide.