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.
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Sponsored What is the 5 year visa for the digital nomad in Thailand?
The Destination Thailand Visa (DTV) is a great option for digital nomads, remote workers, and freelancers who want to stay in Thailand for a long time. This multiple-entry visa is valid for five years, allowing stays of up to 180...
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Beagles sniff out smuggled Chinese duck at Bangkok Airport
Thailand‘s sharp-nosed sniffer beagles strike again, this time detecting 7 kilogrammes of illegally imported raw duck at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport that arrived on a flight from China. Sniffer dogs from the Department of Livestock’s Quarantine and Inspection Canine Unit were on duty at the airport looking for any illegal movement of live wildlife and animal carcasses when they uncovered the…
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Wash off the dictatorship: Protesters splash for a cause
For those who love the splashing water of Songkran but wish it was far more serious and political, a protest held yesterday fits the bill. More than 20 protesters from the United Front of Thammasat and Demonstration, a pro-democracy group, gathered outside the Parliament complex to symbolically “wash off the dictatorship” with water. The rally took place the day after…
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Really Cool Airlines to fly by 2023 close, schedule in June
New carrier Really Cool Airlines is set to take off in Thailand by the end of this year, according to its CEO, Patee Sarasin. The airline will focus on international flights and is expected to help boost the country’s aviation industry, which has been hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. The company will announce its flight routes by the end…
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Police nab Chinese kidnapper at airport before he flees Thailand, 2 hostages saved
Police arrested a Chinese man before he boarded a flight out of Thailand last night. He is one of three men who abducted a Chinese woman and her brother-in-law in Pattaya on Monday for a ransom of 4.7 million baht. The two hostages were saved by police and returned home at 2am today. On Monday, 33 year old Ma Mingshan…
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Passport rip leaves TikTok creator unable to fly to Thailand
A passport rip left a TikTok creator unable to fly to Thailand. Arabella Leat’s holiday plans to Thailand with her mum were ruined due to the small rip on her passport, the UK tabloid Daily Star reported. The young woman was left disappointed and unable to board her flight after airport staff deemed her passport unfit for travel. Arabella posted a TikTok…
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Angry Thai man crashes car into PPRP election poster
An angry Thai man was prosecuted for damaging an election campaign poster belonging to the Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP). He deliberately crashed his pickup into the poster. The suspect’s family revealed he was angry at the party because his request for unemployment compensation was rejected. With the General Election set to take place on May 14, every political party has begun…
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German pedophile arrested for producing child pornography in Pattaya
Thailand’s Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB) arrested a German pedophile for shooting and distributing child pornography involving his teenage stepdaughter from his home in Pattaya. The 76 year old perverted expat, Wilfried Wilms, was taken into custody on Saturday, March 18 following an alert from the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency, which traced child pornography back to Wilms’s Meet4U and…
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Thailand welcomes 5.5 million foreign tourists so far this year
In the first three months of 2023, more than 5.5 million foreign tourists entered Thailand, generating over 200 billion baht for the economy, government spokesperson Trisulee Trisoranakul reported this morning. Between January 1 and March 18, 5,578,721 foreign tourists arrived in Thailand, generating 215 billion baht in tourism revenue, according to data provided by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports.…
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Regents International School Pattaya announces new school principal
Regents International School Pattaya is delighted to announce that Ms. Amos Turner-Wardell, the current Head of Secondary School, has been promoted as the new School Principal effective February 2023. For the past 5 years at Regents International School Pattaya, as the Head of Secondary, Ms. Amos has been central to the development and success of the school and her international…
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2 killed and 3 rescued in boat collision near Koh Samui
A fishing boat and an oil tanker collided near Koh Samui, an island in the southern province of Surat Thani. Three of the five fishermen were rescued, while the other two died. The Fisheries Checkpoint Management Centre Region 7 in Surat Thani notified the relevant departments at 2.20pm yesterday that the fishing boat named Talay Nam Chok 8 (Lucky Sea…
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SUV crashes into mall in Thailand, plummets 4 floors into basement
An SUV last night somehow crashed into a famous mall located in Pathum Thani province, situated to the north of Bangkok, Thailand. The vehicle then drove over the railings by the escalator and plummeted four floors into the basement. The SUV driver miraculously survived the accident, sustaining only minor bleeding to the head. The crash happened yesterday around midnight at Zeer…
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Thailand election to be held May 14
UPDATE Thailand’s Election Committee (EC) confirmed today that Thailand’s general election will be held on May 14, 2023. The vote will be held on May 14 with early ballots cast on May 7. Over 52 million people are required to vote. The election follows Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s dissolution of the House of Representatives, endorsed by His Majesty King Maha…
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10 top destinations near Bangkok for summer and Songkran 2023
As the summer season and the Songkran Festival approach Thailand next month, The Thaiger team recommends 10 top destinations to visit in April to escape the hustle and bustle of the city and enjoy a great water fight. The list includes a wide range of interesting places from waterfalls, seas, mountains, and spectacular natural scenery. With Songkran Festival set to…
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Hong Kong tourist narrowly survives bungee cord snapping midair in Thailand
Distraught onlookers thought the moment a Hong Kong tourist’s bungee cord snapped after he leapt from a height of ten storeys in Pattaya, Thailand, would surely send him plummeting to his death. But, he survived. One of Mike’s colleagues went first and had a blast, and Mike was up next, raring to go. The staff tied the bungee cord to…
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3 police attacked by 30 vendors while inspecting product piracy at a Thai market
A group of 30 vendors attacked three officers from the Ang Thong Police Station while they were conducting a product piracy raid at a Thai market in the central province of Ang Thong on March 16. The police officers later filed a complaint about the assault while the vendors claimed they thought the officers were fake police. The deputy inspector…
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Model prisoners hired by Thai fruit exporter due to worker shortage
A fresh fruit exporting company in the central province of Chantaburi hired 30 model prisoners as factory employees to tackle the worker shortages in the agricultural sector. The director of the Tung Benja Correctional Institution in Chantaburi, Thitinai Patikabut, took 30 well-behaved prisoners to work at the Orasa Fruit Company in the Combang sub-district of the province yesterday. Thitinai reported…
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13 year old called cops after pedo father imprisoned and raped teenage sister
A 13 year old girl sought help from the police after her pedo father imprisoned her 17 year old sister in her bedroom in the Lak Si district of Bangkok where he repeatedly raped her. The perverted man denied the rape accusations despite evidence to the contrary on his two mobile phones. Two traffic police officers encountered the 13 year…
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Aussie dad gets into fistfight with monkeys on Ko Phi Phi in Thailand (video)
An Australian dad got into a fistfight with a gang of monkeys on a Thailand beach after they attacked his one year old son. No pistols at dawn followed but it got quite feisty. Riley Whitelum and his wife Elayna Carausu, along with their two sons, were on the Ko Phi Phi Islands when the incident occurred. While relaxing on…
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Officials in Thailand say radioactive caesium-137 is contained, scholars disagree
The radioactive caesium-137 cylinder that went missing from a power plant in Prachin Buri province, central Thailand, was found to have been melted and turned into red soot with other scrap metal at a smelting factory around 10 kilometres away from the plant, sparking major health concerns for people in the area. Whether the caesium-137 will cause health problems like…
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Thai soldier arrested for murder of delivery driver
A Thai soldier was arrested yesterday for the murder of the delivery driver reported in the central province of Lob Buri last week. The suspect soldier confessed that he killed the victim over a dispute that arose from a car accident that occurred last year. The 52 year old delivery driver, Akkaradate “Ek” Srisa-ard, was found dead in his pickup…
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Not flushing? Man finds 23kg python in his toilet
We have all experienced a sense of panic when we flush a toilet and the water doesn’t go down, and it becomes even worse when something unexpected comes up instead. However, it is an entirely different level of terror when what appears in the toilet bowl is the head of a giant python. Snakes are common enough in Thailand that…
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Thai woman accuses RTP of kidnapping, extorting 1 million baht from her boss
The Royal Thai Police (RTP) are in the headlines once again for all the wrong reasons after a Thai woman accused RTP officers of kidnapping and extorting 1 million baht from her boss in the Din Daeng district of Bangkok. Police reported that initial CCTV footage revealed that two of the men in the criminal group looked similar to Immigration…
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Thailand to build 7 new airports
The Department of Airports (DOA) plans to spend 50 billion baht on the development of seven new regional airports in Thailand, in Nakhon Pathom, Bueng Khan, Mukdahan, Kalasin, Phayao, Phatthalung and Satun provinces, reports DailyNews. The department wants to boost connectivity and provide more travel options for Thais and foreign tourists. New airports around Thailand’s lesser-known locations have been in…
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Thai MP accused of insulting the King of Thailand
Padipat Santipada, a member of the Move Forward Party (MFP), is facing a lese majeste charge in Thailand after being accused of insulting the king in a political speech delivered earlier this month. The charge against Padipat relates to Section 112 of the Thai Criminal Code. Srisuwan Janya, secretary-general of the Association for the Protection of the Constitution, filed a…
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One man’s motorcycle trip from Bangkok to Korat with his 11 cats goes viral
The heartwarming story of a Thai man, known as Uncle Samsen, and his 11 cats went viral on social media after he travelled with his pets in his sidecar motorcycle from Bangkok to the Isaan province of Nakhon Ratchasima or Korat. The route was nearly 300 kilometres and took almost five hours of travelling. Some Thais know Uncle Samsen, 65 year old…
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IDC predicts smartphone market in Thailand to remain stagnant
The Thai smartphone experienced a significant decline in 2022 and is expected to remain stagnant due to inflationary concerns, rising interest rates, and a lacklustre growth forecast for the Thai economy, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC). The IDC reported that 16.6 million smartphone shipments were made in 2022, marking a 21% decline from the previous year and the…
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14 teens arrested after woman killed in knife attack
Police officers arrested 14 teenage boys after one of them allegedly murdered a female motorcycle rider on a road in Nakhon Sawan, in the central part of Thailand, on Saturday night. Officers from Paisaree Police Station managed to arrest the teenage gang after they fled the scene separately on March 18. The students, aged 16 to 17, go to a…
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Thailand dissolves Parliament with immediate effect
UPDATE Thailand‘s Parliament has been dissolved with immediate effect upon an announcement published today in the Royal Gazette. His Majesty King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun of Thailand endorsed the dissolution of the House of Representatives, kicking off the election season. The Election Committee (EC) has tentatively set the date of the election for May 7, 2023, but this will be confirmed…
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Homeless man arrested in China to reunite his family in Thailand
A homeless man arrested in China four years ago is believed to be a Thai citizen. A family in Lamphun province in the northern part of Thailand believe he is their long-lost brother who went missing 29 years ago. Chinese immigration police detained the man, who was later identified as 45 year old Prakob Chuasaeng, in 2019 in Tianshui City, Gansu…
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BREAKING: Radioactive caesium-137 cylinder missing in Thailand was smelted, sparking health concerns
UPDATE The radioactive cylinder containing caesium-137 which went missing from a power plant in Thailand was smelted in a furnace at Chow Steel Industries Public Company Limited’s smelting factory in Prachin Buri province, the governor of Prachin Buri province admitted this morning. The radioactive implications of this incident are unclear right now. Officials from the Office of Atoms for Peace…
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