Northern Thailand News
Northern Thailand news, Chiang Mai news, business, tourism, and culture—stay updated with breaking stories, local events, and travel insights from Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Pai, and beyond. Get the latest from The Thaiger, your trusted Northern Thailand news source.
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UPDATE: Officials raid religious cult, no illegal action found
UPDATE The new religious cult that caught the globe’s imagination for allowing followers to drink alcohol got raided yesterday. But officials from Chiang Yuen district in Mana Sarakham province in northeast Thailand found no illegal activity. Chiang Yuen’s District’s Chief, Somporn Kuankamkong, officers from Internal Security Operations Command, Buddhism Office, and Public Health Department, yesterday visited the cult temple, Phra…
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New religious cult leader encourages followers to get drunk
Thai media visited the temple of a new religious cult in the Isaan province of Maha Sarakham to interview its leader after a viral TikTok video revealed he encouraged followers to get drunk at the cult ceremony. A female TikTok user posted a video joining a ceremony with the cult in Maha Sarrakham. The video revealed participants wearing an all-white…
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Thai tutor arrested for making child porn with boys
An alleged pedophile wanted by the US and Thai Cyber police has finally been tracked down and arrested thanks to a local boxing gym owner. If found guilty the 20 year old part time teacher faces between three and 10 years imprisonment and a fine between 60,000 baht and 100,000 baht. The tutor, named Mai, sexually assaulted children between the…
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Hold the stink: New Korat durian fruit strain doesn’t smell bad
They call it the “king of fruit” but not everyone is a loyal subject to the durian, known for its distinctly stinky smell. But now there may be a way around that terrible smell as a new strain of durian developed in Korat is being hailed as a non-smelly version of the famous large fruit. The northeastern province of Nakhon…
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Police keep open mind on Thai man found dead in water tank with cut throat
Police reported they were keeping an open mind to whether a local man was murdered or committed suicide after a body with a cut throat was found floating in a water tank at a house in the Isaan province of Roi Et. The body of the dead man, believed to be 51 year old Chaiyut Pakakatet, was fished out of…
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‘It’s God’s Will’ says Thai gunman after Chiang Rai mass shooting
A drug-crazed killer gunned down three locals, including a 4 year old girl, and injured two in a mass shooting in the Baan Pa Kia Community in the northern province of Chiang Rai yesterday. Several cats and dogs were also killed in the crossfire. The drunken gunman told the police, “It’s God’s will.” The murderer, reportedly called Anucha Jabo, high…
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Mother & daughter rescued from drowning at Khon Kaen Airport
A mother and daughter were rescued after accidentally driving a car into a flooded underground car park at Khon Kaen Airport in Isaan province of Thailand. A Facebook page, พระจันทร์ ลายกระต่าย V2 (The Rabbit on the Moon V2) posted pictures of a white sedan dripping in water with the caption, “Khon Kaen Airport.” The page didn’t explain the details of…
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Soggy pizza and long hours of waiting – 4 years since the Tham Luang cave rescue
“There were times when kilometres underground standing in waist-deep water, we’d be eating a piece of soft pizza in a break… two guys from different countries, different cultures.” Four years ago, yesterday, the last group of four football players from the Chiang Rai Mu Pa (Wild Boar) team were brought out of the Tham Luang Caves. It took three days,…
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Thai man appeals to robbers to stop as he has nothing left
A Thai man today appealed to thieves to stop robbing him after declaring he has nothing left to steal. Niphon Muangkram’s home in the northeastern province of Khon Kaen has been robbed 6 times in 3 months with 40,000 baht of valuables taken. One of the ironies of all this is that his home is only 1 kilometre away from…
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Fight leads to fatal shooting in Northeast Thailand
A fight at a liquor store in Northeast Thailand led to a fatal shooting this morning. Two gang members of an illegal money lending gang had gotten into a feud with some young locals in Nakhon Phanom province. The spat occurred in the That Phanom district town. The fight left gang member 33 year old Pittaya with head injuries, among…
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Chiang Rai police arrested for taking huge bribe from Chinese porn gang
Another day, another story involving Thai police taking bribes, this time in Chiang Rai. According to deputy police commissioner Surachate Hakpan, a.k.a ‘Big Joke,’ 4 officers in the northern province took a 1 million baht bribe from a Chinese gang filming live pornography at 2 resorts. One of the officers had searched the gang’s filming spot on March 31. He…
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Storm rips apart villages in Northeast Thailand
Communities in Northeast Thailand are the latest to bear the brunt of the country’s monsoon season. Rain plundered 3 villages in Nakhon Ratchasima province last night, damaging 48 houses and several crops. Non Sung district officials have now warned villagers to make sure that their houses’ roofs and structures can endure rough weather. Northeast Thailand is the country’s poorest region.…
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Northeast Thailand teacher’s ex stabs her to death in classroom
The ex-husband of a Northeast Thailand teacher has stabbed her to death today in a classroom of the school where she taught. The ex-husband, ‘Bo’, had reportedly threatened to kill his ex-wife 3 days ago. The couple split up after she caught him cheating. Today, Bo drove up to the school in Surin province and asked a security guard where…
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Former Thai public servant allegedly swindles 30.6 million baht from government
A former Ministry of Defence finance officer, with an online gambling addiction, has allegedly swindled 30.6 million baht from the Buntharik District Administration in the Isaan province of Ubon Ratchathani and is on the run from the police. The Mayor of the Buntharik District Administration, Worrapoj Bootnart, yesterday informed the media that the district office last year hired a financial…
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UPDATE #2: Lithuanian man allegedly murders trans woman in northeast Thailand
UPDATE #2: Police have caught and arrested the man suspected of murdering a trans woman in Surin 3 weeks ago. Police revealed that the 32 year old man, Malleus Kunickas, is in fact of Lithuanian nationality, and not Russian as thought by the deceased’s family and widely reported in Thai media. Wandee, the deceased’s mother, previously said her daughter’s phone…
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Russian man allegedly murders trans woman in northeast Thailand
Yesterday, a mother in the northeastern province of Surin discovered the rotting body of her 31 year old daughter – a trans woman named Thiraphong – wrapped inside a blanket in a storage room behind their family home. The mother suspects her daughter’s Russian boyfriend, who disappeared a few weeks ago, murdered her daughter. Police say they estimate that the…
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Thai OnlyFans couple who turned holiday resort into a porn shoot wanted by police
Police are looking for a Thai OnlyFans couple who turned the popular holiday resort of Wang Nam Khiao into a porn shoot setting. Three of the couple’s sex tapes were circulated online yesterday in secret group chats in the popular Thai Line application. The videos, which soon went viral, feature the couple having sex in a resort room with a…
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Man changes surname to “Ganjaram” to celebrate cannabis decriminalisation
A Thai man in the Isaan province of Buriram has changed his surname to “Ganjaram” to celebrate the decriminalisation of cannabis in Thailand. He says his pregnant wife had already checked the surname’s meaning and found it had a good essence, and added his newborn baby, expected to born on June 22, will be proud of him. On Friday, one…
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Mae Sot district proposed as site of Thailand’s 1st official casino
An Entertainment Complex Committee, set up by the government, has proposed Mae Sot district in the northern province of Tak as an ideal location for Thailand’s first legal entertainment complex, with a casino. The committee has announced that they’ve gathered all information from their survey, both negative and positive, and is ready to submit the findings to the Thai cabinet.…
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Famous Thai cyclist killed in road accident in Thailand
Famous Thai cyclist Nirantra Phramthong was killed yesterday in a road accident in the northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima. The 53 year old was struck by a 10-wheel truck at 8.10am at the construction site of an elevated road junction on the special highway linking Bang Pa In with Nakhon Ratchasima and died instantly. The 41 year old truck driver,…
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Former police inspector in North Thailand scammed, loses retirement funds
A scam gang, pretending to be police, have tricked a former police inspector in North Thailand into handing over all of his retirement money, totalling 1.8 million baht. The former inspector, who lives in Lampang province, said the scammers called him on June 1, claiming to be from the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission. The scammers told the former inspector…
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Restaurant feels heat from police after expanding business into bus stop
A restaurant was left with a sour taste in its mouth after being warned about expanding its business into a nearby bus stop. Local police officials were notified by a Facebook blogger, ขาเกือบพลิก, who complained that a restaurant in the northeastern province of Khon Kaen had taken over a bus stop and was serving food to customers. The Facebook page,…
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Police investigate blast in Northeast Thailand that killed lecturer
Police in Northeast Thailand are investigating a blast that tragically killed a university lecturer in Sakhon Nakhon province’s city district on Friday. Police say the lecturer, 41 year old Pichai Srimanta, was killed when doing a research project to extract oil from plastic waste at a garbage dump, where the explosion happened. A worker who witnessed the tragedy said the extraction…
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Man accidentally shoots himself in the mouth in northeast Thailand
A man has accidentally shot and killed himself while loading gunpowder into his cap gun at a rubber plantation in Roi Et province, northeast Thailand, yesterday evening. Police suspect he was holding the trigger end of the gun with his toes and blowing gunpowder into the barrel with his mouth when he must have accidentally pulled the trigger. The man’s…
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Gambling suspects arrested at northeast Thailand resort
Police arrested 18 gambling suspects at a resort in Thailand’s northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima yesterday. The suspects reportedly used all 10 rooms of the Lake Pine resort to operate 2 gambling websites. Officers seized 10 desktop computers, 5 notebook computers, 30 mobile phones, and 12 bank account books, according to Police Colonel Wiwat Jitsophakul from the Crime Suppression Division.…
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Murder-suicide in north east Thailand
A man has shot his pregnant stepdaughter dead and then committed suicide at a house in the northeastern province of Buriram. The stepdaughter had just married her husband 7 days before the incident. Relatives have refused to provide additional details to the media at this stage. Yesterday, an emergency team from Hin Lek Fire Police Station was called to a…
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Thai cult’s food products tested – feces, bacteria and mould detected
An update on the hidden cult commune in the Isaan province of Chaiyaphum… Local health authorities found the cult was operating a food businesses and seized all of the products for further investigation. The test results showed that the food samples from the group contained excessive amounts of mould, Coliform and bacteria, usually found in feces. At the start of…
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Flooding situation worsening in Chiang Rai, waters recede in Chiang Mai
The flooding situation in easing in the northern province of Chiang Mai, but getting worse in neighbouring Chiang Rai. That’s according to a Thai PBS World report, which says the levels in several Chiang Rai waterways have been rising steadily since yesterday, as a result of heavy rain on Saturday. The Chan River has burst its banks in Chiang Rai’s…
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Thai Bitcoin miner arrested for tapping into free electricity for 6 months
A Thai man in the northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima has been arrested after being caught using free electricity for the past 6 months. He was Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin mining consumes roughly 0.5% of all energy consumption worldwide. That’s roughly 7 times more than Google’s total energy consumption per year – Business Insider The officer from Nakhon Ratchasima’s Provincial Electricity Authority,…
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Stolen gold found scattered in northern Thailand
After a robber stole several pricy items from a gold shop earlier this week, police found 7 trays of gold ornaments in the middle of a river in northern Thailand’s Tak province. Local people showed the gold to police after they spotted it on an islet in the middle of Ping River in the main city district. The locals also…
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