Opinion
The Thaiger Opinion Columns
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Retiring in Thailand can be affordable and enjoyable, but many retirees lose money due to common mistakes. High living costs, scams, and unexpected expenses can quickly drain savings. There are five ways that retirees in Thailand can lose money and...
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Phuket Opinion: Forever at the mafia’s mercy
PHUKET: The proposal by the chief of the Phuket Marine Office to launch a “sea taxi” to ferry passengers between Patong and Phuket International Airport deserves credit for innovation, but appears somewhat impractical. There can be no doubt that visiting tourists need – and fully deserve – better public transport options between Phuket Airport and west coast resort destinations. The…
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Phuket Opinion: Toothless, but no fairy
PHUKET: The other day I had the unpleasant middle-aged experience of breaking a tooth. Not just any tooth, but the right incisor tooth. Alfred E Neuman, eat your heart out. By some amazing stroke of luck, the tooth had broken off but the root stayed intact, which made my experience relatively painless and gave me the chance to consider my…
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Phuket Opinion: Expats in need – who you gonna call?
Bruce Stanley is an American who has been helping foreigners in Phuket for over 20 years. For the past 10 years he has been a warden with the American Embassy, fulfilling a similar function. Here, he talks about resources available to expats in need of assistance. PHUKET: For most foreigners who live on Phuket or those who choose a visit…
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Phuket Opinion: Fuelling the tyranny of greed
PHUKET: It is high time for authorities to take serious steps to crack down on oil smuggling in Thai waters. The latest reported case in Phuket revealed itself in the most noxious of fashions last week, when the 20-meter fishing trawler Premika sank in the shallow waters of Klong Tah Jeen, allowing much of its cargo of tens of thousands…
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Phuket Opinion: Stray dog ‘final solution’ should take a pounding
John Dalley is Phuket’s well-known founder of the Soi Dog Foundation, a not-for-profit, legally registered charitable organization in Thailand, the United States, Australia, the UK, France and Holland. Here, Mr Dalley replies to Phuket Livestock Chief Weerasit Putthipairoj’s public policy that strays should be rounded up from Phuket’s streets and impounded. PHUKET: In response to the comments made by Weerasit…
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Phuket Opinion: Draining Phuket turtle power
PHUKET: It would be difficult to find a more depressing issue than the plight of the various sea turtle species that face extinction in local waters, some of which are also at risk of disappearing from the planet completely (story here). Sea turtles are an integral, but fast disappearing, part of Phuket’s natural heritage. Older generations of Thais will remember…
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Phuket Opinion: Hi-so holidays harder for tourists to afford
PHUKET: Over the years, a number of my friends have made the journey from England to visit Phuket and enjoy a well-earned holiday. The recurring theme of their time here used to be how cheap the island was compared to the UK, but that has now changed. When I first moved to Phuket, years ago, the exchange rate from baht…
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Phuket Opinion: Housing boom making snail mail slower
Boonsong Maneechai, 52, from Nakhon Sri Thammarat, served as Postmaster of the Thaweewong Post Office in Patong for four years before becoming the Postmaster of the Rawai Office in 2009. Here, he talks about why the residents of Rawai and Chalong have been experiencing mail delivery delays, and outlines the steps he is taking to correct the problem. PHUKET: The…
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Phuket Opinion: Get on the bus
PHUKET: There is only one way that breakthrough projects such as Phuket’s first airport-to-beaches bus service get up and running, and that is if everyone in the community gets behind it and supports it. That means: use it. Get on the bus and go to work, to the beach, to see a friend, a movie or even spend a night…
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Phuket Opinion: Tough love for Phuket stray dogs
PHUKET: For the past 10 months, Weerasit Puthipairoj, 58, has been the chief of the Phuket Provincial Livestock Office. Originally from Narathiwat, Mr Weerasit has a master’s degree in Agricultural Development from the Prince of Songkla University Haad Yai campus in Songkhla. Here, he talks about stray dogs in Phuket, the best way to deal with them and what to…
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Phuket Opinion: Drivers – Charming, to the last
PHUKET: At first I was charmed by Thai driving idiosyncrasies, like motorcycles puttering along on the wrong side of the road. To all those who said “There are no rules”, I said “But there are!” For example, that wrong-way driving motorcyclist knows he had better stay well to the side and go slowly.When someone said, “Drivers in Phuket don’t get…
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Phuket Opinion: Dumping drugs for scouts’ honor
PHUKET: Rapin Nichanon, 58, has been the Provincial Prison Chief since 2011. Originally from Nakhon Sri Thammarat, he served as the director of Krabi Provincial Prison before moving to Phuket. Here, he talks about how successful the prison’s “scout training courses” (story here) are in helping drug users become valuable citizens: We have been holding our “scout training” courses for…
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Phuket Opinion: Playing by all the rules
PHUKET: Saphan Hin’s 4,000-seat Indoor Sports Complex is where Phuket United play their Thai Futsal Premier league home games in front of a vocal crowd of around 1,000 supporters. In addition to being the home of the Andaman Pearl, the stadium was also used for several different sporting events over the past few months, including Thailand’s most significant international basketball…
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Phuket Opinion: Praise for the little ‘Heroes’ of Phuket
PHUKET: Although accorded little, if any, attention in the local media, the recent winning of a national championship in the “To Be Number One Teen Dancercise 2013” competition by a team of young dancers from the Baan Bangneaw Municipal School in Phuket Town deserves a great deal of recognition and praise. It was a considerable achievement, the first ever by…
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Phuket Opinion: Drivers’ carelessness causes traffic jams
PHUKET: Phuket City traffic policeman Pol Sen Sgt Maj Boonliang Maneewong, 53, is from Sisaket province in the Northeast. He graduated from the Provincial Police Training Center Region 2 in Chon Buri province in 1984 and has been working with the Thalang Police since 1985. He has been a traffic officer for 20 years, and for the last three years…
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Phuket Opinion: Time to rein in rogue cops
PHUKET: Provincial Police Commander Choti Chavalviwat should be applauded for getting personally involved in the investigation into the attack on a teenage couple who claim to have been assaulted by two sons of a Thalang Police officer on St Valentine’s Day (story here). Reports of assault involving minors are all too common in Thalang, which has a history of teenage…
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Phuket Opinion: Stem the growing tide of gun crimes in Phuket
PHUKET: The recent surge in the number of violent crimes involving firearms needs to be addressed by authorities immediately, otherwise Phuket’s self-designated sobriquet “Pearl of the Andaman” risks being inadvertently changed to “Arsenal of the Andaman”. Few regular readers of the Phuket Gazette will have failed to notice an apparent upsurge in gun crime this high season. This is perhaps…
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Phuket Opinion: Stateless visitors need more than hospitality
PHUKET: The plight of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar’s Rakhine State during the current sailing season clearly shows the need for Asean and other international bodies to come together to help solve, or at least alleviate, the root causes of the problem inside Myanmar as soon as possible. This will of course be no easy task. Few international humanitarian issues on…
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Phuket Opinion: Curing the festering sores of “public’ transport
PHUKET: Efforts by the international diplomatic community to pressure authorities in Bangkok to tackle the festering crime in the Phuket public transport sector and improve Phuket’s reputation as a tourist destination are laudable and have the full support of the Phuket Gazette. No subject has been the topic of more futile editorializing in this space than Phuket’s bizarre patchwork of…
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Phuket Opinion: Taxis – a decade of blocking progress
PHUKET: The recent police-ordered closure of tour counters run by Russian nationals in Kata-Karon is just the latest in a long series of protest-related events in Phuket that undermine the rule of law by rewarding law-breakers and punishing those who play by the rules.The closure of the counters followed a blockade of the Karon beachfront by members of a so-called…
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