News
Thailand news, politics, business, crime, lifestyle, and tourism—stay updated with breaking news and in-depth analysis from Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pattaya, and beyond. The Thaiger delivers the latest national news that matters.
-
Sponsored
What’s not covered by health insurance in Thailand?
Health insurance in Thailand has important limits that everyone should know. Many policies do not cover pre-existing conditions, motorcycle accidents, extreme sports, or specific treatments. These gaps can lead to unexpected costs during emergencies. Coverage for outpatient care and hospital...
-
Biker decapitated in Lampang
Police and rescue services in the northern Lampang province were confronted with a gruesome scene after the driver of a Kawasaki Z650 hit a metal lamp post in the middle of a downward section on the Lampang-Chiang Mai superhighway. The biker’s head, out of its helmet, was on one side of the road, his body on the other. The biker…
-
1 killed, 1 injured as plane hits tug at Don Mueang – VIDEO
One employee is dead and another injured after an accident this morning at Bangkok’s Don Mueang Airport. A Nok Air plane hit a tug towing it to the passenger ramp at Don Mueang airport, killing the tug driver and injuring another employee. The incident occurred around 8am. Don Mueang’s general manager told reporters that Nok Air flight DD6458, bound for…
-
Austrian man dies in Patong condo fall
A 68 year old Austrian man is dead after falling from his 12th floor condominium in Patong. His body was found at about 10 last night, on the ground outside the Patong Night Plaza condominium, where police say he lived alone. According to his passport he entered Thailand on December 19 on a 90 day visa. Blood pressure diabetes medications…
-
Deputy village chief in trouble over racy Facebook photos
What was she thinking?! A deputy village chief in the central province of Ang Thong has found herself in hot water after her sexy Facebook photos were shared online yesterday, Khao Sod reports. “I think what she did was a disgrace for our religious and community leaders, who must take action against her,” wrote one Facebook busybody member, who posted…
-
New bikes must meet Euro 4 emissions standards
A new government policy, which will take effect on March 29, requires all new motorbikes sold in Thailand to meet Euro 4 emissions standards. Officials of the Thai Industrial Standards Institute met yesterday with representatives of more than 40 motorbike manufacturers, including Honda and Yamaha, informing them of the requirements. The measure is intended to help tackle Thailand’s PM2.5 dust…
-
3 dead, 179 injured in Istanbul aircrash
Three people are dead and 179 injured, some seriously after a Pegasus Airlines plane heading into Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen Airport skidded off the end of a wet runway and broke into three pieces upon landing yesterday. Turkey’s health minister Fahrettin Koca told reporters that three died in hospital, with 179 of the 183 aboard wounded. Ali Yerlikaya, Istanbul’s governor, says…
-
2 crushed as truck overturns in Suphan Buri
Two men were crushed to death when tractor-trailer truck overturned in Suphanburi province in central Thailand yesterday. Horrific CCTV footage showed the moment the truck, carrying animal feed, overturned, crushing the two, who were travelling on a motorcycle with a sidecar. The deceased were identified as 64 year old Montha and 56 year old Phra Manop, a monk at the…
-
Bibi does Bangla – What is the Thai girl experience with foreign boyfriends?
Bibi heads to Soi Bangla in Phuket’s seaside party town of Patong. She’s inquiring about Thai girls’ opinions, even the working girls in the clubs. Have they had experience with a foreign boyfriend? What about their foreign boyfriend experiences, good and bad? What are their expectations? Is it all about money or are the Thai women more romantic than the…
-
Thai government scraps Mekong blasting project
The government has officially abandoned a controversial plan to blast rapids on the Mekong river in Chiang Mai province. The Chinese-led dredging and blasting plan, initiated in 2001, met with fierce opposition from locals and environmental groups, and the Cabinet agreed to scrap it at a weekly meeting on Tuesday. The plan was to enable ships to carry goods from…
-
Passenger leaps to safety as taxi crashes, driver asleep
A girl leaped from a moving taxi yesterday, possibly saving her life, as the car immediately crashed into the tollway wall, causing a 4-car pileup. The taxi driver had fallen asleep. The incident occurred on the north tollway at the Rangsit-Nakhon Nayok province intersection northeast of Bangkok. The girl posted on Twitter that the taxi driver was in a deep…
-
4 foreigners, 2 Thais nabbed in 3 drug busts
Four foreign nationals and two Thais have been arrested in three separate drug seizures involving heroin, ecstasy pills, cocaine, MDA, LSD and marijuana. The first bust saw two Taiwanese men arrested yesterday while trying to smuggle 15 kilograms of heroin out of Thailand in instant noodle packages and powder cans. The two, identified as Li Chun Hui and Li Chai…
-
Train hits car in Chiang Mai, family survives
Police from Chiang Mai’s Saraphi police station yesterday received a report of a train hitting a car and rushed with rescuers to the scene at a crossing in Yang Nueng district. Once there, they found a badly damaged black Toyota Vios. The rescue team helped a family of three from the vehicle and took them to hospital, while the damaged…
-
Pattaya Floating Market cleans up its act to prevent Coronavirus
Pattaya’s Floating Market has been vigourously scrubbed down in an effort to increase hygiene and prevent the potential spread of the Novel Coronavirus. Staffers cleaned the entire venue from top to bottom yesterday. Surface areas were cleaned with disinfectant and alcohol spray. Every vendor in the hundreds of booths and stalls took part, to make sure potential tourists know the…
-
73 year old Swede found dead in Chiang Mai condotel
Chiang Mai health authorities have reported the death of a 73 year old Swedish man in the northern province. He was found dead in a his condotel in Chang Phueak district on Monday. The body was discovered by staff, who immediately called police and health officials over fears of the Novel Coronavirus. The body was identified as that of Gunnar…
-
Head-on collision kills Austrian couple in Krabi
Two Austrian* tourists were killed in a collision with a truck in Thailand’s southern Krabi province on Monday. The pair were riding motorbikes registered in Krabi and veered into the wrong lane while navigating a turn on the road to Krabi Hot Springs when they collided head-on with an oncoming Mitsubishi pickup truck at approximately 4pm. Police and rescue workers…
-
Army officer wounded in Chiang Mai firefight with drug runners
A firefight with drug smugglers in Chiang Mai province’s Chiang Dao district has left an army officer wounded and in hospital. A patrol was dispatched to a border village in Chiang Dao on Sunday, after a tip-off. The informant said drugs would be brought across the border through the Nong Kalang pass. Early yesterday a group was spotted coming from…
-
20 kilogram python caught after dog gives warning in Sri Racha
A three meter long python was caught yesterday after a dog in Chon Buri province’s Sri Racha district barked out multiple warnings. Authorities were notified of in the afternoon of an incident at a house in Nongkham. Rescue workers arrived at the house to find the huge python near the house where the dog was barking at it and keeping…
-
The knock-on effect. Coronavirus hits Phuket hotels.
The Thaiger’s occasional Phuket hotel management contributor is back with some inside knowledge of the current situation for hoteliers on the holiday island. That the coronavirus situation is affecting hotel bookings, is an understatement, he says. Here’s some of the current thinking as Phuket hoteliers stand around the water-cooler and mull the situation. Our writer has asked to remain anonymous……
-
Thai Lion Air offers Thais stuck in China free “Fly them back home” flights
Thai Lion Air, the Thai subsidiary of the Indonesian budget airline, is saying it will help repatriate Thais living in various cities in China, where air transportation is still allowed, under the airline’s “Fly them back home” project, free of charge. They are planning the flights home between February 5 and 8. “Passengers will be given a thorough examination as…
-
Police officer murdered, mutilated
The body of a police officer was found in the northeastern province of Kalasin yesterday. He had been stabbed to death and his body severely mutilated. Police later tracked down and arrested 45 year old Amornlak Jitkoh, a Kalasin native, who had fled and hidden in a forest in Nakhon Ratchasima province. He was persuaded to surrender and return to…
-
Bangkok food delivery riders demand legal protections
If you’ve got a smartphone, a motorbike and a bit of cash, you can get work straightaway in Bangkok… but it comes at a cost. Though the income is potentially high, online food delivery drivers face heavy workloads, long hours, customer complaints and high levels of risk. GrabFood riders held a protest in Bangkok last week, saying that they get…
-
Thailand Inventors Day 2020 celebrates outstanding Thai inventions
Yesterday marked Thailand Inventors’ Day, when the National Research Council granted awards to outstanding researchers, inventors and innovations in the prevention of PM2.5 airborne dust and, it is thought, aerially transmitted Coronavirus, were put on display. An air scrubber manufactured by ALPIN ELECTRONICS, an innovative high performance machine ten years in development, on display at the 5 day event. The…
-
Rural students to get digital boost with “e-School”
College students in rural areas of Thailand will soon get a boost in the quality of their education: Mae Fah Luang University (MFU) in Chiang Rai has developed an e-School system for the administration of education in rural areas with a 7 million baht grant from the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Research and Development Fund for Public Interest (BTFP), under the…
-
Regional news source publishes smuggled photos from Bangkok’s Immigration Detention Centre
A regional news source, linked to the Catholic Church, has published a group of photos over the weekend slamming Thailand’s notorious Bangkok’s Immigration Detention Centre. The article claims the Centre has “squalid and overcrowded conditions in which inmates, including children, women and the elderly, have been forced to languish for months and even years on end.” The Union of Catholic…
-
Light winds across Thailand and cooler weather in the Northern hills
Watch out for some fog in the hills around the north of Thailand, a continuation of the smog problems in the city and a chance of thunderstorms during the day in parts of the south. A high-pressure system over upper Thailand and the South China Sea is weakening that will cause morning fog as well as cooler weather in some…
-
Thai doctors claim drug cocktail treats Coronavirus
Doctors in Bangkok believe they’ve discovered a cocktail of drugs that effectively treats the Wuhan Coronavirus. At a media briefing yesterday, the two doctors claimed that a combination of flu and anti-AIDS drugs has been shown effective in treating patients who tested positive for the virus. The two doctors from Rajavithi Hospital, Kriangsak Atipornwanich and Subsai Kongsangdao, declared the combination…
-
China now battling an outbreak of bird flu in Hunan
On top of the growing Coronavirus outbreak and efforts of authorities to contain the spread, Chinese officials have now reported a case of the potent H5N1 bird flu in Shaoyang city in central China’s Hunan province. The province is south of Hubei but the outbreak of bird flu is unrelated to the Wuhan coronavirus. Avian influenza, aka. H5N1, avian flu…
-
Russian woman drowns in Patong
A 34 year old Russian woman drowned while swimming at Patong beach on Saturday. Lifeguards performed CPR on the woman before she was taken to Patong Hospital, where she was pronounced dead, according to police, who were alerted at 9am. Police say the woman, whose name was witheld pending notification of relatives, travelled with her boyfriend to Patong with the…
-
Danish man dies in Chon Buri skydiving incident
A 30 year old Danish man is dead after his parachute failed to open in central Thailand on Saturday. The incident occurred at a jump site in the Sri Racha district of Chon Buri province. Police were alerted at 12:30pm. The 30-year-old Danish national, Stefan Eiriksson Andersen, was found lying face-up and unconscious, blood coming from his mouth and nose.…
-
Coronavirus UPDATE – first death outside China, 14,559 confirmed cases
Deaths from the coronavirus outbreak have now reached 305 today, including the first outside China, a 44 year old Chinese man in the Philippines. 14,559 people are now confirmed with the virus, the vast majority in China. Whilst the fatality rate remains at 2% with the current level of cases, many have also recovered and returned home. Many remain in…
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.