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.
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12Go introduces Japan Rail Passes to enhance travel accessibility for international travellers
For those who have travelled throughout Thailand, 12Go is a well-known provider of various trips, though the platform itself has a much wider reach. Ranging from buses to planes, 12Go is undoubtedly a leading booking platform for travel throughout the...
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Flood warning for 11 southern provinces
Southern Thailand has been soaked with rain over the past week. Now, the National Water Command Centre is warning 11 provinces of possible floods this coming weekend. They are expecting heavy rains from Thursday, December 8 through Sunday, December 11. Strong storms have been flickering power in some provinces in the south of Thailand, with high winds blowing debris and…
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Everything stolen from Danish man’s 3 homes on Koh Samui
A Danish expat living in Koh Samui returned home from a five-month holiday to a most unpleasant surprise. Someone had ransacked his three homes and stolen nearly everything inside. The 43 year old man had been travelling abroad for nearly half a year with his Thai wife. Their homes are in Maenam on the northern coast of the popular holiday…
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Thai Vietjet resumes Bangkok-Da Lat flights after 3-year break
Thai Vietjet resumed its international service between Bangkok and Da Lat Sunday, after almost three years of suspension since the Covid-19 outbreak. Passengers were greeted with a special dance “Blooming in the Sky” at Lien Khuong International Airport along with a lucky draw for air tickets from Thai Vietjet. The arrival of flight VZ940 was welcomed by leaders of the…
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A mother and baby escape blaze in Chon Buri with severe burns
A mother and her baby daughter suffered severe burns after their home in Chon Buri’s Mueang district caught fire. Samet police and firefighters dashed to the scene when a call came through about a blaze in the Privacy Home Village in the Samet sub-district late last night, reported Pattaya News. The emergency services arrived to find that the fire had…
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Sex outside of marriage to carry one year jail sentence in Indonesia
Sex outside of marriage will result in a one-year jail sentence if lawmakers get their way tomorrow in Indonesia. In some of the most Draconian measures introduced in the Southeast Asian nation for decades, lawmakers are set to ratify changes to its criminal code tomorrow. Critics predict will send Indonesia back to the Dark Ages. The Semeru volcano erupted in…
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Four orcas spotted playing near the Similan Islands
Killer whales, otherwise known as orcas, were spotted off the coast of the Similan Islands in Phang Nga province. A private chartered fishing trip ran into the group of four seemingly friendly orcas as the boat sailed the waters of the Andaman Sea nearby the islands. The 35 year old local host of the trip said that he had taken…
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Arrogant Thai construction company rips off Myanmar migrant workers
An arrogant Thai construction company has been ordered to cough up wages it refused to pay to its migrant workers earlier this year. The arrogance of the unnamed building firm is underlined by the fact that no representatives came to court to defend or justify its action. The Labour Court in Phuket told the construction company to settle three months’…
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Safety systems at Central World found fully functional after fire
After Saturday’s fire at Central World shopping centre in Bangkok, investigators found that there was nothing wrong with the fire safety systems there. The building was inspected by district officials from Pathumwan who found that the fire alarm systems and the emergency sprinklers to combat flames were in proper working order. A small fire broke out in Groove, a semi-outdoor…
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Thai govt’s chemical castration policy takes effect next month
The Thai government is preparing to introduce its controversial chemical castration policy on repeat sex offenders next month. The Justice Ministry revealed it is preparing for the new law which is set to take effect on January 23. The policy is aimed at preventing people convicted of sexual and violent crimes from reoffending. The Senate passed the bill, allowing the…
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RTP urges Thai drivers not to ignore e-tickets, they’re real, not fake
A Royal Thai Police (RTP) spokesperson confirmed e-tickets for traffic violations have been in use since May this year and they are not fake despite claims to the contrary. Pol Maj Gen Achayon Kraithong announced on Facebook that the RTP e-tickets are real after a well-known neurologist and professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University warned motorists of a…
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A few good apples – Taxi drivers are not all bad
Taxi drivers are not all bad. A Pattaya motorbike-taxi driver handed into police a foreigner’s wallet he found. The wallet contained about 18,000 baht. Identification found inside the purse was Franz-Joseph (surname withheld), a German national. The wallet contained 320 euros (12,000 baht) and 6,150 baht (US$180). The honest taxi driver, Amnuay Plungklang, contacted the media last week to publicise…
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Pro-monarchy ‘dictator’ must be stopped from retiring in Australia, say Thai asylum activists
Exiled Thai activists are living in fear that a self-proclaimed “Van Helsing” “dictator” and pro-monarchy vigilante could be pursuing them in retirement. Rienthong Nanna, a doctor and former army general, announced on Facebook that he plans to retire in Perth, Australia causing fear among those who now live there after fleeing the country after his vicious campaign. Rienthong set up a…
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Russian murder suspect arrested in Pattaya
A Russian man who fled to Thailand to escape murder charges was tracked down and arrested in Pattaya. Immigration Police worked together with the Russian Embassy in Thailand to coordinate in locating the man and taking him into custody. Now the process has begun to extradite him to Russia to face charges. Igor Guzhin had a warrant issued for his…
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6 months in, Bangkok Governor Chadchart rated highly
A new poll shows that after six months in office, Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt remains popular with a high approval rating. An impressive 81.55% of people polled said that they were satisfied with Chadchart’s performance as governor so far. Only 18.47% of those who answered the poll said they were not satisfied. Chadchart was elected as governor in May in…
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Bloody end to innocent celebratory nap
An Udon Thani woman who was attacked by her husband last week is now looking around for someone new. Husband Somchai returned home early, and threw her lover out of her bed, before stabbing him. Chanoknat says she is unhappy with her husband Somchai Sonangam. According to Bangkok Post, the 44 years old says her rude husband barged in on her…
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Officials seize 25 tonnes of illegal meat from Chon Buri factory
About 25 tonnes of meat, worth about five million baht, intended for barbecues may now end up being cooked in a burn pit instead. Chon Buri authorities raided an illegal meat processing plant yesterday and impounded 25 tonnes of cow and pig offal along with other meats. The factory was in the Si Racha district of the eastern province. The…
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Loan shark sends goons to attack man in hospital and steal his car
Some people never heard the phrase “don’t kick ’em while they’re down” and it shows. A man who is receiving medical treatment in a Chon Buri hospital was brutally attacked in his hospital room by debt collectors. Four men entered his room, beat him, and then grabbed his car keys and took off. They found his car in the parking…
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Insurgent bomb derails train in Songkhla
A train was derailed in the deep south of Thailand, and security officials believe it was a result of a bomb set off by southern insurgents. Train number 707 was making a short run from Hat Yai to the border town of Padang Besar in the Sadao district in the southern province of Songkhla. The train was a freight train,…
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Fire at Bangkok’s CentralWorld mall sends shoppers scurrying (video)
A fire broke out at Bangkok’s CentralWorld mall Saturday afternoon. A small fire broke out in Groove, the mall’s semi-outdoor dining area, around 4.15pm. Coughing shoppers were forced to flee along smoke-filled corridors. Fire 🚒🔥 alert at #ctw #centralworld #เซ็นทรัลเวิร์ล , please go outside in safe area 🙌 pic.twitter.com/cIlNRXJd2r — @chai_prod (@chai_prod) December 3, 2022 Firefighters were quickly at the…
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Disruptive Phuket-bound passenger thrown off flight in Karachi
A disruptive Phuket-bound passenger on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul was thrown off the aircraft yesterday and arrested after the flight diverted to Pakistan’s Jinnah International Airport in Karachi. After the passenger was taken into custody by local law enforcement, the flight continued to Phuket. Turkish Airlines flight TK-172 on an Airbus A330 diverted to Karachi three hours into the…
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Thai student allegedly raped by Hyderabad U professor
Students at the University of Hyderabad are staging protests in support of the Thai student allegedly raped by her professor yesterday. The Thai student claimed that she was raped at the home of a senior professor last night. Local police arrested the suspect, Ravi Ranjan, said to be in his sixties. Ranjan is a faculty member in the department of…
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Phuket welcomes 6,730 flights in December
High season has arrived in Phuket, as the airport schedule lists 6,730 flights this month. The average number of flights per day throughout the month of December will reach 217, up from about 200 in November. (The busiest day in November saw 219 flight land with 10,467 passengers arriving.) Some 3,000 of those flights are international arrivals, while 3,730 flights…
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Thailand tourism predicted at 80% of pre-Covid in 2023
Tourism Authority of Thailand Governor Yuthasak Supasorn just predicted that next year, revenue from tourism will hit 80% of the level it was before the Covid-19 pandemic. He made the bold prediction at the 22nd World Travel and Tourism Council Global Summit, being held in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh. At that summit, the TAT was invited to take…
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Child Protection Foundation leader faces child labour charges
Authorities in Thailand are claiming there’s a fine line between protecting children and exploiting them. Amphawa District Police in the Samut Songkhram province filed human trafficking charges against the Secretary-General of the Child Protection Foundation. The foundation has protected the rights of children, but charges accuse them of using those children as labour in a resort owned by Secretary-General Montri…
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Phuket flight cancellation due to earlier cancelled flight, runway maintenance
After pandemonium at Phuket International Airport on Thursday night with a flight cancellation stranding 300 passengers overnight, airport and tourism authorities say they’re more prepared and it won’t happen again. It all started when budget airline Thai VietJet cancelled a flight from Phuket to Bangkok minutes before take-off last night because staff couldn’t find a seat for one passenger. But…
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Pheu Thai Party under fire as Tuhao-Shinawatra connection exposed
Opposition Pheu Thai Party is under fire after police found that many houses connected to suspected Chinese gangster Chaiyanat “Tuhao” Kornchayanant were built by a company owned by the Shinawatra family. The Pheu Thai Party is the third incarnation of the party founded by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2007. On Wednesday, the Royal Thai Police raided 11 locations…
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Bullets-in-bag Israeli given 18 months in Thailand
The bullets-in-bag Israeli police officer was handed an 18-month jail sentence on Friday for arriving in Thailand with a deadly cargo of live ammunition. Gal Shmuel Farjun was arrested in October at Phuket Airport with two loaded magazines in his suitcase. The 29 year old claimed to have left the bullets in his bag “by accident.” The Israeli Foreign Ministry…
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Thai baht soars to six-month high against US dollar
The Thai baht opened at 34.78 against the US dollar today, strengthening from yesterday’s close of 35 to a six-month high. The baht’s sudden rise is down to the Bank of Thailand’s (BOT) hiking the policy rate by a quarter point earlier this week. The BOT remains committed to a gradual monetary tightening policy, raising the policy rate from 1%…
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Stop giving monkeys cigarettes, beg locals in Lop Buri, Thailand
Locals in Lop Buri province in central Thailand – famous for its out-of-control monkey population – are begging tourists to stop giving monkeys cigarettes. Monkey lovers in Lop Buri were saddened to see a clip circulating on social media in which a visitor to the city flicked a lit cigarette to a monkey. In the clip, the innocent monkey picked…
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World Cup broadcasting soap opera drama rumbles on
The FIFA World Cup 2022 Qatar broadcasting soap opera continues to provide drama. In this week’s episode, the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) is demanding the Sports Authority of Thailand (SAT) return the 600 million baht it handed over because it can’t fulfil its World Cup broadcasting agreement. The long-drawn-out melodrama appeared to have reached a conclusion when Thailand…
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