Bangkok News
Bangkok news, politics, business, crime, and nightlife—stay updated with breaking stories, events, and expat updates from Thailand’s capital. Get the latest from The Thaiger, your trusted Bangkok news source.
-
Sponsored 9 most common health issues covered by insurance for expats in Thailand
Thailand is a popular destination for expats due to its affordable lifestyle and excellent healthcare system. However, settling in a new country often brings health concerns. To ensure you’re covered for the most common medical needs, understanding what expat health...
-
Transport Ministry says they still want to negotiate the 24 billion baht Hopewell pay-out
Driving out to Don Mueang Airport it’s difficult not to notice the new BTS line that now extends from Mo Chit and past the airport. It looks finished and, apparently, will open before the end of the year. But running alongside are the remnants of an earlier, and very expensive, attempt to build a link out to Don Mueang, at…
-
Female doctor resigns after hospital attack; director suggests “gold shop security”
The director of Vibharam-Chai Prakan Hospital in Samut Prakan, just south of Bangkok, says he may need to upgrade security to that used by gold shops to protect hospital staff. His remarks come just days after violence erupted at 2 hospitals in the area. 2 gangs were fighting after 1 of their members died. A female doctor resigned after the…
-
Bangkok “sadist” arrested for man’s death, woman’s abduction
Bangkok police have arrested a man for the abduction of a woman and the death of her boyfriend in the city’s Lumpini Park Tuesday night. Authorities say he is a sexual sadist who preyed on sex workers in the downtown area. Police say a woman, identified as 35 year old Natchada Kiengkaiwaykin, was lured into his Volkswagen van. Her boyfriend,…
-
American busted for fraud in Bangkok
An American man in Bangkok has been arrested and faces charges of defrauding a Thai investor out of 300,000 baht. Immigration police arrested the 37 year old for allegedly conning the victim into investing in an application to search for condominiums, jobs, cleaning and other services. The man, identified only as “Matthew”, was arrested under a warrant obtained by immigration…
-
6 escaped buffalo rescued by Buddhist nun
6 buffalo who broke loose from a Bangkok slaughterhouse and onto city streets this morning will be saved by a nun who owns a farm for rescued farm animals. Phakjira Hatthakitchamroen, who owns Punissarapab Farm in the western province of Ratchaburi, is collecting funds to buy the animals from the slaughterhouse in the Srinagarindra area. They were spotted wandering On…
-
Bangkok police seize fake drugs, cosmetics, supplements in factory raid
Police and officers of the Food and Drug Administration seized 119 items made using hazardous substances and sporting fake labels in a raid on an illegal factory near Bangkok’s Pratunam intersection. The products were valued at 200,000 baht. The FDA reported the production of illegal healthcare products, which led police to Tofu Skincare based in the capitol’s Ratchathewi district. The…
-
Video catches Thai immigration officials asking for a bribe
Officers from an immigration office near Bangkok have been “suspended” after a Facebook video showed an immigration official asking for money to help “speed up his visa process”. The caption read… “This is real, such a shame, when will the cheating stop”. “Thailand is good, foreigners get Visas to work in the country. They go to the Nonthaburi Immigration for…
-
Bangkok slum fire injures 3, damages 5 homes
A fire in central Bangkok’s Khlong Toei slum area last night injured 3 and damaged at least 5 houses with many more reportedly losing their possessions. It took firefighters around 30 minutes to bring the blaze under control. An initial police inspection indicated that the the blaze may have been started in a house whose residents made a small fire…
-
Protesters start a hunger strike out the front of Government House
A group calling themselves the New Life Network is staging a hunger strike at the front of Government House, again calling for PM Prayut Chan-o-Cha to stand down and dissolve parliament. They are complaining that the economy is getting worse and that the gap between Thailand’s rich and poor is widening. They say the situation has deteriorated since the military…
-
Staff injured, property damaged as gang rampages through 2 Bangkok hospitals
Gang members have gone on a rampage through 2 Bangkok hospitals, injuring medical personnel and causing significant damage to property. Violence first erupted at Vibharam-Chaiprakan Hospital in Samut Prakan, just south of the city, when doctors were unable to save the life of one gang member who’d been injured in a fight a few hours before. His death led to…
-
Smaller protest group outside Army HQ in Bangkok last night
A much smaller group of activists gathered outside the Royal Thai Army headquarters on Ratchadamnoen Avenue, Bangkok last night in protest against an opinion expressed by the now-former deputy spokesperson. The protesters, part of the ‘Free Youth’ group who protested in Bangkok at the Democracy Monument on Saturday afternoon, rallied outside the main gate of the Thai army HQ early in…
-
Police say they are gathering evidence to arrest ringleaders of Saturday protest – VIDEO
Whilst the police attending the mostly-peaceful protest, on Saturday afternoon and evening around Bangkok’s Democracy Monument, they didn’t intervene and break up the crowd. But they were taking plenty of photos. Now Bangkok Police have announced that they were gathering evidence to press formal charges against the leaders of the pro-democracy protest. Chief of the Metropolitan Police Bureau, Lt. Gen. Pakkapong…
-
Huge anti-government protest at Bangkok’s Democracy Monument
Anti-government protesters congregated at the Democracy Monument in the heart of Bangkok late yesterday afternoon to demand the dissolution of the current Thai Parliament, demanding a new Constitution and the removal of PM Prayut Chan-o-cha and his government The protest was organised by the Union of Students of Thailand and “Free YOUTH”, and was held in contravention of the emergency decree,…
-
Suvarnabhhumi Airport sees huge jump in traffic
Despite a continued and near-total ban on international arrivals, Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport is seeing a spike in traffic after the government eased lockdown measures and allowed domestic travel. The airport’s general manager says that from July 1-15, Suvarnabhumi saw 3,205 flights (1,604 incoming and 1,601 outgoing) or an average of 214 per day. “The total number of passengers using…
-
Everyone tested for Covid-19 in Rayong, Bangkok negative
The Department of Disease Control has announced the results of Covid-19 testing among 1,603 high-risk people involved in the incidents of an Egyptian military crew member (in Rayong) and a 9 year old girl from Sudan (in Bangkok). The results in Rayong province show that all of 1,336 people tested are negative, while in Bangkok, all 267 tested in a…
-
CCSA quashes reports of a new Covid-19 case in Bangkok
The chief of Thailand’s Disease Control Department is quashing Thai media reports of a south-west Bangkok resident being found to be infected locally with Covid-19. A media conference was hastily convened this morning to clarify the reports in some Thai media overnight. A CCSA spokesperson reported that a hospital in Raj Burana, a district on the west banks of the…
-
Nonthaburi man says pythons ate 20 of his cats
It took snake catchers 15 minutes to capture a 4 metre long python after a scrap dealer in Nonthaburi, just north of Bangkok, discovered it at his store in the province’s Pak Kret sub-district yesterday. The snake weighed in at 15 kilograms and the handlers say it put up a fierce fight, even breaking some of their equipment. The dealer…
-
Teen stabbed, man attacked in Nonthaburi robbery
Police in Nonthaburi, just northwest of Bangkok, are hunting 2 men who attacked and robbed a 14 year old boy and a 52 year old trash collector who were waiting at a bus stop outside a housing estate in Bang Bua Thong. The unnamed teen was robbed of just 100 baht. He was stabbed in the left side of his…
-
9 returning Thais rushed to hospital with high fevers after arriving at BKK
The deputy director of Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport says 9 Thai nationals, returning from Jordan and South Korea, have been diagnosed with “high fevers” and rushed to hospital. The first 8 were part of a group of 120 who touched down on a Royal Jordanian flight yesterday afternoon. “Preliminary screenings found that 8 passengers had high fevers and were rushed to…
-
More details emerge about the movements of the Sudanese family
This is an official explanation of the circumstances of the Sudanese 9 year old who has tested positive for Covid-19 and was residing in central Bangkok in Sukhumvit. There have been some other publications providing additional information about alleged movements of the family during the time before the girl was admitted to hospital, but The Thaiger is unable to verify…
-
Man dies in collision after car bursts into flames in Bangkok
A man has died after the car he was driving burst into flames when it collided with another vehicle. Nation Thailand reports that the accident happened in the Nong Jok district of Bangkok. It’s understood the victim, named as 47 year old Issara Bangyai, was test-driving a Mazda sedan in front of a car showroom when a pickup truck jumped…
-
Sexual assault, not theft, motive for spiked water bottles – Police
In an unexpected development to a story which has recently made headlines, police in Nonthaburi, just north of Bangkok, now claim sex, rather than theft, was the likely motivation behind the cases of spiked water bottles of joggers at a public park. On Friday police announced progress in the investigation into cases at the park in the government complex, following…
-
Motorcyclist, gazing at phone, plummets from Bangkok bridge
A man is dead after plummeting 10 metres from Bangkok’s Rama 3 bridge yesterday. Police and rescue workers were called to an area below the bridge and found the body of a 43 year old motorcyclist, identified only as “Kiatpong.” Still on the bridge was his Honda Zoomer-X scooter, and there was evidence of scratches along the bridge wall. He appeared…
-
Bangkok online booze peddlers busted, 2 million baht in untaxed alcohol seized
Last week the country’s top alcohol regulator approved a draft law to ban online alcohol sales. Yesterday, synchronised raids on 2 Bangkok addresses resulted in 6 arrests and the seizure of of foreign liquor and wine valued at 2 million baht. The first raid was a house used as a distribution centre in Ram Intra Soi 61. 5 men and women…
-
Separate tragedies across the nation
Tragedy has struck around the nation in separate incidents. In the Hat Yai district of the southern Songkhla province, the bodies of the owners of the locally well known Nattharika Furniture were discovered this morning by a relative who had been instructed to show up at the shop at 6am. In an apparent suicide pact, 55 year old Somsak, and…
-
Guinean man held for alleged rape of a minor in Bangkok
A man from the western African nation of Guinea was arrested at a McDonald’s in Bangkok’s Bang Rak area for allegedly raping a 17 year old girl. 58 year old Mamady Keita, reportedly a ruby trader, is accused of luring the girl to a hotel in the Phya Thai area and assaulting her. The girl told police that she’d been…
-
Student activists gather in Bangkok to oppose emergency decree
Members of the Student Union of Thailand have come together to protest the government’s extended emergency decree, gathering outside Pathumwan police station in Bangkok. Officials extended the decree by another month after it was originally set to expire at the end of June. Now human rights activists and critics of the government have slammed the extension as politically motivated. The…
-
UK’s Kew Green Hotels launches 7 properties in Bangkok
Despite a quickly changing business environment for the world hospitality industry, some companies are accelerating expansion plans in anticipation of the eventual recovery. Kew Green Hotels, one of the UK’s leading hotel management companies with over 55 hotels in its portfolio, has now announced plans to expand into the south east Asian market through a joint venture with Siamese Asset.…
-
Thailand growing more expensive for expats
According to Employment Conditions Abroad, Bangkok and Chiang Mai are among the 30 most expensive cities for expats in Asia. The capital of Turkmenistan might not spring to mind when with considering the priciest cities, but according to ECA International it ranks first on both the global and Asian tables, a 5 point rise up the rankings due to an…
-
Hospital director proposes importing overseas Covid-19 patients for treatment
With the Covid-19 situation in Thailand apparently well in hand (there have been no locally transmitted cases for well over a month), a hospital director in Bangkok is proposing flying in patients from abroad for treatment at his hospital. The director of Mongkutwattana Hospital is considering medical flights to bring international Covid-19 cases to the hospital for treatment, in an…
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.