Thailand News
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For your nose only
BANGKOK: Doctors performing the wrong operations on their patients are the stuff of medical malpractice lore, so perhaps it was inevitable in plastic-surgery-obsessed Thailand: a woman who went in for cosmetic eye surgery emerged from the operating theater with a nose job instead. Nattha Masa, 40, paid the Ruamphaet Clinic in her home province of Samut Prakan 8,000 baht to…
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Bargirl swallows rock
RAWAI: A Patong bargirl swallowed a Frenchman’s diamond ring after he refused to pay her and a friend for services rendered after an all-night menage-a-trois in Rawai. Chalong Police received a complaint from a 62-year-old Frenchman identified as Mr Patrick, who fingered Tawan, a 28-year-old bar girl, as the jewelry-gulping culprit. Mr Patrick told the police that on the evening…
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Phone fury
PATTAYA: Four innocent bystanders were injured by ricocheting bullets when a bagman for a Pattaya loan shark opened fire on his mobile phone. Witnesses to the slaying of the mobile phone said the man, identified only as “Woot”, was seen at about 3 am yelling into his mobile phone on the ground floor of Niran Condo on Soi Arunothai. He…
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Another fine mess
BANGKOK: Unscrupulous police officers extorting money from the public hardly constitutes news in Thailand – but it is noteworthy when the police themselves become victims of malfeasance. Between March and October this year, Pol Sgt Tarntip Preak-kratok managed to skim off nearly 3 million baht in fines collected by the Nongkam Police Station, where she was employed as a desk…
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The final upshot
BANGKOK: Police arrested a 27-year-old man after he was caught taking photos up a girl’s skirt at a motor show at Central Plaza on Phra Ram III Rd last month. Worakarn Jaruphat was collared by security guards after “Amp”, a young woman taking part in the Miss Motorshow Contest, grabbed his wrist when she felt something touch her legs. When…
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The hunt for Beer
NATHON PATHOM: A gang of teenage thugs picked the wrong guy to attack and rob in the early hours of October 21. Their intended victim turned out to be an off-duty police officer with a loaded pistol. At 3:30 am, the four gang members were riding their motorbikes slowly along Rajamankha Rd in Nakhon Pathom municipality, waiting for a victim…
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Thief sparks investigation
BANGKOK : The remains of a would-be thief were found lying on the floor of a new home being constructed for Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and one Thailand’s wealthiest women. A construction worker arriving at the worksite on the morning of October 21 made the gruesome discovery near the back of the partly-constructed mansion, located on…
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A cut above
CHON BURI: An enraged woman in Chon Buri’s Banglamung District cut off her partner’s penis at about 2 am on October 18, the second such incident in a month in the same province. The victim, 24-year-old furniture shop employee Songram Yospanya, explained that his long-term partner Rungnapa Pongaree, 32, felt neglected after he took on a “minor wife”. It should…
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The demon seed
NONG KHAI: An elderly man turned himself in to Srivilai District police on the morning of September 4 and shocked officers by confessing to the August 20 murder of his own son. Kane Manorat, 70, left the monkhood after seven years to protect his family from his 38-year-old son Boonpeng, a glue-sniffing addict from the age of 15, whose sick…
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Cut and run
CHONBURI: In the latest incident involving a philandering lover, a jealous girlfriend and a sharp knife, a young man from Petchaboon province awoke on the morning of September 4 to find to find a very private part lying in a pool of blood on the floor next to his bed. The victim, identified as 20-year-old Amnart Pinkratok, was rushed to…
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A very rich diet
PHAYAO: Doctors performing emergency abdominal surgery were dumbfounded when they found more than two kilograms of coins and other objects inside the patient’s gut. Sanguan, 37, was taken to Phayao Hospital by relatives after complaining of severe stomach pain on August 31. Doctors knew something was amiss when they looked at X-ray images of Sanguan’s stomach – it looked like…
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The love that lasts
SUPHAN BURI: Love is sweeter the second time round for Suphan Buri newlyweds Sunthon Thanabutr, 74, and Sumrith Aom-aerm, 75. The love-struck third-agers, both of whom have been married and widowed, knew each other more than half a century before their chance meeting at an “Elders’ Day” event held at Wat Pho Takuan earlier this year. K. Sumrith said that,…
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Repellent behavior
CHERNG TALAY: A 17-year-old boy high on a cocktail of cola and crushed mosquito-repellent coils attacked a Buddhist nun with a meat cleaver in her quarters in the morning of August 19. The nun received 205 stitches for 16 wounds to her head and upper body and is said to be in a “worrisome” condition at Wachira Phuket Hospital. The…
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Crack worship
SUKHOTHAI: Villagers who discovered a long crack in a wall surrounding Khong Pong temple in Sri Samrong District believe it was made by an angry naga, or serpent-god. The crack was first noted on July 22, when pupils came to ask temple administrator Sawai Pradit why the 200-year-old temple had cracks resembling a serpent’s track around its exterior wall. Dumbfounded,…
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Death by aromatherapy
BANGKOK: A woman in Bang-wa District died of asphyxiation after turning her bathroom into a makeshift sauna and aromatherapy chamber in an attempt to shed unwanted flab. Tanakrit Kianthong, a grilled pork vendor, told police he returned home on July 3 to find his wife Pattaporn, 43, lying dead on the floor of the second-story bathroom of the couple’s three-story…
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Pig farmer’s matrimonial madness
SURAT THANI: A mentally disturbed pig farmer threatened to hang himself and his baby daughter from a flagpole if the police did not comply with his demands to be locked up in a prison cell for 18 months. It was later learned that the crazed man was desperate to find a retreat from his long-term lovers. The incident occurred just…
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Enraged jealousy of a jilted janitor
PATHUM THANI: On the morning of June 4, a group of secondary school teachers sat at some school desks chatting at the Suan Gularb Secondary School in Tambon Pheut-udom, as hundreds of students sat doing their work. The situation is common – and even passes for education – in countless government schools across the country. What wasn’t common was when…
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Great ball of fire!
KOH SIREH: When firefighters responded to a call from the 100-year-old Muslim community on Koh Sireh at about 4:30 on the morning of May 24, little did they know that they were about to witness a gaseous and ghostly apparition. It took city and provincial firefighting units about 30 minutes to extinguish the blaze at 12/24 Soi Si Sena and…
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Crapuccino, anyone?
THAILAND: Name any addictive drug and you will find users seeking ever-more efficient ways of getting it into their bloodstreams. The latest case is caffeine, the state-sanctioned stimulant found in coffee. Under the guise of “alternative medicine”, caffeine junkies are now taking coffee enemas. They claim that a good dose of java administered directly into the colon can have a…
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Dark times for black dogs
SRISAKET: Black dogs in Nongsimai Village 2 were slaughtered recently after a local shaman convinced villagers that soaking string in the blood of a black dog and wrapping it around their homes would offer protection from the dreaded phi porp – a female ghost that kills married men and eats their innards. After two village men died in mysterious circumstances,…
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The iceman cometh
NAKHON PATHOM: One of the primary targets in the Government’s war on drugs are dealers of ya bah (methamphetamine), one form of which is the highly addictive recrystalised form, known as “ice”. But if the tale told by a man in Nakorn Pathom’s Muang District is to be believed, dealers in ice made from water are now being targeted by…
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Beach blanket bingo
KARON: In an effort to find beer for himself and his new best friend from Burma, the transvestite cashier of a local bar broke into two mini-marts and helped himself. But, high as he was on the twin passions of beer and very close friendship, he left his address book on the beach among the empty beer bottles – allowing…
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Food fight
PHITSANULOK: They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but a housewife in Nernmaprang District wound up dead with a shotgun blast through her stomach – after serving her drunk husband a dinner that he deemed mai aroy (not delicious). The wife, 33-year-old Somtong Kamyuang of Tambon Chompoo Village 3, had prepared dinner for her husband…
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Sexist Grim Reaper
RAYONG: Residents of Village 7 of Tambon Baan Laeng, Muang District, held a Buddhist sadaokhro merit-making ceremony on March 11 to try to turn around a string of untimely deaths that has caused the number of male residents to plummet to the point where there are 141 males and 269 females. One might imagine that the surviving males might like…
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Chicken fallout
UDON THANI: As 58-year-old village headman Boonchu Srisingha was leaving his home in tambon Chiang Yuen on the morning of 27 January, he noticed a white plastic bag hanging from the fence surrounding his home. Intrigued, he looked closer and spotted a note attached to it that read, “Please give the contents of this bag to Mongkol Singhamaw, aged 28,…
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Cursed by spirits
BANGKOK: A man from Buri Ram province who went on a three-day drinking binge returned to his job in the capital with a terrible pain in his abdomen – which he apparently tried to cure by operating on himself. The man, identified as a 32-year-old Sanan Jodrum, having three days vacation, did what most low-paid laborers in Bangkok do: he…
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Instant death
KHON KAEN: There are plenty of coffee lovers in Thailand, but one itinerant sugarcane cutter from Khon Kaen took caffeine craving to new heights. Banjong Singhakul, 45, found that he could bypass the annoying process of mixing the stuff with hot water by simply munching down mouthfuls of instant coffee granules. Unfortunately, too much of anything is never a good…
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The horror of the morning after
PATHUM THANI: Some people may be familiar with the surprise of waking up on the morning of New Year’s Day to find an unexpected creature lying beside them in bed. Few, however, take the trouble to report such incidents to the police. Fewer still are the cases where police haul the offending bedmate off to jail. Pol Lt Col Sarawut…
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Not a ghost of a chance
THALANG: When police cremated an unidentified murder victim without first conducting a religious ceremony, their actions came back to haunt them – literally. Fishermen discovered the body in the waters off Ao Por on the morning of December 10 – and it was not a pretty sight. Pol Maj Anan Jingjit of the Thalang Police Station said that they could…
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A definite case of penis envy
NAKHON PATHOM: Phallic symbols have been worshiped by man since time immemorial, and in Nakhon Pathom’s Phra Phathom Chedi district lives one man who is doing his best to keep that tradition alive. Not only has he collected 300-400 wooden lingams, but he proudly wears 100 of them – all at once suspended – from a special belt strapped around…
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