Northern Thailand News
Northern Thailand news, Chiang Mai news, business, tourism, and culture—stay updated with breaking stories, local events, and travel insights from Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Pai, and beyond. Get the latest from The Thaiger, your trusted Northern Thailand news source.
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Sponsored How to reduce out-of-pocket medical expenses in Thailand?
Managing medical expenses in Thailand is important as healthcare costs continue to rise. The country’s healthcare system includes both public and private options, but even with the Universal Coverage Scheme (UCS) for citizens, many still face high out-of-pocket medical expenses....
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Mother & daughter rescued from drowning at Khon Kaen Airport
A mother and daughter were rescued after accidentally driving a car into a flooded underground car park at Khon Kaen Airport in Isaan province of Thailand. A Facebook page, พระจันทร์ ลายกระต่าย V2 (The Rabbit on the Moon V2) posted pictures of a white sedan dripping in water with the caption, “Khon Kaen Airport.” The page didn’t explain the details of…
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Soggy pizza and long hours of waiting – 4 years since the Tham Luang cave rescue
“There were times when kilometres underground standing in waist-deep water, we’d be eating a piece of soft pizza in a break… two guys from different countries, different cultures.” Four years ago, yesterday, the last group of four football players from the Chiang Rai Mu Pa (Wild Boar) team were brought out of the Tham Luang Caves. It took three days,…
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Petrified tree in Tak certified as Guinness World Record largest
Ah, Thailand: famous for its tropical beaches, delicious food, wild nightlife, and… giant wood? Thailand recently gained a Guinness World Record after unearthing the longest petrified tree trunk log ever found anywhere in the world. The world record was verified on Friday in Tak, a Northern province of Thailand lying on the Burmese border. The gigantic fossilised log was measured…
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Thai man appeals to robbers to stop as he has nothing left
A Thai man today appealed to thieves to stop robbing him after declaring he has nothing left to steal. Niphon Muangkram’s home in the northeastern province of Khon Kaen has been robbed 6 times in 3 months with 40,000 baht of valuables taken. One of the ironies of all this is that his home is only 1 kilometre away from…
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Chiang Rai police arrested for taking huge bribe from Chinese porn gang
Another day, another story involving Thai police taking bribes, this time in Chiang Rai. According to deputy police commissioner Surachate Hakpan, a.k.a ‘Big Joke,’ 4 officers in the northern province took a 1 million baht bribe from a Chinese gang filming live pornography at 2 resorts. One of the officers had searched the gang’s filming spot on March 31. He…
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Storm rips apart villages in Northeast Thailand
Communities in Northeast Thailand are the latest to bear the brunt of the country’s monsoon season. Rain plundered 3 villages in Nakhon Ratchasima province last night, damaging 48 houses and several crops. Non Sung district officials have now warned villagers to make sure that their houses’ roofs and structures can endure rough weather. Northeast Thailand is the country’s poorest region.…
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60% of new HIV cases in a northern Thai province are from high school students
Healthcare workers from the northern province of Phitsanulok claim they discover 2 HIV cases every hour, and that 60% of HIV cases in that area are found in high school students. The statement was made yesterday at a healthcare meeting to discuss the silent danger of HIV at the Crystal Conference Room of The Park Hotel, Phitsanulok. The conference was…
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Northeast Thailand teacher’s ex stabs her to death in classroom
The ex-husband of a Northeast Thailand teacher has stabbed her to death today in a classroom of the school where she taught. The ex-husband, ‘Bo’, had reportedly threatened to kill his ex-wife 3 days ago. The couple split up after she caught him cheating. Today, Bo drove up to the school in Surin province and asked a security guard where…
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UPDATE #2: Lithuanian man allegedly murders trans woman in northeast Thailand
UPDATE #2: Police have caught and arrested the man suspected of murdering a trans woman in Surin 3 weeks ago. Police revealed that the 32 year old man, Malleus Kunickas, is in fact of Lithuanian nationality, and not Russian as thought by the deceased’s family and widely reported in Thai media. Wandee, the deceased’s mother, previously said her daughter’s phone…
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Russian man allegedly murders trans woman in northeast Thailand
Yesterday, a mother in the northeastern province of Surin discovered the rotting body of her 31 year old daughter – a trans woman named Thiraphong – wrapped inside a blanket in a storage room behind their family home. The mother suspects her daughter’s Russian boyfriend, who disappeared a few weeks ago, murdered her daughter. Police say they estimate that the…
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Woman gets justice after washing her laundry in public
A woman’s appeal for justice through social media has been successful after she was beaten by a member of the local authority in the La Haan Sai district of the Isaan province of Buriram. Wichuda told the media that she was assaulted by a member of Buriram’s Subdistrict Administrative Organization because she complained about the plumbing. The 27 year old…
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Thai OnlyFans couple who turned holiday resort into a porn shoot wanted by police
Police are looking for a Thai OnlyFans couple who turned the popular holiday resort of Wang Nam Khiao into a porn shoot setting. Three of the couple’s sex tapes were circulated online yesterday in secret group chats in the popular Thai Line application. The videos, which soon went viral, feature the couple having sex in a resort room with a…
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Mae Sot district proposed as site of Thailand’s 1st official casino
An Entertainment Complex Committee, set up by the government, has proposed Mae Sot district in the northern province of Tak as an ideal location for Thailand’s first legal entertainment complex, with a casino. The committee has announced that they’ve gathered all information from their survey, both negative and positive, and is ready to submit the findings to the Thai cabinet.…
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Famous Thai cyclist killed in road accident in Thailand
Famous Thai cyclist Nirantra Phramthong was killed yesterday in a road accident in the northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima. The 53 year old was struck by a 10-wheel truck at 8.10am at the construction site of an elevated road junction on the special highway linking Bang Pa In with Nakhon Ratchasima and died instantly. The 41 year old truck driver,…
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Northeast Thai man shoots and kills ex-wife, and himself, after she refuses to re-unite
A man in Northeast Thailand has shot and killed his ex-wife after she refused to go back to him. The man, 35 year old soldier Akkhaphon Phonphan, shot his ex-wife, 34 year old nurse Naphaporn Nakkiew, at Khon Kaen Hospital in the early hours of this morning, before turning the gun on himself. According to Khon Kaen city police, Naphaporn’s…
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Former police inspector in North Thailand scammed, loses retirement funds
A scam gang, pretending to be police, have tricked a former police inspector in North Thailand into handing over all of his retirement money, totalling 1.8 million baht. The former inspector, who lives in Lampang province, said the scammers called him on June 1, claiming to be from the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission. The scammers told the former inspector…
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Police investigate blast in Northeast Thailand that killed lecturer
Police in Northeast Thailand are investigating a blast that tragically killed a university lecturer in Sakhon Nakhon province’s city district on Friday. Police say the lecturer, 41 year old Pichai Srimanta, was killed when doing a research project to extract oil from plastic waste at a garbage dump, where the explosion happened. A worker who witnessed the tragedy said the extraction…
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Man accidentally shoots himself in the mouth in northeast Thailand
A man has accidentally shot and killed himself while loading gunpowder into his cap gun at a rubber plantation in Roi Et province, northeast Thailand, yesterday evening. Police suspect he was holding the trigger end of the gun with his toes and blowing gunpowder into the barrel with his mouth when he must have accidentally pulled the trigger. The man’s…
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Soldiers in Chiang Rai shoot and kill 8 drug suspects who reportedly opened fire
Soldiers in Thailand’s northern province of Chiang Rai have shot and killed 8 suspects who reportedly opened fire on them along the Thai-Burmese border last night. The soldiers had been warned that a gang would try to smuggle drugs from Myanmar, according to Thai media. They then went to patrol the border area in Mae Fa Luang district. Later, they…
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Gambling suspects arrested at northeast Thailand resort
Police arrested 18 gambling suspects at a resort in Thailand’s northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima yesterday. The suspects reportedly used all 10 rooms of the Lake Pine resort to operate 2 gambling websites. Officers seized 10 desktop computers, 5 notebook computers, 30 mobile phones, and 12 bank account books, according to Police Colonel Wiwat Jitsophakul from the Crime Suppression Division.…
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Thai cult’s food products tested – feces, bacteria and mould detected
An update on the hidden cult commune in the Isaan province of Chaiyaphum… Local health authorities found the cult was operating a food businesses and seized all of the products for further investigation. The test results showed that the food samples from the group contained excessive amounts of mould, Coliform and bacteria, usually found in feces. At the start of…
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Flooding situation worsening in Chiang Rai, waters recede in Chiang Mai
The flooding situation in easing in the northern province of Chiang Mai, but getting worse in neighbouring Chiang Rai. That’s according to a Thai PBS World report, which says the levels in several Chiang Rai waterways have been rising steadily since yesterday, as a result of heavy rain on Saturday. The Chan River has burst its banks in Chiang Rai’s…
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Man in northeast Thailand stabs wife on train
A man in northeast Thailand stabbed his wife on a train yesterday, after suspecting she was romantically involved with another man. Police said the woman, 31 year old Ratchanok Yimsa-ngob, had decided to go and live with her grandmother in a different district of Nakhon Ratchasima, and the couple was headed there on the train. Along the trip, Ratchanok and…
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Thai Bitcoin miner arrested for tapping into free electricity for 6 months
A Thai man in the northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima has been arrested after being caught using free electricity for the past 6 months. He was Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin mining consumes roughly 0.5% of all energy consumption worldwide. That’s roughly 7 times more than Google’s total energy consumption per year – Business Insider The officer from Nakhon Ratchasima’s Provincial Electricity Authority,…
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Health and safety a priority as kids return to Bangkok schools after two turbulent years
The Thailand Ministry of Education yesterday allowed schools to reopen their doors for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the nation in 2020 in line with the government’s transition to living with Covid as an endemic disease. Some children celebrated their return to school in style in Tak province, northern Thailand, taxied in by elephants, as reported in…
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Students ride elephants to school in northern Thailand
Some might take a bus, others ride their bike, some will walk. But some Thai kids arrived at school via elephant this morning in Tak province, northern Thailand. Today was the first day of nationwide on-site classes in Thai schools after almost two years of online, remote studying. To mark the occasion, parents from Baan Ya Por School in Phob…
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6 million baht worth of gold stolen in Northern Thailand
Police are on the lookout for an armed robber who fled the crime scene with nearly 6 million baht worth of gold from a Big C Supermarket in Tak, Northern Thailand, on Sunday. The robber burst into the popular superstore, withdrew a handgun, demanded cash and several trays of gold jewelry, before making his escape on a white Yamaha motorbike…
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Chiang Rai businessman gives away cash with a mini treasure hunt
A man in the northern province of Chiang Rai has been giving away money to locals in a make-shift mini treasure hunt. He’s posted videos on TikTok to show people where he has hidden the money, allowing locals to figure out the clues and find the money. He told Thai media that he wanted to help people and encourage tourists…
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UPDATE: Authorities find Isaan cult also selling food and snacks online
Following the report on the raid of the hidden cult compound in the Isaan province Chaiyaphum last week, authorities visited the make-shift for a second time and found they were also operating a semi-commercial food business to make a living. The ‘cult’ distributes food products like chilli paste, fermented fish and snacks but without registration with the Food and Drug Administration,…
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Police expand investigation into 11 bodies found at Isaan temple cult
Police are widening their investigation into a cult at a temple in north-eastern Thailand, where 11 bodies were kept. According to a Bangkok Post report, the bodies were discovered during a raid on the temple in the Khon San district of Chaiyaphum province. A 75-year-old man, named as Tawee Nanra, and allegedly the cult leader, has been arrested. Bail was…
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