Thai Life
Thailand guides, travel tips, cultural insights, and essential local information—discover everything you need to know about living, visiting, and experiencing the Land of Smiles. Get the latest from The Thaiger, your trusted source for Thailand guides.
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Phuket Property: CBRE achieves top-three ranking; In brief…
PHUKET: CBRE announced, on March 26, that the company has achieved top-three rankings in 25 categories across 13 countries in the Asia Pacific Property Awards in all real estate categories, in nearly every major market across the region from New Zealand to China. The Asia Pacific Property Awards are part of the long-established International Property Awards and its winners’ logo…
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Phuket Property: Shivalai shimmers above Kamala
PHUKET: The Shivalai Resort Condominiums and Private Luxury Pool Villas will be a new boutique development perched on a hillside overlooking Kamala and out to the sea. The eight stylish three-storey low rise condominium buildings will have only two units per floor and five luxurious private pool villas when construction is completed in 2014. The Phuket Gazette spoke to Jakkrit…
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Phuket Tech: Lock down your mobile devices
PHUKET: In New York City, the crime rate has been slowly, steadily decreasing every year for the past 15 years. Until last year. In 2012, there were 3,484 more major crimes reported than in 2011 – and 3,890 more thefts of iPhones and iPads. Stolen iPhones and iPads are reversing a long-standing decline in major crimes. The situation in Phuket…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Wake up and drop in
PHUKET: As the final hours of daylight waned in the sky, I pulled my rusty old BMW up to the ridge of a tin mine-turned-lake, home to Anthem Wake Park, across from Wat Manik in Cherng Talay. Pausing but for a moment to study the deep blue water, the lake was both tranquil and alive. However, this tranquil introduction was…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Miss Thailand World 2013
PHUKET: Twenty Miss Thailand World 2013 finalists recently spent three days promoting local tourism and preparing for the next phase of their competition at the Cape Panwa Hotel, Phuket. Kasemkij Hotels, which owns Cape Panwa, released a statement saying it was an honor to host the event and its activities that are designed to promote philanthropic endeavors, tourism and culture…
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Phuket Lifestyle: PIMEX is better than ever
PHUKET: The Phuket International Boat Show, fondly known by its acronym PIMEX, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year with a lineup of exhibitors, brands and products that are second to none, and which have made it Asia’s favorite maritime and lifestyle show. Phuket Governor, Maitri Inthusut, opened the event at the Royal Phuket Marina at 10:30am yesterday, and it…
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Phuket Diving: The short tale of longtails
PHUKET: The roar of a well-oiled second-hand car motor destroys any hope of silence, despite there not being a road or traversable land for kilometers around us. Originating in and still dominating the waterways of Southeast Asia, longtail boats are the most unique way to reach a dive site from Phuket and other Andaman areas. However, diving from a traditional…
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Phuket Gardening: Doctor’s delight – more cover-ups
PHUKET: This week opens the ‘last chance saloon’ door to a few more multicolored foliage shrubs. And in fact, two or three are consistent performers and might rightly feel miffed if not given a mention. Indeed one, sanchezia nobile, prompted an enthusiastic Floridian to write on the web as follows: “Does anybody know about this plant? I saw it here…
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Phuket Property: The Emerald Terrace stands out in Patong
PHUKET: The uniquely designed Emerald Terrace will cover 1.3 rai of land on a hillside in Patong. The 7-storey, low-rise condominium will have 133 units comprising 98 studios; 21 one-bedroom apartments – eight of which will have private rooftops – and six two-bedroom apartments with private roof tops. Owners can use the swimming pool or relax in the distinctive pod-shaped…
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Phuket Property Watch: Koh Samui puts on a game face
PHUKET: War is hell. While the opinion on developing tourism often ranges from heaven to hell or somewhere in-between those luxury hotel 400 thread count fine Egyptian bed sheets (as usual I can’t help but take a quick detour off into the realms of upscale bedding). Apparently there is an ongoing controversy over thread count linen and whether the claims…
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Princess Yachts prepare for Phuket’s international boat show
PHUKET: Boat Lagoon Yachting, the sole distributor of Princess Yachts SEA, is giving away a free yacht charter at the annual PIMEX boat show.Having served the boating community since 1995, the company is probably best known as the exclusive authorized dealer for prestigious Princess Yachts. Joining in the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Phuket International Marine Exhibition (PIMEX),…
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Phuket Property: More than half of Laguna Shores already reserved
PHUKET: Laguna Property, Phuket’s largest developer of high-quality resort residences, has started selling units in the third wing of its landmark Laguna Shores holiday apartment development. Almost 120 Laguna Shores units – more than 50 per cent of the total 229-unit building – have been reserved since its market debut on December 15, 2012. The stylish one- and two-bedroom apartments,…
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Phuket Gardening: Camouflaging and covering up
PHUKET: If you strolled round the average Phuket garden with the proud owner, he might be forgiven for protesting: “What, do you want yet more foliage plants!?” But remember that at this time of year, apparently evergreen trees and shrubs start to drop leaves in an attempt to conserve energy, and prevent excessive water loss through transpiration. Others simply give…
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Phuket International Boat Show to celebrate 10th Anniversary
PHUKET: Asia’s favorite boat show, the Phuket International Boat Show (PIMEX), celebrates its 10th Anniversary this year from 21 to 24 March at Royal Phuket Marina with a line-up of marine and lifestyle products second to none. Having grown from humble beginnings, PIMEX will host the region’s largest in-water display with a range of luxury power and sail boats ranging…
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Phuket Environment: The rime of the ancient mariner
PHUKET: At the end of the 18th Century, and just after the bloodbath of the French Revolution, Coleridge wrote a narrative poem called “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” A wonderful poem in its own right, it contains a pertinent lesson for our time. It chronicles how a sailor shot an albatross, a pervasive harbinger of good luck, thereby shattering…
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Phuket’s Sunday drivers
PHUKET: While many were having a Sunday lie-in on March 10, dozens of drivers, navigators and their families headed to Chalong for the Phuket Invitational Car Rally 2013. More a treasure hunt than a race, the annual rally took 45 cars over 153 kilometers of some of Phuket’s lesser known roads, sois and tracks including some secluded scenic routes seldom…
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Bamboozled by bamboo
PHUKET: A reader recently asked Normita Thongtham, who writes a Sunday gardening column for a national daily, if her earlier suggestion about making a living fence of bamboo “planted six to eight meters apart was a typographical error.” The writer’s answer was “no.” And the reason? Because bamboo (bambusa) grows very fast, and the space between the individual plants is…
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Phuket Health: Learning to love your body
PHUKET: This week we are diving straight into what most people often need to hear when they come and ask how to improve their lives – health and fitness. Your body is constantly in flux (just like life) and your health will always be subject to your lifestyle choices. Healthy, happy people do not necessarily have to be fit people…
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Phuket Diving: Sidemounting a revolution
PHUKET: “CLICK, click”… with both tanks unclipped and held in front of us it is possible to make our way through the small window of the little dive-boat wreck sitting at a depth of about 18 meters off the coast of Racha Yai, Phuket. Tanks still stretched out in front of him, Kevin from Kiwidiver pushes through the small window…
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Phuket Food: FroYo – The cool new trend in healthy snacks
PHUKET: The latest Korean craze to hit Thailand, after TV dramas and the Gangnam-style dance, is soft-serve frozen yoghurt, also known as “FroYo”. Opened recently in The 6th shopping mall in Patong (just across the road from Jungceylon and next to the White Tiger Bar), Bang Frozen Yoghurt offers a healthy alternative to traditional full-fat and sugared ice cream. “Although…
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Phuket People: Chanchai Doungjit
PHUKET: As the director of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) office in Phuket, Chanchai Doungjit needs no introduction. In a province where tourism is the main livelihood for most of the population and the industry’s marketing needs to be robust, the director is always in the media.Just before our interview, Chanchai had been in a weekly meeting with the…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Saddle sore; Meditate for charity
Saddle sore but satisfiedPHUKET: On January 28 local expat James Mason left Tiger Muay Thai camp in Chalong (one of his main sponsors) to cycle 890 kilometers to Rainbow House, a home for disabled or abandoned children, in Bangkok. James, who used to weigh 235 kilos, was given five years to live by a doctor in the UK until joining…
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Escape from Boracay
PHUKET: Timing is everything, and my recent sortie to the Philippines for island hopping was ill advised. I’m stuck in the middle of what they are politely calling a ‘tropical depression’, or what could eventually become a typhoon. The depression thing reminds me of Tony Soprano and his psychiatrist: “So how are you feeling today Tony?” Yesterday’s highlight was a…
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Phuket Legal: Property purchase in the name of a Thai company
PHUKET: In many cases, foreign investors wish to register a company in Thailand with an eye toward purchasing property in the name of that company to use for business purposes, or simply to use as the company’s registered office. Although it is commonly believed that a Thai company with foreign shareholders cannot purchase and own land, or that it’s very…
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Phuket Property: Centrio condominium to be launched in town
PHUKET: Property developer, Able Asset Co Ltd are excited about their upcoming development in Phuket Town, Centrio, a condominium to be built on 2,100 square meters of land close to Central Festival, comprising three eight-storey buildings with a total of 504 units. Kasidit Manopinives, managing director of Able Asset Co Ltd, spoke to the Phuket Gazette about Centrio and his…
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Phuket Entertainment: Stumble into the Walking Dead
PHUKET: If you haven’t seen the Walking Dead, let’s have a short recap – for you ‘dead heads’ out there – sit tight, we’ll be with you in a minute. Based on a comic book series of the same name, the Walking Dead is an American television drama about a small group of survivors searching for shelter in an inhospitable…
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Phuket Books: So it is with San Miguel
PHUKET: Anything by T Corahessan Boyle is worth reading. His first two novels – Water Music, about two African expeditions up the Niger by 18th century Scottish explorer Mungo Park, and Budding Prospects, about modern day marijuana growers in northern California – rank among the two funniest novels ever written in English – are wildly exuberant dances of demonic prose.…
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Phuket History: A journey from Aceh to Lipe
PHUKET: The Adang-Rawi archipelago is situated in the Andaman Sea, just 50 kilometers from mainland Satun province. The archipelago consists of more than sixty islands, of which Adang, Rawi, Lipe and Tarutao are the largest. The group of islands was designated as a marine national park in 1974. Today the pristine islands offer some of the finest beaches and dive…
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Phuket Property: Como at Yamu
PHUKET: COMO Hotels and Resorts, the award-winning five-star hotel group based in Singapore, is to develop and manage a new property on the Yamu peninsula of Phuket. This property is the tenth member of the COMO family of unique destinations and is scheduled to open in November this year. Point Yamu offers 109 rooms, including 30 private villas, with panoramic…
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Phuket Property: Express your inner self
PHUKET: Holiday Inn Express has opened its first property on Phuket, providing savvy leisure travelers with affordable comfort in a prime central location. The Holiday Inn Express Phuket Patong Beach Central has all the characteristics that guests expect of the trusted global brand.The 277-room hotel defines “smart travel” by combining comfort and convenience with proximity and price. Only a few…
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