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 Life: Daunting decisions
PHUKET: Choosing your child’s school might be one of the most daunting decisions you ever have to make. It might even be harder when living abroad, as educational standards that are common back home may not be supported in the new county you’re living in. The first rather difficult point you have to consider is where your child will study,…
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First Person: The merit in being an organ donor
PHUKET: Many Thai people who believe in reincarnation think that donating an organ after death may affect their body in the next life, such as being reborn without the organ they donated.Making merit is a good thing, but to help to extend other people’s lives is the biggest merit of all. Take my life, for example.I was 20 years old…
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Thai Gallery – Dr Wiwat Seetamanotch
PHUKET: DR Wiwat Seetamanotch has a quick analytical mind, matched only by his quick actions. He hardly ever leaves things undone and there seems to be no ‘pending’ tray on his office desk. Perhaps this explains why crisis management appeals to him, and why, in terms of personality at least, he appears to be the best man for the job.…
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Phuket Comedy: Laugh away the low season blues
PHUKET: Stand-up comedy comes back to the island this Wednesday when three star comedians take to the stage at the Holiday Inn Resort Patong for a night of fun. Hailing from Canada, the UK and Scotland, respectively, Paul Myrehaug, Jeremy O’Donnell and Brian Higgins are currently touring Asia, performing not only in Phuket, but also Hong Kong, Shanghai and Bangkok.…
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Phuket Gardening: The last of the red brigade
PHUKET: It is always exciting to discover a new plant. I recently chanced on a shrub with fine, arching, broom-like leaves, and masses of tiny but brilliant red tubular flowers. Its name? Russelia equisetiformis. Despite the tongue-twisting botanical label, this is not a shrub that draws attention to itself and, in any case, it is not common in Phuket. Maybe…
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Phuket Life: Given the chance of his young life
PHUKET: Imagine that you are thirteen years old and school just isn’t your thing. Your mother lives with her new boyfriend in another province and you’ve been in trouble quite a bit lately – understandably so. Now imagine that amidst this unstable period of your early life, someone offers you the chance that many poor Thai boys dream of –…
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Phuket Health: The truth about dengue fever
PHUKET: A prominent Phuket doctor has warned residents to protect themselves from dengue fever, also known as “break-bone fever”, by removing all sources of stagnant water from around their homes and minimizing exposure to mosquito bites. According to the US Center for Disease Control (CDC), dengue (pronounced den’ gee) is caused by any one of four closely related dengue viruses.…
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Phuket Property: Quality homes in a nice part of town
PHUKET: On the verge of closing sales for Eva Town Suan Luang, a city-park housing project in the heart of Phuket Town, Eva Group is taking reservations for the last 10 units.Sales for the 250 million baht housing development opened in December last year. With the project now 85% sold out, the developer doesn’t think it will be long before…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Going, going, gone
PHUKET: World Environmental Day, which was on June 5, has a special meaning for Phuket-based photographer Chusak Uthaipanumas. Twenty years ago, on this day, he received an accolade at the quadrennial photo contest on the environment organized by United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). The photographer traveled to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, to attend the UNEP award ceremony. It was…
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Phuket Life: Operating Phuket’s new incinerator
PHUKET: After a long wait, with a few false starts, the second trash incinerator at the Saphan Hin waste management facility became fully operational recently. The incinerator, which was expected to be fully operational during May, encountered technical problems during its trial run and repairs needed to be carried out. The timing was unfortunate. At the same time, the older…
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Phuket Lifestyle: C’mon light my fire
PHUKET: The smell of gasoline lingers on your hands after the flames have been extinguished, and the performance is over. But the smell itself is a little addictive, like a woman’s perfume on the pillow of an empty bed – a reminder of a past flame. A very talented busker (street performer) once took me aside and gave me a…
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Phuket Dining: The other Kiwi juice
PHUKET: Rain squalls, flooding and high winds put a bit of a damper on the recent Steve Bennett MW New Zealand wine dinner held at the Holiday Inn, Patong Beach, but having heard many good reports about this form of Kiwi juice I brave the elements and turn up on time. granita is served to cleanse the palate and I…
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Phuket Diving: Camera rolling, regulator in
PHUKET: Toweled dry and eating a pile of pancakes on Andaman Ocean Safaris’ boat, my dive buddy and I head to the upper cabin with lackluster enthusiasm to watch the video from the day’s dive. I had seen these sorts of videos before. They usually came off as gimmicky and, let’s be honest, I had just been on the dive…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Going to print
PHUKET: The hottest style of trend in pattern design this year is undoubtedly tribal. Last year saw an explosion of African-inspired prints hit runways and major stores and the trend has continued. In 2012, prints have trickled down to the masses and evolved to feature Aztec and Southwestern Native American designs.When wearing a tribal print, your look is instantly trendy.…
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Phuket Lifestyle: From Phuket teacher to London 2012
PHUKET: English judo competitor Sophie Cox has five weeks left until her fight to become Olympic champ – seven years after retiring to Phuket to become a teacher. Sophie,30, broke the news of her Team GB selection as the under 52-kilogram competitor on Twitter recently, with her official team selection announced by the British Olympic Association on June 16. She…
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Phuket Gardening: Our sunny reminders
PHUKET: Typhoon force winds, teeming torrents of rain, roads like lakes, uprooted trees and fractured boughs – hardly the conventional image of a “Land of Smiles” burnished by tropical sunshine beaming from azure heavens. Leaden skies, accompanied by profound gloom suggest that something much more ominously potent than Venus has blotted out the sun. Despite the meteorological office’s pronouncement that…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Low season diving
PHUKET: As I watched my first rainy season blow in over the Andaman Sea in frightful gusts, I assumed it was time to pack up my dive gear and head over to Kata Beach with a longboard. However, I wasn’t ready to throw the flippers overboard completely, because unlike Khao Lak, Phuket dive companies do run low season trips daily,…
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Phuket comedy: Laughter never rains, it pours
PHUKET: With Phuket’s wet and rainy season now truly here the Punchline Comedy team has decided to give comedy lovers a reason to rejoice with another hilarious night, planned for June 27.Three top stand-up comedians will head to the Holiday Inn Resort, Patong Beach to bring the mirth back.The event will be compered by comedian, writer and presenter Jeremy O’Donnell,…
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Phuket gardening: What’s in a name?
PHUKET: Plants can have bizarre common names, but these names remain in use precisely because they are memorable and refer to a plant’s visible features. Clitoria ternatea (even the botanical name is – well – suggestive) is called the butterfly pea. Quesonia has a tall, triangular crown of flowers which gives it the somewhat cryptic label of pagoda plant. Other…
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Phuket books: Boring obsession with rock genius
PHUKET: In my recent review of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, I lamented the dearth of novels about rock musicians. Now along comes the even more recent Stone Arabia (Scribner, New York, 230pp, 2011) by Dana Spiotta. But this is in a every way an inferior book: both shorter and more conventional. Egan tackled plot – time…
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Phuket Life: In praise of the bag lady
PHUKET: Cast your mind back to any freezing night in New York or London. One of the memories that will likely haunt your conscience is the image of a pathetic human bundle of rags, covered by a frayed blanket or a flattened cardboard box, in a desperate attempt to keep out the biting cold. Her face, if you can see…
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Phuket life: Paintographer Gerard Garson
PHUKET: Gerard Garson is a French photographer, now based in Phuket, who always wanted to be a painter and through his use of High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging he has managed to do both. He calls himself a paintographer and signs his work ‘Gast Garger’. Gerard’s passion for photography started in1977, when he was a student working for the photographic…
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Phuket lifestyle: In a league of their own
PHUKET: There’s a restaurant experience in Kathu that is uncannily like dining in someone’s front room; largely because it is in someone’s front room. The restaurant in question is Royale Nam Tok (RNT) hosted by Corry Ringoet and Marc De Schriyver, (a Belgian partnership) who, after having enjoyed 20 years of success operating their Antwerp restaurant, De Tafeljoncker moved lock,…
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Phuket lifestyle: Branching out with colorful nudibranchs
PHUKET: Perhaps it’s embarrassing, but I first got involved in diving because of the lure of the unknown treasures, which I “knew” were lying at my feet, just below the surface. I wanted to discover statues, gold, porcelain, all those precious and valuable objects that were lost to humanity. However, a couple archaeological ethics classes and museum practicum courses managed…
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Andaman manta rays take flight
PHUKET: Dive companies like Sea Bees can guarantee a lot of aspects of their trips. They can guarantee a high-quality breakfast, good equipment and knowledgeable staff, but what they cannot guarantee are those precious and glorious sightings of roaming mega-fauna, like manta rays.Every diver last week may have spotted the sweeping black wings of a manta ray in the distance…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Kata Reef’s beauty under threat
PHUKET: Geared up without letting a tank touch the pavement, four of us waddle across the hot sand of Kata Beach to take a peek at the beautiful and “at high risk” reef-system just offshore. Only a couple weeks ago Niphon Pongsuwan, a coral expert, warned Phuket that the amount of coastal development on the island would accelerate the sedimentation…
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Phuket Health: The doctor will see you now
PHUKET: With the Phuket Health and Fitness Festival set to kick off this weekend, keynote speaker Dr John Hinwood stopped by the Phuket Gazette’s TV studios for an interview with organizer Michael Massey, a driving force behind the Rawai – Nai Harn Group who are hosting the event. Dr Hinwood says that he will focus on the mindset necessary to…
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Blooming jellyfish stay for safety-stop
PHUKET: Directly in front of my mask, as we hang on the mooring line for our safety-stop, is a small jellyfish (jellies or sea jellies depending on your concern about the misnomer), not a box jellyfish or an infamous jelly-like Portuguese man-o-war washed up from Australia, just a little ambiguous jellyfish. Then through the bubbling of our regulators comes the…
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Phuket Lifestyle: It’s all go for Hugo
PHUKET: It’s Saturday night at the Hard Rock Cafe in Patong and a young man steps out onto the stage armed with his trademark stetson hat, a Gibson guitar, a new band and some sultry killer tracks from his first solo album. On March 24 Hugo was back home in Thailand and performing for the first time here since 2005.…
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Phuket Lifestyle: This year’s top trends
PHUKET: The transformation of the tuxedo into women’s apparel is a bold new take on a classic look. Fortunately, you don’t actually have to wear a tuxedo just because you’re inspired by its sophistication. Instead, try taking bits and pieces of it to establish your own style. A structured jacket or waistcoat in black velvet or cream satin can add…
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