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 History: Ancient air-con
PHUKET: Historic architecture is fascinating. Architecture surviving from a particular time in history can tell us a lot about that period. For example, the cultural influences of the period, the way people lived, their religious beliefs and a lot more. One of the most interesting aspects of historical architecture is the clever designs and features that are purposely built into…
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On The Menu: Very Versace
PHUKET: Versace is a name synonymous with quality and style and so it is with Le Versace restaurant lounge bar, which is perched high on the northern hills above Patong. This brand new venue officially opens next month, offering not only fine dining, but one of finest views of Patong available. Its not often I get to feel like a…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Giving thanks to the goddess of water
PHUKET: Thailand is beginning preparations for Loy Krathong tomorrow, one of the most colorful Thai festivals. It is a time to give thanks to the goddess of water and seek forgiveness for past misdeeds. The festival always occurs on the evening of the full moon of the 12th Thai lunar month which this year falls on November 28. Loy literally…
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Phuket Pets: The power of your pet’s senses
PHUKET: Dogs inherited keen senses from their wolf ancestors, and its these attributes that enable them to play such a massive role in our lives. With their phenomenal sense of smell, dogs are being used to sniff out illegal narcotics, explosives – even pirate DVDs. Their sight and hearing capabilities help to assist the blind or deaf live more independent…
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Phuket Property: Courting Phuket’s LGBT community
PHUKET: CC Bloom’s Hotel has been re-opened under the name ‘CC’s Hideaway’, a 42-room luxury full service hotel nestled in the hills overlooking the Andaman Sea in Karon, Phuket. CC’s Hideaway will be celebrating their grand re-opening party on Friday November 30, with an event called ‘Rise of the Phoenix Party’ featuring Ultra Nate from the USA, along with other…
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Phuket Property Watch: Finding the center of gravity
PHUKET: When I was in school, science classes usually just elicited a big yawn and most likely you’d find me ditching the enforced boredom for a smoke out back of the gym. Be it biology, physics or even branching out to those other affiliated headaches like algebra, calculus. My short breaks became afternoon off’s. Ferris Bueller only dabbled in this…
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Phuket Property: B1bn condominium in a prime location
PHUKET: The recently founded, Bangkok-based Able Asset developer group has announced plans to launch a billion baht, low-rise condominium project on a centrally-located parcel of prime Phuket real estate. Touted to be the biggest project of its kind on the island, the ‘Centrio’ condo will be developed on a plot that spans some 2,100 square meters, just opposite Central Festival…
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Phuket Books: A head-spinning adventure
PHUKET: So far, Colin Cotterill has written seven novels in the Dr Seri Series, which tell of the misadventures of the National Coroner of Laos who emerges from thirty years in the jungle with the Pathet Lao after their victory in 1975. Now he’s has switched to a new Jimm Juree series in modern day Thailand. Jimm Juree is a…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Drug addiction – Yassine’s cautionary tale
PHUKET: Morocco over the years has been romanticized by Hollywood and through the prose of numerous authors. It’s a place that conjures up images of bazaars, palaces and bustling market squares. But the vision of Morocco from those looking in, is a lot different to the one Yassine Darkaoui endured while looking out from the Northern city of Tangiers. Yassine…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Life Home Project preps for World AIDS Day
PHUKET: At the British International School (BIS), CAS students are making Christmas cards for Life Home Project, a Phuket-based charity that cares for mothers and children affected by HIV/ AIDS. CAS stands for ‘Creativity, Action, Service’ and is an integral part of the school’s IB program as CAS student Visnu Khanijou explained: “We are making the cards to help raise…
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Phuket Lifestyle: SKÃ…L members give up their shirts for charity
PHUKET: Phuket’s Skål club is planning some playful revelations at their gala charity fundraiser on Saturday, December 8, at Bliss Beach Club on Bang Tao beach. The Full Monty is the name of the event and yes, it means that some of the island’s most attractive hotel managers will be taking it all off to benefit both the club’s scholarship…
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Phuket Property Watch: The secret lives of wallflowers
PHUKET: A few days ago I fell off a cliff. Never mind the ominous sounding fiscal cliff that is now the global buzzword as we move into Obama Part 2. Hopefully the Pres can keep on walking the tightrope as he has deftly done for the past three years. Apparently Teflon doesn’t tarnish. My perilous downfall was much more surprising,…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Blazing Saddles
PHUKET: THE thought of cycling around Phuket probably enters most people’s minds about as frequently as wondering what it would be like to thrust a live cobra down the front of their underwear.However, cycling around Phuket is undoubtedly growing in popularity, despite the obvious challenges associated with the endeavor. On most days in the early dawn mist you’ll see phalanxes…
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Phuket Diving: Dive Bunny takes plunge
PHUKET: A lion fish is out in the open just over the sands of Kata Beach, but before a photo can be taken there is a sudden commotion. Dive instructor ‘Scuba Nick’, eyes wide-open, rips off his mask and reaches for his student’s regulator. Ex-British military, Nick is a big guy, with big hands going for the second stage of…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Watching the birds disappear
PHUKET: As we left Chao Fah Road and turned onto a dirt path, a truck carrying sand drove past, bobbing under its own heavy weight as it negotiated muddy potholes, made as a result of the recent heavy rainfall.“This sand is ‘pillaged’ from the lagoons around here,” says my nature photographer friend Rat, emphasizing the word ‘pillage’.We are here to…
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Thai Gallery: Charn Ditkajan
PHUKET: The young tattooing master, Charn Ditkajan, exudes an air of grace and calm authority. He has just performed a four-hour-long tattoo inscription for an Italian gentleman, but shows no sign of fatigue. “I silently chant mantras during the session to keep me focused and restore my energy,” he explains with a distinguished Supanburi accent known among Thais for its…
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Phuket Property: How to acquire Thai property
PHUKET: Separating emotional excitement from the need to impartially assess the risks of an important investment when purchasing a dream home is not easy. A real estate agent may have shown the purchaser glamorous photographs and conducted a personalized tour, so the desire to sign on the dotted line might impair the purchaser’s judgment. The real estate industry in Thailand,…
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Holiday Inn opens in Ao Nang
PHUKET: The Holiday Inn brand has arrived on the coastline of Krabi with the company taking over the 55-guestroom Sala Talay Resort and Spa on Ao Nang beach recently. “We are pleased to announce the initial phase of the opening of our first Holiday Inn property in this beautiful region of Krabi.” says Steve Ng, the general manager of the…
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Phuket Property Watch: Location, location, location
PHUKET: Reading the above headline you would have to believe that either I somehow suffered a momentary nervous breakdown, or else those three drinks before dinner were triple shots. Does the truth lay at the bottom of a glass, obscured from sight by the swirling ghost of a melting ice cube? Probably not. There isn’t much poetic license in real…
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Phuket Gardening: Adding yet more green to your living spaces
PHUKET: For years – five to be precise – I have kept about fifteen plants, potted in ceramic containers, on the patio outside my front door. The original idea came from my Thai partner who wanted “lucky plants” to grace and guard the entrance to the house. So we slowly acquired some of these talismans, mostly with unknown botanical names.…
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Phuket Humor: Death from the Ozone Layer
PHUKET: There’s a new theory about what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. It wasn’t a meteorite that wiped them out. It was their own farting. “The animals, weighing from 80 to 100 tons, would eat…between 130 and 260 kilos of food every day,” according to one report. “They would fart non-stop.” Their farts contained a high proportion of methane…
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Phuket Tech: A 3G auction in a 4G world
PHUKET: In last week’s Live Wire, I talked about the recent “3G auction,” wherein AIS, DTAC and TrueMove each acquired three of their own channels near the 2.1 GHz frequency, for delivering 3G services. The auction, plagued by delays, infighting, legal drama, bureaucratic wheel spinning, political machinations, and an unknown amount of tea changing hands, has finally brought legitimate HSPA/HSPA+…
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Phuket Property: Looking to expand in Asia
PHUKET: After an absence of two and a half years, Regent Hotels & Resorts is setting its sights on finding three properties to manage in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Hua Hin. The company currently manages a property in Phuket which is expected to open in December. Regent Phuket Cape Panwa offers 105 rooms and expects to keep 50 per cent…
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Phuket Property: Let it spin, spin, spin…
PHUKET: I’m in the midst of Sunday Bloody Sunday. Yes, the day journey to the crux has left me on the virtual edge of the cliff. There is no turning back. Is this jig up? Mastering the art of confusion takes practice. Jumping onto the turntable of life just keeps you returning back to the start all over again. This…
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Phuket Property: Sansiri to build the Base Uptown
PHUKET: Looking to build on the recent sell-out success of “The Base Downtown” condominium project in central Phuket, Sansiri recently unveiled their new “The Base Uptown” earlier this week. The ‘urban lifestyle’ condominium project will feature a total of 387 units in three buildings, each with seven floors. The project will span a five rai (8,000 square meters) plot adjacent…
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Phuket Gardening: The three o’clock flower
PHUKET: Today we consider two purple bloomers new to these columns. One, the Indian rhododendron (melastoma malabathricum), with flowers a glorious shade of deep magenta, was discovered by your correspondent in a garden center on Chao Fa West, south of Phuket Town, better known for its range of rustic stone. For a moment I wondered whether it was the same…
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Phuket Life: 100 US Navy service projects in Phuket
PHUKET: THE USS Peleliu returned to Phuket recently and conducted the US Navy’s 100th Community Service Project in the greater Phuket area. In June 2006, the Rotary Club of Patong approached the US Navy Attaché’s office in the US Embassy in Bangkok about doing community service projects together with the US Navy ships that visited Phuket for rest & relaxation.…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Charity golf drive to empower rural school
PHUKET: The Phuket Real Estate Association (P-REA) will hold a charity golf tournament on Saturday at the Phuket Country Club in Kathu to raise money to support Koh Mapraw School. A press conference was held by the P-REA on October 12 at Phuket Country Club where P-REA president Thanusak Phungdet told the gathered media about the objective of the ‘P-REA…
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Phuket Lifestyle: The race that stops a nation
PHUKET: Next month marks the 152nd anniversary of the ‘Race That Stops the Nation’ or, as it has more recently become known, ‘The Race That Stops Two Nations’, because Australia and New Zealand go into lock-down on the day of the famous Melbourne Cup. This year, you’ll have a chance to be part of the celebrations, when the Phuket International…
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Phuket Diving: Re-breather revolution
PHUKET: The pool is silent. Three divers, but not a sound. Then, right before our ascent, we flip the switch on our regulators to open-circuit. There is a roar of bubbles that destroys the silence – it’s inappropriate. Yet in reality, up until my recreational re-breather “Try Dive”, a cacophony of bubbles ballooning in my face was all I had…
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