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 Food: Chalong’s Rimtang
PHUKET: The first thing you notice when walking into Rimtang@Chalong, Phuket, is its smart ambiance. Past the intricately carved wooden door, is a light and airy space, tastefully decorated with Thai objet d’art and minimalist furniture. Tall glass windows invite in the surrounding flower garden and the tantalizing views of Wat Chalong beyond. Talking to the staff, we learn that…
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Phuket Punchline Comedy: Sit down for stand-up
PHUKET: Seasoned stand-up comedians Eddy Brimson, Mickey Hutton and Marcus Ryan are in town for one night of no-holds barred, stand-up comedy at the Holiday Inn, Patong on Wednesday, October 24 at 8pm. This latest onslaught of close-to-the-funny-bone humor features the very best of the UK comedy circuit, namely: Mickey HuttonNewcastle-born comedian Mickey Hutton has performed all over the world…
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Phuket Gardening: An annual event
PHUKET: It’s been about a year since we talked about annuals. So that’s my excuse for returning to them today. The reason annuals don’t get much exposure in these columns is because they only exist for one year and will, like Wimbledon, make their statement – a floral one in this case – just once during that time. Shrubs, on…
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Phuket Property: An alternative holiday choice
PHUKET: Kanita Resort & Camping is a family-run agricultural resort on the Karon hillside. The property started out as a resort with bungalows, but over time it has evolved into a unique project with various accommodation options and activities. Resort owner Satchaphol Thongsom and his wife Kanita explain how the project started: “At first we bought 10 rai (16,000 sqm)…
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Phuket Tech: Please play fair
PHUKET: The competitive business world can easily be compared to elite sports. In both, the stakes for winning or losing are extremely high, with people being stretched to constantly deliver their best results. At sports events, ethical behavior and values such as respect, honor and sportsmanship, get utmost importance. Cheating is not tolerated in world-class sports. And, in exactly the…
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Phuket Property: Where have the artists gone?
PHUKET: It’s hard to trace back exactly how Phuket came onto the global stage as a leading beach destination. These days the campfires of old gather round the internet, and storytelling is an arcane memory. While I hear some catcalls from the cheap seats way out back about how the island is finished, and its impending doom signed, sealed and…
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Phuket Gardening: Books on tropical gardening
PHUKET: Much of the knowledge one acquires about plants is learnt in the acid-bath of experience. And certainly there is no substitute for hands-on gardening. How often we find ourselves puzzled by the advice we find in books by so-called “experts”. Nonetheless, we often do need to check things – names, cultural requirements, growing habits and so on. And different…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Property expo offers luxury…. and a helicopter ride
PHUKET: Fancy an opportunity to test drive a super car? Or go for a ride in a private helicopter? Or how about enjoying a cruise on a marquee yacht such as the 80-foot Emily Rose? These possibilities and much more will grace Phuket when the all new SMART Property and Lifestyle Expo takes place at Royal Phuket Marina, December 27-30.…
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Phuket Lifestyle: The island’s own daredevil
PHUKET: Sometimes Phuket is compared to the Wild West, and, although a bit dramatic, it can be true. You never know what can happen here, or who you might find doing it. The island has a tendency to draw extraordinary individuals. Quiet neighborhoods overlooking the ocean that house the secretly rich and famous. You might meet the person who invented…
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Phuket Tech: Travel apps; Tech tips on start-up
PHUKET: We all take our mobile phones with us when we travel to far away destinations like Phuket, be it for business or relaxation. The costs of international roaming can become truly exorbitant; however, the explosion in phone apps, either free or with nominal download charges, could provide the solution. Most will require an internet connection, though “free WiFi” is…
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Phuket’s divers speak, the world listens
PHUKET: PADI dive professionals, from dive master to instructor examiner, united and made Phuket’s reefs their number one priority by taking part in Go Eco Phuket’s record breaking reef cleanup. Tasked with bringing up the bigger debris and the 4.5 ton net in Banana Bay those on board Khao Lak Scuba Adventures Manta Queen III were obviously excited about the…
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Phuket Property: The island’s very own superhero
PHUKET: Growing up, I never quite got into comic book superheros. Sure there was superman, Batman and Robin, The Flash and frankly more than I could list in an entire column. I preferred reading books or watching those old black and white classic movies to all that ‘slam bam thank you ma’am’. Hollywood got hold of the trend and even…
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Phuket Environment: Jellyfish are back in the spotlight
PHUKET: A piece published recently in a London daily newspaper may have created some unnecessary alarm in Phuket. The story concerned a British tourist who apparently fell overboard while on a boat in Thailand. She was so severely stung by jellyfish that she ended up in hospital with the equivalent of third degree burns, not only excruciatingly painful but which…
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Phuket Books: Peace Corps Redux
PHUKET: What to make of Paul Theroux? He has written 19 novels and 15 travel books. His traveling persona and fictional characters both share a certain mean-spirited crustiness. But, his latest novel The Lower River (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, New York, 2012, 323pp) is written close to the heart. Like Paul Theroux, the narrator Ellis Hock had been a Peace…
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Phuket Gardening: Having it both ways
PHUKET: I am aware that it may sound heinous, but having given the matter some thought, I don’t believe the tropical gardener should be too preoccupied with the hazards of poisonous plants. After all, only a few, such as the lantana, have toxic berries or fruit.Take the allamanda cathartica or ban burii. One of the best of all tropical climbing…
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Phuket Lifestyle: It’s fun to eat at the ACYC
PHUKET: Sunday is a day when many of us generally have a lie-in, followed by a lazy morning pottering around the house, until thoughts turn to lunch. Dreamy thoughts of a traditional Sunday lunch… you know, the ones we used to have ‘back home’, with roasted meat, potatoes, peas, gravy and all the trimmings. But it’s already late Sunday morning,…
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Land of smiles: Recapping the conventions
PHUKET: Here are some highlights of the recent US political conventions for readers who may have missed them on TV: The main thrust of the Republican convention was to emphasize Mitt Romney’s warm humanity. Mitt reminds people of one of those wooden statues of American Indians that used to stand outside cigar stores. To humanize him, they brought out his…
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Phuket Property: Condominium law since 2008
PHUKET: In a move to address numerous complaints from condominium buyers, the Thai government enacted the Condominium Act No 4 (2008), which significantly expanded the scope of consumer protection by amending several provisions of the original Condominium Act made thirty years previously. The original Act has been amended three times in attempts to keep the law up to date with…
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Phuket Business: Tune in, turn on, pass out
PHUKET: Complementing the recent opening of the Tune Hotel Asoke in Bangkok, Phuket is looking to welcome its own premium yet low-cost, frills-optional hotel, to open in Patong in December. Owned and operated under a franchise agreement by Red Planet Hotels, the growing Tune brand presence in Thailand expands on existing branches in Haad Yai and Pattaya. Tune Hotels is…
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Phuket Diving: Knowledge trumps beauty of ignorance
PHUKET: A brilliantly colored mantis shrimp (stomatopoda) pops out of its burrow and scurries towards a broken piece of coral. Its legs spin out below it like the Road Runner – but it’s not that fast, at least its legs aren’t. We kneel in the sand to watch the biological wonder. It looks almost comical as it arches its head…
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Go-Eco Phuket takes on the ocean’s silent killer
PHUKET: Rubbish. It is ugly; it costs local communities and economies; and it destroys wildlife. Every year tens of thousands of marine creatures, mammals and birds die because of the litter we drop or the fishing nets we abandon and lose at sea. If you are fed up with seeing your local dive site trashed, or rubbish left on Phuket…
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Phuket Gardening: Red for danger
PHUKET: Today’s piece was intended to focus on shrubs, beautiful and not armored, but still unlikely to find a place in a garden frequented by children due to their poisonous qualities. But, another small tree has temporarily upstaged them. I was on a trip around Phuket, and ended up, literally, in a small soi which, as they often do, terminated…
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Phuket Property: Land art made from the heart
PHUKET: Phuket has participated in a project entitled ‘The King’s Land Art Project’ using Niwet Silpa, or ‘Land Art’ inspired by nine different national artists and erected in nine provinces around Thailand. Each of the nine designs across the Kingdom represent His Majesty’s talents and projects and range in size from four to 20 rai. The Phuket project was taken…
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Phuket Property: GM Christoph Berger stays with Outrigger
PHUKET: Outrigger Hotels and Resorts Asia-Pacific, who announced in July an agreement to buy the Phuket Beach Resort in Laguna, has retained Mr Christoph Berger as the General Manager of the Phuket resort. The beach front property is scheduled to reopen it’s doors on April 1, 2013. When it reopens, the new Outrigger Phuket Beach Resort will include a spa,…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Authentic Kopi
PHUKET: If you happen to be in downtown Phuket and want a respite from the heat and a quick bite with refreshing drinks, you’d do no better than dropping at Kopi de Phuket on Phuket Road. Kopi, a Hokkien Chinese term derived from the English word “coffee,” is used up and down the Malay Peninsular to mean either coffee or…
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Land of smiles: Ye olde Curmudgeon’s imaginary interview
PHUKET: In the wake of the recent Republican convention, I thought I’d do an imaginary interview with US presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Imaginary interviews are always more fun than real ones, because you can make your interviewee say anything you want. This one would go like this:Me: Our readers want to know what experience you have in foreign affairs.Mitt: Well,…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Come fly with me
PHUKET: Suchard ‘Robert’ Raksangob wants to share his enthusiasm for flying airplanes with visitors and residents of Phuket. On Saturday, September 15 from 3pm, he’s inviting anyone with an interest in aviation to join him at the Phuket Airpark in Pa Klok where they can join the Phuket Flying Club.“I flew for more than 25 years with the Thai Flying…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Feeding the gypsy in you
PHUKET: If you’re passing through Cherng Talay, heading down to Surin or Bangtao beaches, you’d have to be blind not to notice the startling yellow and pink building on the left hand side of the road – opposite Tesco Lotus. This is Gitano Restaurant & Love, the latest incarnation of the innovative couple, Miguel Kirjon and Lin Prachakrich. Miguel and…
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Phuket Property: Drifting along the right track
PHUKET: Drift Interiors is an up and coming design company based out of a stylish Sino-Portuguese town house on Krabi Road in Phuket Town. Creative Director Craig Paterson and his Creative Partner Khun Yoo have worked their artistic flair on a number of projects ranging from resorts to residential villas on Phuket. Craig spoke to the Phuket Gazette.Phuket Gazette: What…
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Phuket Diving: Out of the shadows ye self-reliant scuba diver
PHUKET: Ten years, five years, even two years ago, any conversations approaching the idea of “solo” diving were held in hushed voices in the back of small bars between experienced divers, or in the depths of online cave-diving forums. ‘Buddy diving’ was a philosophy heralded by Jacques Cousteau and the crew of the Calypso as early as the writing of…
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