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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Sponsored The real cost of being a digital nomad in Thailand
Thailand is a popular destination for digital nomads, known for its affordable living, lively culture, and modern facilities. With its warm climate, great food, and friendly communities, it's an ideal place for remote workers to balance work and travel. However,...
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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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Phuket Property Watch: And then came Layan
PHUKET: Thinking of owning property in an island paradise? Swaying coconut trees, tropical drinks in day-glow colors and of course the ultimate deal closer – the beach. Let’s take an example, someone named Dieter, snowbound in Bavaria, with subzero weather, a veritable glacier outside the front door and packs of wolves howling at the moon. Maybe the wolf thing is…
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Phuket Property: Tourism by the numbers
PHUKET: A dynamic shift in Phuket’s tourism market is pushing demand away from the beaches. Overseas tourists are pushing up numbers at the large malls, such as Central Festival and Jungceylon, where the top three nationalities of customers are Chinese, Russian and Australian. Last month, retail giant Central Retail Corporation announced a US$332 million expansion project in Phuket to include…
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Phuket Gardening: The ‘who’s hue’ of ornamental leaves
PHUKET: Foliage plants, as we noted last week, are cultivated mainly for their ornamental leaves. But such a bald statement requires qualification. After all, many flowering plants also have attractive foliage, and this is especially true in the tropics where the tendency is for most leaves to be evergreen and glossy. Nor am I thinking of foliage plants, which originate…
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Phuket Dining: “Up’ market beach dining
PHUKET: What’s Up? Well, for one thing it’s a delightful new beach club at the southern end of Nai Thon beach. There have been a number of beach clubs popping up around Phuket, some successful, others less so but this recently opened Up Beach Club seems to have the mix just right. For one thing they have kept the concept…
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Phuket Humor: Why is English so hard to learn?
PHUKET: Let’s face it, English is a ridiculous language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in a hamburger; neither apple nor pine in a pineapple. English muffins were not invented in England, nor French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. You cannot buy boots in Boots, you cannot buy virgins in…
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Phuket Health: Being strong and balanced
PHUKET: THE last article I wrote was about how to achieve goals and persist with New Year’s resolutions (click here for story). Every year, without fail, the resolution at the very top of most people’s list has to do with improving personal well-being, energy and health. This means being strong and healthy is inherently valuable to most of us. For…
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Phuket Pets: Shaving your hairy dog
PHUKET: I’ve written about this before, and it’s a hot topic (no pun intended) among dog owners in Phuket. The key question is, “Can I shave my dogs’ fur coat?”. It seems logical – we look at our panting dogs and think that we couldn’t cope with a fur coat all day, so clearly they can’t. But we’re applying human…
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Phuket Music: Kilgora’s mango metal invasion
PHUKET: Kilgora is a local metal band that joins together the forces of three European expats: Norwegian Jon Ramslie (guitar/vocals), Frenchman Stephan Audiger (bass), and Englishman Huwy Williams (drums). Based in Phuket, the band says their music reflects a variety of influences from “Stoner to Thrash Metal and Oriental music, all in a brutal and melodic melting pot lovingly termed…
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Phuket Property: Finding the balance between culture and a modern lifestyle
PHUKET: Highlighting Sansiri PCL’s confidence in the island’s condominium market, the Bangkok-headquartered firm has launched sales for ‘THE BASE Height-Phuket’ in the Sam Kong area of Phuket Town. As the third ‘THE BASE’ branded project on the island, following successful launches of the ‘Downtown’ and ‘Uptown’ projects also in Phuket Town, the ‘Height-Phuket’ is ideal for the young working generation,…
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Phuket Gardening: Variety is the spice of life
PHUKET: Every so often, readers of the Phuket Gazette pose questions which prompt other reflections, and ultimately require a fuller response than a mere email allows. Here is a recent, partly paraphrased example: A Kata apartment dweller has a sunny communal balcony, at present adorned with boxes of bougainvilleas. She says that some people would like to exchange these for…
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Phuket Diving: A communal recovery from the myths of DCS
PHUKET: Recovered from her diving accident, Nicole still combs through the details of the day, searching for the tiny factors that might have contributed to the serious case of neurological decompression sickness (DCS Type II) she faced a year and half ago after a 22-meter dive in the Similan National Park. Unless it’s a ruthless horror story about DCS, where…
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Phuket Lifestyle: A Rotary roundup; Golf tourney
PHUKET: Members of the Rotary Club of Patong Beach recently purchased some much-needed necessities for the Banjo school for migrant workers with money raised by the club. “Supercheap arrived at the school and assembled the goods one hour before they were expected,” said Club member Patricia Mitchell. “Consequently, Stewart and I arrived to find the children and teachers happy and…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Rally round the family
PHUKET: Gentlemen, start your engines. A family event dedicated to making a positive difference is racing back to Phuket for the third straight year. The Phuket Invitational Car Rally is a family day out like no other. You won’t need to pack a food hamper or fix the ski rack, just fill up with fuel, bring the family and make…
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Phuket Lifestyle: St. Valentine’s Day
PHUKET: According to classics professor Noel Lenski of the University of Boulder Colorado, the lovers’ holiday traces its roots to a raucous annual Roman festival where men stripped naked, used goat – or dog-skin – whips, and spanked young maidens in the hopes of increasing their fertility. The annual pagan celebration, called Lupercalia, was held every year on February 15…
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Phuket Property: Travel summit votes on key issues
PHUKET: The nation’s pre-eminent gathering of tourism and travel industry experts has concluded that while Thailand looks headed for its best year for tourist numbers and revenues ever, action to legalize gaming, improve infrastructure and attract ‘quality’ travellers was urgently needed ahead of moves to introduce the Asean Economic Community (AEC). More than 350 tourism industry movers and shakers attended…
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Phuket Property Watch: Tourism heads off to the mall
PHUKET: ‘Bling bling’ goes the ringing in my head, as I frantically search out my missing car in the massive underground car park at one of the island’s ubiquitous shopping malls. I am not at all prepared for the event, which has taken on a real life adventure of Stanley and Livingstone proportions. Where is Indiana Jones when you need…
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Phuket Property: New deal for Marriott
PHUKET: Marriott International recently announced the signing of seven management agreements with TCC Hotels Group, which means the US hospitality company will operate seven TCC hotels across Thailand.These agreements make the TCC Hotels Group the largest owner of Marriott International hotels in Asia Pacific. The seven hotels are: The Imperial Queen’s Park Hotel, Bangkok, to be rebranded as Bangkok Marriott…
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Phuket Humor: Learning about the birds and bees
PHUKET: Today I’m going to tell you how I learned about the birds and bees. All you young whippersnappers out there need to know how we learned about this important topic way back in prehistoric times, even before the Rolling Stones. Nowadays it’s easy for a young person to learn about sex. All you do is log onto the Internet…
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Phuket Blazing Saddles: The power of Yao
PHUKET: This week we head off Phuket to a quieter parallel universe called Koh Yao Noi where time seems to stand still and the cycling is relaxed and easygoing. For even the most party-loving souls, Phuket is becoming frenetic, crowded and often stressful. If you are a cycling aficionado this is especially true as pedaling around Phuket is always challenging…
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Phuket Health – Reality check of New Year’s resolutions
PHUKET: So January 1 has quickly passed and I wonder how many of you are still on track with your new year’s resolutions? The good news is you still have time to create lasting goals and redeem yourself if you’ve all ready fallen off the wagon! First, a ‘Reality Check’: Staying motivated and committed toward accomplishing your dreams is often…
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Construction law practice in Thailand
PHUKET: Seeking a perfect home may be an arduous process but the complexities of building a property in Thailand are multiplied without a solid construction contract, as many homeowners and property developers will attest. A crucial part of any good contract is cost assessment and management. Many problems in construction projects occur because there is no written contract recorded between…
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Phuket Property: “Student life” at dcondo Kuku
PHUKET: Sansiri’s latest dcondo development in Phuket – a campus-style resort in Kuku – is selling out fast with pre-sales for the project having reached 50% and continuing to rise, as of the beginning of February. The development’s design concept is inspired by dormitories at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the UK. Sansiri has previously launched one other…
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Phuket Gardening – Turning over a new leaf
PHUKET: Any New Year’s resolutions about gardening? Plenty. Everywhere in the garden I see Nature’s perfection and my imperfections. Mistakes a-plenty. Why, is there a gap in that flower bed? Ah! Because the multicolored acalypha I once put there succumbed to mildew and was never replaced. Why is the grass so threadbare near the fish pond? Because the area is…
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Chinese New Year: the year of the snake nears
PHUKET: As billions of Chinese around the world bid farewell to the year of the dragon tonight, they prepare to welcome tomorrow’s ‘invisible moon’, which marks the official start of a new year – the year of the snake. That’s right, the Chinese New Year officially begins tomorrow, February 10. The most important festival in the Chinese calendar, Chinese New…
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Xenophobia strikes out in Phuket
PHUKET: Welcome to the brand new year of twenty thirteen. So far the twenties have been pretty disappointing. Music seems to have taken on an alter personality with televised ‘talent shows’ now taking us dangerously close to a purgatory known as ‘karaoke-land’. There are the movies, but sequels to mega-blockbusters seem to be rolling out faster than one of those…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Go with the flow… riding
PHUKET: Before a band of bronzed onlookers – clad in board shorts and tiny black dresses, sipping their drinks and dancing to Phuket House Mafia – professional indoor surfers from Singapore christened Phuket’s first wave pool at Surf House. That’s right. Never again do surfers have to stow their boards for the high season, now you can have it all.…
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