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 Gardening: Another golden boy
PHUKET: “HELIOTROPISM” – now there’s a word to conjure with, but what does it mean? Don’t use big words if you don’t explain them. Well, for the uninitiated, heliotropism is a plant’s diurnal motion, its capacity to slowly and imperceptibly turn towards the sun. (Helios is the Greek sun god, trope means turn in Greek). By doing this, a plant…
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Phuket Lifestyle: A head start ahead of the rest
PHUKET: Saturday is usually a fun day for everyone. It’s the beginning of the weekend and most people are looking forward to spending time doing what they want to do, and being with the ones they love. Saturday, June 30 was an especially happy day for students of the HeadStart International School (HSIS). It wasn’t just a regular Saturday but…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Art Dinners designed to expose local artists
PHUKET: Michael Earle is an architect and local magazine publisher with a mission to expose and support Phuket’s local artists. “I moved to the island three years ago after working as an architect in Spain for many years. I immediately noticed a great number of interesting art galleries operated mainly by local Thai artists in Phuket Town. They were not…
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Phuket Diving: Rhythm of the night
PHUKET: Watching the sun set behind Koh Doc Mai from the top deck of Sea Bees Excalibur II, an adventurous thrill creeps through me – I’m going on a night dive, and it’s been ages. When was the last time you went night diving? For most of us it was probably part of our advance diver training, and maybe we…
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Phuket Property: Crime and punishment in paradise
PHUKET: The tragic murder of an Australian travel agent in Kata recently has created a hailstorm of calls for action from both public and private sectors. There is little doubt that over the past few years a steady increase in crime and a straining infrastructure has thrust the island headlong into a self-induced, perfect storm. It’s easy to jump on…
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Phuket Entertainment: Impaling history
PHUKET: Film-makers love revising history to suit a story. Some, such as Oliver Stone, weave their fabrications so subtly into the weft and warp of historical accuracy that they can become instant conspirators. Others, such as Quentin Tarantino, strip history down to its underpants and strap a silly hat on its head, before shooting it, blowing it up and, just…
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Looking Back: A brief history of Thai-US relations
PHUKET: Diplomatic relations between Thailand and the United States date back to the early 19th century. The United States was founded only a few decades earlier, when thirteen of Great Britain’s colonies in the Americas declared their independence on July 2, 1776. The USA was a young nation, more concerned with preserving its new found freedom than becoming a great…
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Phuket Lifestyle: The mighty Mekong – ‘Mother of Water’
PHUKET: Tourists visiting Thailand for the first time might be forgiven for thinking that “Mekong” is nothing more than a cheap local whiskey. But mention the word to almost any Thai national and you’ll proudly be informed that it is a mighty river. He or she might go on to say that its name means “Mother of Water”. In a…
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Phuket Property: Bricks and mortar won’t hold back the water
PHUKET: Speaking exclusively with the Phuket Gazette, Goetz Dienel, Managing Director of Thai-Dien Co Ltd, said demand for his company’s products and services is on the up due to an increase of technically-demanding projects across the country. Established in Phuket 17 years ago, Thai-Dien specializes in cutting-edge building repair and reinforcement solutions. “We’ve done work for government facilities and institutions,…
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Phuket Lifestyle: The “Dean’ of Thai Silk
PHUKET: Fashion can seem like an enigma, its true meaning obscured by smoke and mirrors; a touch of sparkle here, a well established line there, and you’ve made the dress of the season – though no one quite knows how. What is trendy today is later passé and might be the trend again someday – 30 years down the road.…
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Phuket Life: Young scribes come of age
PHUKET: Koji Maehara is a rare gem. Born in Tokyo on December 26, 2000 to parents who are both Japanese and non-native English speakers, he was taught to speak English before he learned Japanese.Although his mum does speak English as a second language, he usually speaks Japanese with her at home, but always English with his brother.His proficiency in English…
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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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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 Books: Heartbreak’s hardest road
PHUKET: Recently I reviewed a pair of books – The Lifeboat and The Starboard Sea – by a pair of first-time female novelists that were competent enough in terms of prose and plot but sorely lacking in characterization. In a word, they lacked heart. Scott O’Connor’s Untouchable (Tyrus Books, Blue Ash, Oklahoma, 2011, 381pp) is chock full of heart: that…
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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 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 Gardening: Changing from red to amber
PHUKET: The light has changed to amber. Time to stop dawdling, to drive on, and seek shrubs of a different hue. But since there are red plants aplenty that have escaped our scrutiny, here are some we should have noticed on our travels. The most stupendous scarlet bloomer of all is the flame tree (delonix regia). Right now, one is…
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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 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 Dining: Tempting tastes of the Cape
PHUKET: Few things can tell someone about another culture or country like its food. Italian food is full of flavor and body. American food comes in large quantities and fills you up. Thai food is spicy with intricate details and layers. If food is indeed anything to go by to get a sense of culture, then the South African Food…
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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: 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 Gardening: Scarlet symbols
PHUKET: Red flowers are often symbolic, or associated with particular events or activities. Take the red rose, England’s national symbol. In the dynastic War of the Roses, the baronial armies of the House of Lancaster wore the red rose in battle against the white rose of York. Bizarrely, that red or “damask” rose may well have been the first cultivated…
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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 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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