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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On Deck: “Deck drain’ for Thai sailing
PHUKET: Thailand has a very strong national youth sailing team based in Sattahip in the Gulf of Thailand. Run by the Yacht Racing Association of Thailand (YRAT) they have had increasing success on the international stage in recent years. The breakthrough happened in 2010 when a young Thai girl called Noppakao Poonpat won the Optimist World Championships. Not only did…
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Property Watch: Island remains worthy investment
PHUKET: Like many Phuketians, I took a ‘green season’ break with my family. I chose Sydney and the Gold Coast, and inevitably a visit of this nature leads to comparisons with my home island of Phuket. Property investors interested in Phuket will also conduct their own comparisons and therefore agents, developers and owners who wish to sell should take note…
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Profile: Surf star searches for balance
PHUKET: Grom surf star Annissa (‘Anni’) Flynn, 17, took the local surf scene by storm in her younger years, regularly beating older, more experienced board riders. Now she is competing in the top regional competitions, most recently at the Quiksilver Challenge, which took place in June at Canggu in Bali. “I placed sixth at Canggu,” she says with a shrug.…
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Books: Get lost in an epic Jamaican novel
PHUKET: Trinidad had V S Naipaul and Jamaica now has Marlon James through his third novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings (Riverhead Books, New York, 2014, 688pp), which is an epic tale of gang warfare in Jamaica, spilling over to Miami and New York and spanning the years 1976 to 1991. Like a Russian novel, a big cast of…
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Gardening: Sowing seeds: A classroom encounter
PHUKET: I recently received an unusual request. Would I talk to a class of pre-school children about plants? The name ‘pre-school’ is a bit of a misnomer since this United Nations of a class was already at the tender age of four to five attending school everyday. I hesitated for all of two minutes before emailing back and agreeing to…
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Phuket International Women’s Club gives away B2mn in scholarships
PHUKET: The Phuket International Women’s Club (PIWC) will reached out to yet another flock of young minds with more than 2 million baht worth of scholarships on August 19. “We want to give a better future to students in financial need. We work closely with schools, colleges and universities as we move through the selection process,” said PIWC Scholarships Chairman…
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Blazing Saddles: Better biking with Olympian Nick Gates
PHUKET: At the end of 2014, Thanyapura Phuket launched their Cycling Academy headed up by former Olympian and Tour de France star Nick Gates. Nick hails from Sydney and has over 15 years of experience in pro-mountain bike, adventure, track and road racing. He twice competed in the Tour de France for the Lotto-Domo team and has won the Commonwealth…
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Phuket pads: Modern architectural masterpiece
PHUKET: Loch Palm Golf Course’s five-bedroom villa has got to be the most unique and unusual property in Phuket, breaking every design and construction norm. Architecturally, the conceptual inspiration was drawn from the site and situation. Located on the edge of the Loch Palm reservoir and golf course, the site is positioned between two geometrically flat, level surfaces and is…
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Going up: Baba’s five-bedroom villas
PHUKET: Kicking into gear on Na Tai Beach, across the bridge in Phang Nga, is Charn Issara Development PLC’s riveting joint-venture project Baba Beach Club. The sales gallery has now been built and construction crews are busy building five-bedroom villas. Vorasit ‘Wan’ Issara, managing director of Sri Panwa resort, said that Charn Issara, which is developing the 42-rai project with…
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Avocado: Earth’s magical fruit
PHUKET: Returning back to the island from a holiday in Chiang Mai with five kilograms of Thai avocado is truly a nutritionist’s version of bringing souvenirs home. This fruit is without doubt at the top of my ‘favorite foods’ list for health and taste. Right now, all avocado fans in Thailand are blessed as the Thai avocado season is in…
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Penang, Phuket: islands of irony
PHUKET: Penang and Phuket share many historical and cultural similarities and recent similar events in their property markets show that the sister islands still have much in common. On a recent trip there, courtesy of Firefly Airlines, to join Penang’s heritage celebrations, I was introduced to a small Thai enclave in the northern quarter of Georgetown, not far from the…
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Royal Phuket Yacht Club to reopen
PHUKET: Excitement is building up across the island over the upcoming reentry of the iconic Royal Phuket Yacht Club in January. After an expansive 18-month upgrade, the Royal Phuket Yacht Club, which in 1986 was the island’s first luxury hotel, will now reopen under the name ‘The Nai Harn’ on January 16, 2016. Over the years, the 130-key luxury hotel…
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On Deck: Tonnes of trash killing our future
PHUKET: The ‘crystal clear,’ ‘aqua blue’ sea off Phuket is a significant part of the island’s tourism offerings and attracts many visitors to this fair isle. Those iconic sea, island and beach snorkelling images from the Tourism Authority of Thailand [TAT] campaigns have been around the world more times than an inter-continental jet. Today’s reality, however, is somewhat different because…
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Prab Keesin – the family business
PHUKET: The Keesin clan and Pisona Groups is a household name throughout Phuket, as the political powerhouse family from Patong has a number of developments and interests in the island’s primary party town. Most recently they found themselves caught in the limelight with a host of mafia-style charges being levied against them. The founder of the clan was the recently-deceased…
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By the book: Not all doom and gloom on Phuket
PHUKET: People who spend time on Phuket or reside here will surely have heard expats grumbling about the island’s property market. Of course there are some nagging issues: there is a lack of easily accessible information for buyers, similarly and most certainly a lack of regulation and there is no Multiple Listing Service [MLS]. However, while the market here is…
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Keep it green: So much water, so little to drink
PHUKET: “And not a drop to drink”, bemoan the parched and stricken seaman drifting to oblivion on a windless sea in Coleridge’s ‘The Ancient Mariner.’ It is an irony not lost on any of us that, though most of the earth’s surface is covered by water, it is largely saline and undrinkable. However, even on so-called dry land, criss-crossed by…
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RPM awarded for excellence
PHUKET: Another much-welcomed boost for Phuket’s tourism industry has come with Royal Phuket Marina being the first marina in Thailand to receive the TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence for 2015. Aside from winning the certificate, Royal Phuket Marina is also the first and only 5 Gold Anchor-awarded marina in Thailand. “We’re very proud to receive the TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence. Honoring…
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Property Watch: New chapter for Vietnam property
PHUKET: A few weeks ago I found myself, once again, on the central coast of Vietnam in Danang. Over the past decade, the city has undergone a massive transformation and despite the old school charm of tree-lined avenues and the penultimate buzz of Asian-flavored street life, towering skyscrapers are starting to dot the horizon. My first journey to Vietnam was…
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Phuket Business: Old money with new visions
PHUKET: Born to one of Phuket’s wealthiest families, yet successfully cruising ahead in new business directions, is none other than Boon Yongsakul, the brains and muscle behind the success of the Boat Avenue Community Mall, along with some very well-received housing projects. His grandfather, a Hokkien Chinese migrant who came to Phuket, laid the foundation for the Yongsakul family’s business…
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Up in the air: Bangkok Airways flies to Hat Yai
PHUKET: Bangkok Airways will launch a new service between Phuket International Airport (HKT) and Hat Yai International Airport (HDY) starting in late October. Tasara Taksinapan, the carrier’s media relations manager, recently confirmed the new route with the Gazette’s ‘Up in the Air’, but said that the carrier had yet to issue an official press statement about the service, which will…
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Excuse Buster: Shaping up gluteus maximus
PHUKET: I Swore I’d never write an article with topics as generic and common as ‘bigger biceps’, ‘five fat-burning secrets’ or ‘get quads of thunder’. I hate these types of articles. They are often 2,000 words and harp on about exercises that have been around for years, but are renamed and tweaked so that they are perceived as a brand…
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On Deck: When only Thai quality will do
PHUKET: Back in the pre-iPhone days when you went shopping for clothes and the label said ‘Made in China’, you would have sighed and thought, ‘What is the world coming to?’ Fast forward to the era of the iPhone, iPod, iPad not to mention self-driving Google cars, and nobody blinks an eye at the ‘Made in China’ tag anymore. Hey,…
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Property watch: All about crunching numbers
PHUKET: Part of the buzz of the property market in Phuket is that Phuketians, foreign and Thai, have land and property in their blood and love discussing values. However, there are other numbers and number-crunching functions involved in the property game. The functions of property have transformed radically over the last few decades and the basis on which people invest…
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Profile: Wild ride on hippocampus [video]
PHUKET: Etymological failures rarely re-direct a person’s life as drastically as a simple false assumption did for topflight seahorse expert and marine biologist Lindsay Aylesworth. Lindsay was ushered into the upper echelons of seahorse research while working on her doctorate with her adviser Amanda Vincent – recognized as the leading expert in the field – and Project Seahorse at the…
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The Deck condo zooms ahead
PHUKET: Major property developer Sansiri Plc’s new condominium, The Deck, is attracting interest from both Thai and international buyers. The draw is likely a result of the condo’s prime location in the heart of Patong and the fact that construction is now 100 per cent complete, with just the final stages of architectural and interior work left to be done.…
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Keep It Green: Cup of gold trumps angel’s trumpet
PHUKET: One of my all-time favorites is the datura, now fashionably known as the brugmansia. Its common moniker is angel’s trumpet, but in Thailand it’s known as lam pong. Although very tempting to do so, it is not going on the ‘top twenty’ list for one simple reason – it does not relish the climate in Phuket. On the slopes…
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In Focus: Chalong art evolution
PHUKET: Believe it or not, chaotic Chalong is slowly evolving into a destination where people want to live and tourists want to visit. Thanks to entrepreneurs like Oliver Schibli, who has opened his own art gallery, Bubu Collection, next to Wine Connection, people now have somewhere to go to look at beautiful creations. Oliver first arrived in Phuket from his…
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Blazing Saddles: Cycling: Not just for a healthy body
PHUKET: As if burning calories and improving cardiovascular fitness and body strength weren’t enough, a new study shows the brain-boosting benefits of biking, which begs the question: does cycling improve your sanity? I was recently out cycling in the south of Phuket with my usual riding buddies: four enthusiasts who regularly pound the pedals together, followed by just the occasional…
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Health: Dodging bullets with agility
PHUKET: Agility ladders, a staple of sports training when victory can hang on the athlete’s ability to turn quickly, have moved into mainstream gyms where fitness experts say they are helping everyday exercisers be nimble and quick. Jumping, running, marching and hopscotching through the grids on the floor have become an added feature in personal training and group fitness classes.…
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Looking back: Gambling through the decades
PHUKET: Gambling, in all its forms, is illegal in Thailand. But despite the fact that it has been outlawed for several decades, it is still a popular ‘recreation’ for many Thais. Underground gambling dens throughout the country do very well, and casinos, located in towns like Poipet, just over the Cambodian border, are mainly Thai owned and often packed with…
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