Thai Life
Discover the latest regional stories and happenings in Thailand with The Thaiger, your source of credible, informative, and reliable updates. Stay informed about important local events, political happenings, social issues, cultural highlights, and entertainment stories, all curated to ensure you never miss out on what’s happening in the Land of Smiles. Our journalists will keep you informed with all the essential Thai life updates and allows you to connect with the community and experience Thailand like a local.
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Island Fever: Breath of fresh air needed for Asia’s boutique hotels
PHUKET: Here in Asia, which continues to often live in the shadows of big brother western-hotel design, hotel owners and designers continue to create derivative products. The East is often transfixed on Western products, in the case of luxury concepts, not so much, but certainly in the boutique spaces. When you look outside the “sandbox”, the new buzz-word in the…
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Excuse Buster: Eat your mangosteens
PHUKET: Mangosteen is often considered the powerhouse of tropical fruits, and for good reason. According to an article in the March 2008 issue of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, “The mangosteen rind, leaves and bark have been used as folk medicine for thousands of years. The thick mangosteen rind has been and is used for treating catarrh, cystitis, diarrhea,…
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The birds and the bugs
PHUKET: When I rise early – which is not often these days – the calling of early birds fills the air. Not the blended dawn chorus of an English spring, but a number of separate and distinctive sounds: the musical “sui su” of the magpie robin, the bubbly “chic chic chic” of the yellow-vented bulbul, the soft “woo-croo” of spotted…
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Expectations high at the Phuket Real Estate Show
PHUKET: Expectations are high among the property developers promoting the latest condos and houses for sale in Phuket at the Phuket Real Estate Show at Central Festival Phuket Visitors at the show, which got underway on Thursday, can expect to find some excellent deals and promotions at the fair from the variety of properties on offer at the 50-plus display…
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Diamond Condominium: building on strong foundations
PHUKET: All good projects begin with strong foundations. To make theirs even stronger, the developer of Diamond Condominium in Cherng Talay inaugurated an environmentally friendly piling system called “Hydraulic Static Pile Driver” at the initial stage of the project’s construction. Following the official land blessing ceremony in mid January, the first of 768 piles was laid using the “Hydraulic Static…
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Books: David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks – Great, if taken seriously
PHUKET: David Mitchell’s third novel, Cloud Atlas, was an audacious break from traditional narrative form: six wildly different characters in divergent, stylistic voices and places ranging from the South Pacific in the 1850s and Los Angeles in the 1930s to the far-distant future in Korea and Hawaii. Surprisingly, Mitchell followed this with a traditional autobiographical novel of his English youth…
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Video Report: BISP student paints his path to recovery
PHUKET: Strikingly colorful works of art currently lining the hallways of the British International School Phuket (BISP) map the road to recovery for one very happy student who nearly lost his life in a motorbike accident in March 2013. Sevastan Lukashov was left in a month-long coma after a horrific accident on the bypass road, and had to undergo extensive…
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Phuket Pads: Next stop – Layan Beach
PHUKET: It is common knowledge that land prices on Phuket have multiplied several times over in the past 10 years, and land prices on the west coast have become out of reach for most buyers, except for large developers, hotels and resorts. The future for smaller developers and individual private buyers is inland and north of Laguna as land prices…
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Excuse Buster: Strong is the new skinny – why women should lift like men
PHUKET: The myth that claims women who lift weights will become bulky has wreaked havoc for decades, and the fear it provokes still continues today. I’m here to tell you: It’s just a myth. Strength training is probably one of the best body-shaping exercises women can do. Here’s my guess as to how this myth came about, and why it…
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Bohemian-style photography workshop in Phuket
PHUKET: There was a Bohemian, Rolling Stone Magazine flare to the atmosphere when I walked into the Chalong hillside villa. The small group of photographers, the playboy model, her male counterpart and friends, sat around a long table drinking wine and digging into a feast of farang food – clearly not your typical photographers’ workshop. They had finished the nude…
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Mind Matters: Providing a safety net for Patong workers
PHUKET: When I moved into the condo I rented last year, I paid a security deposit in addition to the first month’s rent. The purpose of a security deposit is twofold. If a renter damages the dwelling, money paid from the deposit covers the costs of repair. Second, if a renter breaks the lease and the landlord is forced to…
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Boating: Dodging pirates for Phuket yachting lifestyle
PHUKET: With a handful of girls dancing in bikinis on the deck as Jimmy Rougerie wails on the tenor saxophone and the sounds of the modern meringue tipico music roll off the wooden deck of the sailing yacht Capricorn, it is difficult to imagine Somali pirates laying siege to the vessel just a handful of years ago – but every…
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Excuse Buster: Moringa – The tree of life
PHUKET: As we continue our superfood series, I should tell you about moringa – the tree of life. This is not a title to be taken lightly. This nutrient-dense plant is one of the most powerful natural multi-vitamins around. It’s a true superfood with a nutritional breakdown that includes: 92 nutrients, 46 antioxidants, 36 anti-inflammatories, 18 amino acids, 9 essential…
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Balance Matters: Coping with the teenage years
PHUKET: Kevin screamed, “I don’t care what you think!”, as he pushed his mother out of the doorway to his bedroom. His mother, Jit, was propelled into a wall head first and fell to her knees. She called after her son, but he was already gone. Jit pulled herself up, walked to the kitchen table, picked up her tea and…
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Gardening: Many layers of an onion
PHUKET: My good friend Sam Wilko, known to Gazette readers as resident gourmet, sent me a fascinating article about the onion and suggested I write about it. So, here are some appropriated facts about the humble onion – plus a few of my own. It is the world’s most widely grown vegetable. About 175 countries cultivate it – twice the…
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Property Watch: Community lifestyles and property value
PHUKET: At this time of year when we are all thinking about our objectives for 2015, it is also time to reflect on the direct and indirect influences that affect the value of our properties in Phuket. How can you take affirmative action to maximize any possible appreciation of your Phuket property investment?COMMUNITY CREATION My friends and acquaintances in Phuket…
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Books: An awful waste of time
PHUKET: In 2002 Michel Faber published The Crimson Petal and the White, an extraordinary novel of shifting social strata set in a time and place when they were most rigid: the early Victorian Age in London. By dint of cunning and determination, Sugar, a prostitute from the age of 13, rises from brothel inmate to kept woman to household governess…
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History: Southern Thailand courts united Japan’s first Shogun
PHUKET: Tokugawa Ieyasu was the first Shogun of a united Japan. In the year 1600, after the bloody battle of Sekigahara, Ieyasu managed to unite the warring clans of Japan under his sovereignty, ushering in a long era of peace under the Tokugawa Shogunate. A year earlier, in 1599, a visiting envoy from the Kingdom of Pattani presented Ieyasu with…
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Excuse Buster: Charging up your willpower
PHUKET: It’s a new year and a new opportunity for a new you, so let’s wipe that slate clean and start afresh. It’s just like we said to ourselves last year… and the year before that… and probably the one before that, too. For those of us who fall off the wagon: what is it that stops us from reaching…
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Phuket Pads: Smaller villas all the rage
PHUKET: The Phuket property market has remained fluid over the past 10 years. Crises have come and gone, yet the property market has remained surprisingly resilient. Buyers have benefited during this time period, as developers have adapted their offerings and prices to meet the budgets of overseas clients. Five years ago there were few off-plan projects under 20 million baht…
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Environment: Worrying island waste
PHUKET: Garbage disposal is a major issue for Phuket. Every day the island produces 800 tonnes of waste of which 60 per cent is wet waste. This issue must be solved, but merely increasing the capacity to dispose of it is not the answer. If the community is to have sustainable growth, then all that waste has to be managed.…
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Phuket’s NBC targets expat freehold condo market
PHUKET: High demand for condominiums coupled with an oversupply of new units has led the developers of Naiharn Beach Condominium (NBC) to turn their attention to the island’s south, where they say attractive locations for new developments are easier to come by. “The number of places left for freehold condominiums is very limited,” says Fredric Perrochon, NBC sales director. “Our…
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Diving: Where the wild things are
PHUKET: On land, wild animals are a rare sight, especially in their natural habitats – discounting monkeys attacking tourists for ice cream in Phuket, of course. In the United States, a unusual creature that isn’t a squirrel or a chipmunk will, at the very least, get a good pointing at; and the rare moments when a fox slips into view…
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Reversals in life and love
PHUKET: I needed a break. After reviewing three 600-page books in a row, I found a nice change of pace in Paul Theroux’s Mr. Bones (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2014, 359pp). This is Theroux’s third collection of short stories, adding to his oeuvre of 28 novels and 14 travel books. The 20 stories range widely in location – New York,…
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Phuket Aviation Club spreads its wings
PHUKET: There has been a great deal of activity at Phuket Airpark in Pa Khlok recently, as ever more private aircraft arrive there, adding to the small but impressively diverse and growing fleet of fixed-wing aircraft, gyrocopters, paramotors and ultralights. Pat James, who heads the Phuket Aviation Club (PAC) based at the airfield, said his growing association is seeking new…
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Thai oranges and lemons won’t leave you sour
PHUKET: “Oranges and lemons, say the bells of Saint Clement’s”, so goes the opening couplet of the children’s nursery rhyme about London’s church bells dating from 1744. But though the nursery rhyme remains unchanged by time, the real oranges and lemons we knew as kids are not the same as the varieties we now encounter in Phuket’s fresh markets. While…
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Royal Phuket Marina brings luxury to central Phuket
PHUKET: Phuket is changing in front of our eyes. And where some see trouble, others see opportunity. One of the latter is Royal Phuket Marina (RPM), whose latest development, La Reserve, is a luxury condominium property for the new, changing Phuket. “Phuket is turning into a proper city, a proper town,” says Ian Spurdle, RPM’s director of sales and marketing…
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Excuse Buster: Amalaki – The anti-aging superfood
PHUKET: Thailand is blessed with so many rejuvenating and health-restoring herbs, fruits and foods, and during the next few columns of Excuse Buster, I would like to share my favorites, which I recommend to clients and include in my own diet. I want to start by saying that taking a few herbs or natural supplements to counteract a poor diet…
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Phuket Pads: The island’s chalk and cheese
PHUKET: Phuket is, in many ways, becoming similar to Pattaya, with more and more cheap condos popping up in Patong, Kathu and other areas of the island. One-bedroom units from 1-3 million baht are becoming the norm to cater to the once-a-year tourist, and Thai investors are becoming eager to make an investment in Phuket’s booming property market. CHALK AND…
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Woolf in shepherd’s clothing: Renowned clairvoyant stops in Phuket for a “look’
PHUKET: Lynda Woolf is a celebrated seer, clairvoyant and mystic who is currently visiting the Atsumi Health and Wellness Center in Rawai to dispense wisdom to those in need of her extraordinary services. Hailing from a stunningly beautiful corner of the US, Lake Tahoe, Lynda has called Singapore home since 1996, largely to facilitate her work as a psychic practitioner…
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