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 12Go introduces Japan Rail Passes to enhance travel accessibility for international travellers
For those who have travelled throughout Thailand, 12Go is a well-known provider of various trips, though the platform itself has a much wider reach. Ranging from buses to planes, 12Go is undoubtedly a leading booking platform for travel throughout the...
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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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Phuket’s property of tomorrow
PHUKET: The year 2014 saw a number of new property developments – most noticeably condominiums – emerge on the Phuket map, fundamentally changing the Phuket landscape. To find out what tomorrow holds for the island’s property market, the Phuket Gazette‘s Maciek Klimowicz talked to Uthai Uthaisangsuk, senior executive vice president of Business Development and Project Development Division at Sansiri, one…
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Gardening: Yes, we have bananas
PHUKET: I was talking recently with an English lady visiting Phuket about gardening, and the subject of bananas came up. “Do you know”, she enthused, “that banana skins put around the roots of rose bushes promote better growth?” “No,” I replied in surprise. But then I wouldn’t have known that, since bananas were like gold dust in my childhood, and…
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Exciting new genre of art debuts in Phuket tomorrow night
PHUKET: Well known local artist Rose Maitland Smith will be on hand to open her new art exhibition tomorrow night, January 17. About 20 of her unique, striking and colorful paintings have arrived at the Boathouse by Montara on Kata Beach and will remain on show there until mid-March. Rose, who exudes in person the same energy and optimism that…
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Expats target market for Thalang residential housing project
PHUKET: Following the completion of phase one of 59 European-style tropical townhomes in Thalang under the banner “Baan Tak r Kard”, local developer Living Vis has launched the second phase of its residential development under the brand “r homes”, in a bid to attract more expat buyers. “More than 80 per cent of the two- and three-bedroom homes in phase…
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Boating: New E-Visa on arrival for superyachts to Andamans
PHUKET: The Indian government has launched e-visas to enter the country at any of nine airports, a move that has been welcomed for facilitating visitors wanting to join their superyachts at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. “Visa on Arrival Facility is now available at nine airports in India for those planning or those interested in cruising the highly intriguing superyacht…
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Gardening: Citrus celebrities – limeys and limes
PHUKET: No discussion of the kingdom’s leading fruits would be complete without looking at the citrus family, which plays such an important role in Thai cooking. I recall that in England more years ago than I care to remember, bright-yellow, oval lemons were treasured objects. Cut open and squeezed over sugar, they were used for Shrove Tuesday pancakes, or added…
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Excuse Buster: Man versus machine
PHUKET: Walk into any gym and you’ll find a mix of machine weights and free weights. Less than five years ago, the fitness industry was loving machine weights, boasting how good they were for building size and strength. This has its truths, but after a while people have started to realize the lack of movement and mobility they had with…
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Balance Matters: Counseling, a first encounter of the helpful kind
PHUKET: Roughly one out of 15 people are affected by poor mental health at least one time in their life, but many don’t realize that they need help, that help exists, how it works or indeed how to find it. Most of us have heard of counseling (also referred to as therapy or psychotherapy), but that doesn’t help people understand…
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Phuket Pads: A hint of Europe in the South
PHUKET: Most villas available on the island are either in Thai or Balinese style and as the Thais say, “Same, same!” But this unusual and well-designed property stands out from the crowd with its European design. One of the main attractions is that it is a perfect family home in which to entertain and comes with great amenities. The house…
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Environment: Piscine pollution – killing fields
PHUKET: Some time ago a friend rang to say that the beach at Kata was littered with dead fish – mostly of an emerald green color. My guess was that they were reef-dwelling parrot fish and out of curiosity, I decided to venture down to Nai Harn Beach. A scene of carnage awaited me; there were hundreds of very dead…
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The Santa Clause: Many happy rental returns
PHUKET; What did Santa Claus bring you via your property investment this Christmas? Was it 5% guaranteed net rental return on your property investment? 6%? 7%? A 60:40 or a 50:50 split of all expenses and rental returns after expenses? Looking at the wide mix of so-called guaranteed returns promised in property ads, online and on billboards in Phuket, it…
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When in Rome, read Hughes
PHUKET: In the 1950s, Robert Hughes was part of a group of students at Sydney University – including Germaine Greer and Clive James – who went on to lead brilliant careers outside Australia. Hughes became a hugely influential art critic at Time magazine. Besides eight books about art, he wrote a wonderful history about Australia as a penal colony, The…
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Phuket Aviation: Hold your horses – flying car media frenzy is premature
PHUKET: There has been a great deal of buzz in the global aviation industry this month over the recent unveiling of the AeroMobil 3.0, hailed by many as a great leap forward in the race to create the world’s first practical, mass-produced “flying car”. The concept of flying cars has certainly been around for a long time – almost as…
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Across the Land: Building a sustainable home in Phuket
PHUKET: Chatting with a local architect who has designed and built homes in Phuket for the past 15 years prompted me to investigate sustainable materials used in home building. The architect had mentioned that current-day building materials have less maintenance issues and are more durable. Sure, the materials are more expensive, but in the long run they save the owner…
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Seven Seas Condo: Phuket’s downtown island luxury
PHUKET: Seven Seas Condo, a plush new resort-style condominium project, is about to shoot up in the heart of Phuket Town. The 2.5-billion baht Seven Seas Phuket project is located on Hongyok-Uthit Road, near Bangkok Hospital Phuket, and consists of four, eight-story buildings with a total of 975 units – all surrounded by views of Phuket’s lush, green hills. Developed…
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Excuse Busters: Remain a holiday hunk
PHUKET: So the festive season is here, as if you hadn’t noticed. Now, I’m not going to be Phuket’s very own Ebenezer Scrooge and tell you not to indulge and have fun (I’ll let Craig do that), but I will give you some tips on how to lessen the impact of excessive eating followed by vegging out in front of…
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