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.
-
Sponsored Why retirees in Thailand are choosing long-term health insurance over quick fixes
Retirees in Thailand are increasingly seeing the importance of health insurance in protecting their well-being during retirement. With insurance requirements for retirement visas and rising healthcare costs, many are moving away from short-term plans and choosing long-term coverage. Long-term health...
-
Excuse Buster: Overtraining and the stress bucket
PHUKET: Believe it or not, training can increase the amount of stress in your life, and stress accumulates over time. I work closely with many Thai boxing gyms in Phuket and I get asked a lot about overtraining. These guys punish their bodies for six to eight hours every day – that is a ton of stress on the body.…
-
Books: Scoring big in Africa
PHUKET: Denis Johnson published his first of three books of poetry at the age of 19. His meticulous attention to words is evident in his 11 books of fiction, which tend to be slim and terse, but intensely descriptive. I’ve read his second novel, Fiskadoro, a post-nuclear apocalypse set in Key West, and his eighth, The Tree of Smoke, an…
-
Island Fever: Life after nut rage
PHUKET: We live in a complicated day and age. With our lives revolving around “selfies”, our very existence is punctuated by snapshots expressing extreme delight. Sadly, most of these moments seem to occur only in cyberspace. One recent event that is testament to how quickly our world can about-face is the Korean Air “nut rage” incident involving Heather Cho, a…
-
BISP’s “Three Artsketeers’ put artwork on display
PHUKET: For most, art is just a break, a temporary escape from the daily routine, but three British International School Phuket (BISP) IB Visual Arts students want to make it the theme of their lives. In fact, thanks to their own determination and the support of their school, they are already on the right path with the upcoming BISP 2015…
-
Thinking Green: Striking a beach balance
PHUKET: “We need chairs,” are the plaintive cries in the press, demanding a return to the old model of endless rows of deck chairs and umbrellas. Meanwhile, the vendors are crying, “Our businesses have been hit badly.” And at the same time, environmentalists are claiming, “Our natural treasures are being directly influenced by coastal law enforcement, pollution, construction, density of…
-
Looking Back: Kedah state’s magical history
PHUKET: The Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa is an ancient book which chronicles the history of the Kedah state. Kedah is a Malaysian state bordering the south of Thailand. As recently as a century ago, the sultanate was in fact a tributary state of Siam. Sometimes referred to as The Kedah Annals, the Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa was translated by Lt Col James…
-
Gardening: A shrub with no enemies – allamandas
PHUKET: It’s astonishing what one can learn by watching Mother Nature at work. As readers know, my garden has long been plagued by hawk moth caterpillars, but what is fascinating is that these voracious munchers have a distinct pecking (or should I say munching) order. Their diet, in strict order of preference, is tabernaemontas, then periwinkles, next adeniums and then…
-
Excuse Buster: Don’t turn your back on coconuts
PHUKET: This week, I read an article in the Bangkok Post that caught my attention. It was called “Coconut oil, the hype is not healthy: It is apparently the latest wonder food, but medical evidence does not back up the wild claims” (story here). I agree with the featured dietician when she says: “It takes diversity and balance to ensure…
-
Property: Working a wider Angle
PHUKET: One picture is worth a thousand words. Make it a panoramic picture or a virtual tour, and it becomes even more valuable, especially in the competitive world of property sales. Geoff Whitlie of Panoramas Thailand has proved this formula successful in Koh Samui – now he is expanding to Phuket. Before the internet, the real estate business involved a…
-
Gardening: Dealing with dry spells
PHUKET: While we are used to the onset of the dry season in Phuket every November, this year has been a bit different, as the monsoon was more prolonged and the drought, once it did arrive, has been more extreme. Not a drop of rain since New Year’s Day in my bit of the island means that we are having…
-
Books: Enjoying horrific greatness
PHUKET: For many years on Anzac Day, memorial services for the prisoners of war (POWs) killed on the Death Railway in Kanchanaburi would be presided over by Colonel Edward “Weary” Dunlop, a heroic surgeon and camp commander. Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2014, 334pp) is a highly fictionalized account of his…
-
Excuse Buster: Six common mistakes keeping you from a killer body
PHUKET: For those who are trying to get back into the fitness game, or who are just stepping up to the plate for the first time, it is essential that good habits are formed right from the get go. Too many people start a fitness regime and fail to see it through. There are many reasons that people fall off…
-
Blazing Saddles: How to stay young for longer
PHUKET: Phuket is one of the globe’s most desirable retirement havens, drawing thousands of retirees to its sandy shores. In addition, the demographics of the local Thai populace indicate that Thailand is a rapidly aging society, with 21 per cent of the population already over the age of 55. While many of us think that the effects of aging are…
-
Phuket Pads: Luxury villa shortage in south
PHUKET: The south of the island is facing a shortage of new upmarket villa developments. There are two main reasons for this: higher land and material costs, and more buyer demand for two-bedroom to three-bedroom villas on smaller plot sizes. However, a home is up for grabs in one of the first upmarket luxury villa developments in the south, Rawai…
-
Thinking Green: Protecting our coastlines
PHUKET: “We love our coast and we love the water,” proclaim the founders of the charity organization Sustainable Coastlines, established in New Zealand. “We want to support, protect and be challenged by the sea.” In the past, Phuket’s coastline provided communities with a livelihood from fishing, but this has now moved on to tourism. As a result, today’s great challenge…
-
Gardening: Dealing with pesky pests
PHUKET: In the natural world, things lurch from hero to zero or rescuer to rogue in no time at all. Only last week, I was singing the praises of a crafty coucal, which had rid my tabernaemontanas of a plague of caterpillars. In fact, most birds are superstars, consuming aphids, grasshoppers and scale insects, as well as caterpillars. But in…
-
Balance Matters: Cure for expat homesickness
PHUKET: When I first arrived in Thailand more than 20 years ago, I was filled with excitement and a sense of adventure. I was eager to learn the language and immerse myself in a new culture. I did just that. I explored every crevice of this amazing country and its dramatic landscapes by train, bus and motorbike. I filled myself…
-
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…
-
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,…
-
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…
-
Phuket Boating: Ready to launch a well-earned Siesta
PHUKET: WHEN well-known Phuket yachtie Bob Mott settled on the design for his new 55-foot alloy Catamaran Siesta, little did he know that the project would be more than two years in the making. Now, with the launch slated to be held in Phuket in September this year, Bob relates how his experience offers a great deal of good advice…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Up in the air: DCA rule changes cause turbulence
PHUKET: Ongoing regulatory changes made by the Thai Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) headquarters in Bangkok have left recreational flying enthusiasts throughout the Kingdom scrambling to remain in compliance, Up In The Air has learned. Pat James of AeroPro Management, based at Phuket AirPark in Pa Khlok, said that the administrative adjustments followed a change at the top of the…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Commitment keeps a restaurant alive
PHUKET: What makes a restaurant successful? Many will say it’s the location, but the owners of Rodizio Brazil restaurant add “commitment” to this list, as they prepare to let go of one of their Patong ventures. It’s been a year and a half since Rodizio opened in Patong, in a narrow lane off the beachfront road, near the Patong Tower.…
-
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…
Don't forget to check out some other things to do in Thailand - get help starting a business or finding a job in Thailand, buy Thailand property, rent a yacht or book a medical procedure worldwide.