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.
-
Sponsored Siam Paragon and Bangkok Pride proudly celebrates Pride Month from May 31 – June 4, 2024
To mark Pride Month and Thailnd’s milestone of being the first Southeast Asian country to legalise same-sex marriage, Siam Paragon, a top-of-mind global destination, for Thais and international visitors, in collaboration with Bangkok Pride proudly supports and empowers the diversity,...
-
Outrigger gets new Executive Vice President
PHUKET: Global marketing expert Sean Dee has joined the Outrigger executive team as executive vice president and chief marketing officer. The new appointment was recently announced by David Carey, president and CEO of Outrigger Enterprises Group. As the company’s new global brand steward, Dee is responsible for developing and deploying the global marketing and brand strategies for Outrigger Enterprises Group,…
-
Khao Lak finds its way forward
PHUKET: These days, everywhere you turn, the news is focused on Phuket fever. From soaring airport arrival numbers and surging hotel occupancy rates to, of course, the sordid underbelly of mass tourism. But the resort destination known as ‘Greater Phuket’ is no ‘one trick pony’. Nearby Khao Lak has certainly been kicking up its heels lately as Fortuna’s wheel of…
-
Brave diving leads to wondrous discoveries in sands off Phuket
PHUKET: Turn your back on the reef. This isn’t an orientation dive to test your ability to get back to the corals. Turn your back on the safety of the gorgonian sea fans, staghorn corals and saffron-colored clam, and start kicking – be brave. Following the lead of Vince Moy from Kiwidiver, we stomp across the sand of Kata Beach…
-
Phuket Lifestyle: Let’s lunch at La Moon
PHUKET: On the way to Surin Beach, as you pass through Cherng Talay, if you’re feeling a bit hungry you should make a stop at La Moon restaurant. La Moon’s owner ‘Khun Ging’ is sitting with some local Thai families, sharing a communal meal and exchanging the latest family news when we arrive. Ever the perfect hostess, Khun Ging soon…
-
Phuket International Boat Show will be in January
PHUKET: The Phuket International Boat Show (PIMEX), ‘Asia’s favorite boat show’, which has been held in March for the last two years, will now return to its previous date slot and will next be held from January 9-12, 2014 at Royal Phuket Marina said Andy Dowden, show director. “Following feedback from the 10th anniversary show earlier this year, we have…
-
The stork and the snail
PHUKET: As we all know to our cost, snails are the gardener’s bane. Today’s subject, however, is not about the common or garden variety creature that hides in the day and slides and slithers around at night to devour your seedlings, but another, more exotic species. Perhaps it merits a less disparaging mention in dispatches. The species in question is…
-
Phuket Property: Asking for a second opinion
PHUKET: Many times prospective buyers of property in Thailand search online for legal information in regards to their purchase. They soon discover that online legal advice varies depending on the law office, lawyer or advisor providing the information. In some cases advice is given which recommends that to secure an investment in property a Thai company should be incorporated to…
-
Phuket Property Watch: The season of our discontent
PHUKET: Anyone who has ever taken a cross-country road trip can certainly understand the blurred state of fatigue known as ‘white line fever’; late night driving as the music drums steadily into the oncoming darkness. This is the time that your imagination wreaks havoc in the mulched up madness of what can be summed up as “too far, too long…
-
Phuket People: Prapa Hemmin
PHUKET: At the photo session prior to our interview, Prapa Hemmin looks dazzling in an electric blue dress and matching necklace. Still, she apologizes, “Sorry if I don’t look my best today. I am in the middle of an important project, the nature of which keeps me awake at night and the fatigue is ruining my complexion.” As Director of…
-
Fine dining at Phuket’s NINE
PHUKET: In the three months since it opened, the NINE Wine Bar and Bistro, tucked away in a cozy corner at the Royal Place, has brought a fresh new dining treat to Phuket. For those of you who fly past the Tesco Lotus intersection to enter the bypass road speedway, try and slow down a bit and you’ll see the…
-
Phuket Books: The new wave general
PHUKET: General David Petraeus is justly famous for introducing a sophisticated counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq that averted a catastrophic civil war and led to an orderly American withdrawal. Previously, American troops had been stationed in huge forts from which they would venture forth in under-armored vehicles, which fell prey again and again to roadside bombs. Petraeus introduced a badly needed…
-
Phuket Gardening: The ABCs of plant names
PHUKET: “A” is for arbitrary – which is what the articles that follow will inevitably be. How else to describe in the same breath, an array of plants as different as acalyph (also known as the red cat’s tail) and the golden allamanda. “A” also represents excellence, so I hope the ensuing choice of plants will reflect that principle. In…
-
Phuket Explore: Low-tech heaven
PHUKET: It is perhaps a little known fact that residents of Phuket, the island renowned for its sandy beaches and crystal clear water, are always on the lookout for a holiday getaway somewhere else. The reasons? Increasingly crowded beaches and expensive hotels that offer little value for money. So when a friend told us about a tent-hotel on an isolated…
-
Phuket In Focus: Dreaming in black and white
PHUKET: Members of the Phuket Darkroom Club (PDC) will have their first exhibition of black and white photography at the Chalermraja Cultural Centre, Phuket Town from May 1-14. The works on display are portraits of heritage and culture that capture the love Phuketians have for their home, through the lens of a black and white camera. Audiences will enjoy rare…
-
Phuket Tech: Woody retires but ‘Live Wire’ lives on
PHUKET: This week’s column marks the end of my eleventh year as a Phuket Gazette columnist and, as of the end of this month, I’m retiring in Thailand – something I probably should’ve done years ago. Just too many irons in the fire, and my family has had to put up with a lot. Although I’m hanging up my keyboard…
-
AREA punctures bubble scare
PHUKET: Recent speculation that Thailand’s real estate market is on the verge of collapsing, is far from the current reality, the head of a major real estate services firm has insisted. The President of the Agency for Real Estate Affairs Company Limited (AREA), Dr Sopon Pornchokchai, PhD, has once again shunned news report warnings of an imminent property bubble burst.…
-
Phuket Property: Cleat condos add to Krabi
PHUKET: The Cleat condominium, a residence in the Krabi Boat Lagoon, recently announced the exciting launch of a new phase of the project. Phase 1 was first launched in March of this year, with 15 units set to be complete by June. The Cleat offers low-rise waterfront condos, has four buildings with a total of 62 units, and is located…
-
Phuket People: Rittidat Kodsan
PHUKET: Tucked away halfway up Rang Hill, in Phuket Town, is the small office of the National Broadcasting Services of Thailand, Phuket (NBTP), the production house of the town’s only national television station, Channel 11. The 15-year-old station is tiny and quaint – if somewhat run-down. Its setting is made more rustic surrounded by a virgin forest overrun with creepers…
-
Phuket Gardening: Treasures in your garden
PHUKET: If you asked a stranger propping up a bar why he lived in Phuket, he would probably reply – in no particular order – the girls, the climate, the easy, smiley lifestyle and the cheap cost of living. I doubt he would mention the all-too ephemeral beauty of the place, or the sheer convenience of life on the island.…
-
Phuket Pets: Dog(s) of the week – Angel and Silver
PHUKET: My baby (Angel) and I (Silver) are madly in love and spend most of our days curled up in the corner snuggling together. A few months ago we were found and rescued from a local animal holding facility. Our owners dumped us there in bad health, since they were going away on holiday and didn’t know what to do…
-
Phuket Tech: The death of Windows – Live Wire
PHUKET: In the past week, the Windows world received quite a shock. First IDC, then Gartner – the two biggest names in computer industry prognostications – announced that, for the first time ever, shipments of new PCs had declined, year-on-year from the first quarter of 2012 to the first quarter of 2013. And the declines were substantial: somewhere between 11…
-
Phuket Humor: In praise of sitting
PHUKET: A recent article claimed that too much sitting can kill you. It causes heart attacks, diabetes and a bigger bum. The author worried about the health of people who spend all their working days sitting in cubicles in front of computers, then go home to spend their entire evenings sitting in front of TV sets. Indeed, I have often…
-
Slave to the bean
PHUKET: I’ve just checked out of the emergency room, covered in bandages not dissimilar to those worn by the damaged star of the movie The English Patient, or perhaps more fittingly, Return of the Mummy. Anyway, same-same but different, said the man outside the sliding hospital door. My horrific accident that will no doubt result in permanent scars, comes from…
-
Two Phuket hotels honored at DestinAsian Reader’s Awards
PHUKET: The JW Marriott Phuket Resort & Spa was named the Best Hotel in Phuket in the 8th annual DestinAsian Readers’ Choice Awards 2013, while the spa arm of the Banyan Tree brand was named Top Hotel Spa in the Asia-Pacific region. On Phuket’s beautiful Mai Khao Beach, the luxury 265-room JW Marriott Phuket Resort & Spa is set across…
-
Up-country condo market not flooded
PHUKET: The head of the Agency for Real Estate Affairs Company Limited (AREA), has rejected reports that Thailand’s key up-country condominium markets are currently being oversupplied. The markets in question include Phuket, Chiang Mai, Pattaya, Khon Kaen as well as the Gulf of Thailand coastline stretch between Hua Hin and Cha-am. AREA President, Dr Sopon Pornchokchai, PhD, said that such…
-
Portrait of a modern day backpacker
PHUKET: Just as Americans are fond of saying, “We were all immigrants once,” so old expats in Thailand say: “We were all backpackers once.” Though some first came with the military or on teaching contracts, it’s true that most of us first stepped foot in Thailand as backpackers. Technically, I was never a backpacker. In 1976, I carried my kit…
-
Phuket Gardening: Wallflowers and blushing violets
PHUKET: The English language has a wealth of expressions for reticent or modest behavior. “Take a back seat” is one; another, with a biblical provenance, talks of “hiding your light under a bushel”. Brought up as children on AA Milne’s tales, older Phuket Gazette readers may recall Winnie the Pooh saying: “it’s not much of a tail, but I’m sort…
-
Relearning the balance of life
PHUKET: French national Roland Fabre, 34, was an up-and-coming Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter, up until about five years ago, when his life changed forever – seemingly for the worse. Approaching the height of his career, he was just starting to make waves in professional MMA rings in both the US and Japan. Then, during one particular fight in Japan,…
-
Phuket People: Siriporn Tantipanyathep
PHUKET: The reception area of the Phuket Passport Office is teeming with people waiting to apply for their travel documents. Officers dressed smartly in Nyonya style – women in sarongs and Kebaya blouses and men wearing Batik print shirts – give an air of friendly efficiency.“It’s part of the governor’s initiative to promote local culture,” says Passport Chief Siriporn Tantipanyathep.…
-
Boiling down a life of rice
PHUKET: It’s not easy to find staff for a boiled rice shop in Phuket Town. Sometimes new employees run away after just one day. It might have something to do with the starting time… 4am, or the regular days off… none. But Nalinee “Ann” Sukjaroen has been working at the Boiled Rice Shop on Dibuk Road for the past 25…
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.