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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Phuket History: Early Portuguese forays into Siam
PHUKET: The Portuguese were the first European power to arrive in the Far-East and established a diplomatic relationship with Thailand, which at that time was known as the Kingdom of Siam. Portuguese diplomatic missions arrived in Siam in the early 16th Century. During that period the Kingdom’s capital and center of authority was based in the ancient city of Ayutthaya.…
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Phuket Books: Whitey – Life of a Boston mob boss
PHUKET: In Martin Scorsese’s celebrated film, The Departed, Jack Nicholson turns in a bravura performance as a Boston Irish crime boss, throwing a maniacal rant against ‘rats’ (informers) in which he scrunches up his face and flashes rodent-like incisors. It’s one of the great moments of movie history. Ironically, Whitey Bulger, the real Boston mobster upon whom Nicholson’s character was…
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Phuket Life: A botanical cornucopia – Gardening
PHUKET: I have just paid my first visit to the Phuket Botanic Garden. It is a relatively new enterprise, and in the way of novel horticultural enterprises, I did not expect to discover an extensive, superabundant or mature garden. Wrong on all counts. When I emerged two hours later, I felt overwhelmed by the sheer scope and size of the…
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Phuket Tech: New-look Flickr gives users a terabyte of media storage
PHUKET: Popular photo sharing service Flickr recently revamped its website interface and Android app with a new photocentric layout. Perhaps the biggest change aimed at luring more people to their service is the increase of its online storage space to one terabyte per user. The new layout fills the screen with photographs using a black background and minimizing empty space.…
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Phuket Health: Damage in a glass
PHUKET: Newspaper articles often extol the potential health benefits of so-called moderate drinking, but while very small amounts can have some minimally beneficial effects, alcohol is a substance that does far more damage than good. For example, alcohol consumption can induce up to 60 diseases; is the third leading lifestyle-related cause of death; and, in the USA alone, is responsible…
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Phuket Health: Doctor’s orders – Eat more chocolate!
PHUKET: Who doesn’t like dark chocolate? While the bitter taste of an 80 per cent variety might not be to everyone’s taste, recent studies from Harvard Medical School, Boston University School of Medicine, and the German Heart Journal, have shown that dark chocolate intake is associated with a 39 per cent lower risk of heart problems and stroke – that’s…
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Phuket Life: Smooth sailing on the USS Nimitz [VIDEO]
PHUKET: For anyone interested in military aviation, a chance to board the US aircraft carrier USS Nimitz is the opportunity of a lifetime – and a group of lucky Phuket reporters were invited aboard the mammoth floating airfield soon after it anchored off Cape Panwa recently. The Nimitz Strike Group includes the USS Princeton missile cruiser and nine flight squadrons.…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Rice – a whole grain of truth
PHUKET: Rice is the staple food of the Thai diet and one that is consumed in great quantities. From breakfast to dinner, and sometimes well into the night, no Thai meal is ever complete without rice. Nothing beats a bowl of freshly cooked, aromatic Jasmine rice. Considered by Thais the king of all rice, its perfume is redolent of the…
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Phuket Explore: A canter around Lanta – Blazing Saddles
PHUKET: Koh Lanta is about a four-hour drive south of the Sarasin Bridge and has been described by many as ‘paradise postponed’. The reason is that access to this lovely island is constrained by the need to cross two small pieces of sea by two extremely slow and decrepit vehicular ferries, which can take up to two hours to negotiate,…
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Phuket Lifestyle: A great grill experience
PHUKET: When we organized our visit to The Grill at Regent Cape Panwa, the newest luxury resort on the cape, I was intrigued by general manager Brice Borin’s offer to show us the “Regent experience” as he put it. Later that week, sipping a cool drink at the open-air rooftop bar, watching a cruise liner sail off towards the horizon…
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Phuket Gardening: “B’ is for bloomin’ beauties
PHUKET: Well not all bloomin’ beauties. Take bamboo or bambusa for example, it does produce a blossom; after all, flowers are a necessary prelude to the more important business of procreation by seed dispersal. However, bamboo isn’t cultivated for its flowers, but for entirely different reasons. It is grown to create the ramrod-straight canes used commercially in scaffolding, or for…
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Phuket History: Recalling a Thai-Malaysian legacy
PHUKET: One of the most famous historical figures in the history of Phuket and this region, is the late Khaw Sim Bee Na Ranong, better known on Phuket as Praya Rassada. He was the high commissioner of Phuket and the Southwestern region of Siam from 1900 to 1913. He was assassinated 100 years ago in May, 1913. To commemorate his…
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Phuket Property Watch: Beach blanket bingo at Bongo
PHUKET: I can hear the distant pounding of bongos in the night. Of course, once you get passed 50, there is the sudden moment of terror and then the notion your heart is going to thump, thump, thump you right into the afterlife. Are there bongos in heaven or hell? But no, it’s definitely bongo madness out there somewhere in…
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Phuket’s BIS students look to the future
PHUKET: Students from the British International School Phuket (BIS) were all smiles on Friday, May 24 as they celebrated their graduation from the school’s International Baccalaureate (IB) program. There were 47 students in the Class of 2013 and no doubt all of them felt relieved to have completed the intensive two-year IB course. Students now begin the nail-biting wait to…
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Phuket Property: Secure your home by phone
PHUKET: For many property owners in Phuket, security is a constant concern. If you are heading overseas or off-island for travel or business, there was previously no way to monitor your property while you were away. To increase their home security and personal convenience, many people are now turning to the increasingly affordable home automation and security products that have…
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New On On cherishes old memories
PHUKET: The On On Hotel on Phang Nga Road in Phuket Town is now a place you could recommend to your mother. Gone are the cars parked in the atrium, the scary hallways, the worn-out bedrooms whose appearance in the film ‘The Beach’ made it the world’s most famous dive and a magnet for backpackers. The renovation of the hotel,…
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Phuket Gardening: ABC of plants – “A’ is also for almond
PHUKET: A couple of recent inquiries reminded me of another omission in my opening sorties on the subject of ‘A’ plants. Chris Sieber wrote to ask how he could find a source book where he could “find plant names in English, Latin and Thai.” And on the subject of almonds, he added: “About three years ago I brought three green…
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Phuket Books: An education of life in the East
PHUKET: Jerry Hopkins was present at the creation of Rolling Stone magazine and the early hippie days of West Coast rock. After penning the definitive biography of Jim Morrison – No One Here Gets Out Alive – he took off for a long sojourn in Hawaii. He’s been in Thailand now for 20 years, still writing books, three dozen of…
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Fearless forecast for Phuket hotels; Branded residences capture investors’ interest
PHUKET: We are still less than five months into the Year of the Water Snake and as I sit at my desk on a rainy Sunday, my mood turns aquatic. I grind out any thoughts of the past, like stubbing out a spent cigarette with a worn heel of a scuffed pair of working shoes. Not content with only a…
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Phuket Property: A vision for Vista
PHUKET: Situated on a hill among lush landscape overlooking Nai Thon beach, Vista del Mar is an exclusive villa development bordered by landscaped tropical gardens. The recently launched second phase of the development will consist of four smaller villas – 300 square meters, compared to the larger 420 to 700 sqm first phase villas – complete with infinity swimming pools…
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GiVE back!
PHUKET: IT’S not only about rapid off-plan sell-outs for Sansiri Pcl; the real estate market leader is also known for setting the bar high in the realm of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Complementing the success of its Iodine Please and Sansiri Academy projects over the past few years, the property firm has raised the CSR standard yet again, setting a…
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Service-minded sailors to shore up
PHUKET: As the end of May draws near, the crews of the USS Nimitz, a prominent American Navy supercarrier, along with the USS Princeton, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, are set to moor off Phuket for three days of shore leave – but it’s not just leisurely R&R that the crews have their sights on. Faithful crew, male and female,…
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Phuket Food: Discover the delights of durian
PHUKET: The ineffable flavor of the durian has been a source of intense debate among locals and visitors to Southeast Asia for centuries. There have been countless attempts at describing the fruit’s pungent smell and unique taste; it has been likened to roast almonds, rotten onions, old gym socks and even turpentine. While everyone has a different way of describing…
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Airborne Virus spreads science across the globe
While many visitors arrived at Phuket International Airport in the run-up to last month’s Songkran Festival, a French couple, whose microlight aircraft landed there on April 11 for safety reasons, raised more than a few eyebrows at the busy facility. Stephen Fein reports:PHUKET: The couple, 31-year-old Adrien Normier and his fiancée Clementine Bacri, 28, are on an around-the-world journey of…
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Phuket Gardening: Alpha shrubs start with ‘A’
PHUKET: Last week we considered annuals, but today it is the turn of their big brothers – the shrubs and ornamental trees that form the backbone of any tropical garden (click here for last week’s article). Acalypha hispida, also known as the chenille plant or red cat’s tail, is alphabetically the first to come under scrutiny. Unlike its cousin, A.…
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Phuket Cinema: Funny ghost love story breaks Thai box office records
PHUKET: Thailand’s top grossing movie of all time, ‘Pee Mak Phrakanong’, stars five war buddies with black teeth and silly hairstyles. One still wears a toddler’s topknot of the Rattanakosin period, explaining, “I got sick when I was a kid and mom vowed that if I recovered I’d keep this hairstyle forever.”They face a fierce enemy together, suffer terribly, and…
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Phuket Diving: Seahorse lovers asked to saddle up
PHUKET: Project Seahorse calls on all divers and marine enthusiasts to help with the recently launched three-year project aimed at studying the seahorses of Thailand. Seahorses were one of the first fish species to be added, in 2004, to Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which demands that countries…
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Phuket Education: Middle years program excels
PHUKET: In a recent edition of the British newspaper, the Weekly Telegraph (February 12-19, 2013), Suzi Dixon examines the lot of internationally mobile parents seeking an appropriate education for their children. Essentially, she compares International Baccalaureate (IB) programs with the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE). Ms Dixon begins her article by noting that many schools use curricula specially…
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Phuket Property Watch: How same-same drove me insane
PHUKET: It was a rainy Tuesday night, just last week, when I rolled over in bed and casually glanced at my wife, enveloped in the dark shadows of sleep. Suddenly, my heartbeat turned staccato, as it dawned on me that the woman next to me had not the familiar face of my wife, but, shockingly, turned out to be my…
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New “pads’ for Phuket’s students
PHUKET: With land prices surging and many new condominium projects sprouting up across the island, competition to penetrate new market segments is heating up. Up to this point, much of the focus has been on Phuket’s working and high-end groups. Meanwhile, lingering demand among other niche segments has been largely overlooked, if not ignored by developers. Seeing and seizing an…
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