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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Holiday Inn opens in Ao Nang
PHUKET: The Holiday Inn brand has arrived on the coastline of Krabi with the company taking over the 55-guestroom Sala Talay Resort and Spa on Ao Nang beach recently. “We are pleased to announce the initial phase of the opening of our first Holiday Inn property in this beautiful region of Krabi.” says Steve Ng, the general manager of the…
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Phuket Property Watch: Location, location, location
PHUKET: Reading the above headline you would have to believe that either I somehow suffered a momentary nervous breakdown, or else those three drinks before dinner were triple shots. Does the truth lay at the bottom of a glass, obscured from sight by the swirling ghost of a melting ice cube? Probably not. There isn’t much poetic license in real…
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Phuket Gardening: Adding yet more green to your living spaces
PHUKET: For years – five to be precise – I have kept about fifteen plants, potted in ceramic containers, on the patio outside my front door. The original idea came from my Thai partner who wanted “lucky plants” to grace and guard the entrance to the house. So we slowly acquired some of these talismans, mostly with unknown botanical names.…
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Phuket Books: The resident fashionista of Guantanamo
PHUKET: Norman Mailer was never known for his generosity to young writers. The one author he did adopt was the convict Jack Abbott, author of the prison memoir, In the Belly of the Beast. Mailer championed his cause and when Abbott was released from prison, he promptly stabbed a waiter to death. But Alex Gilvarry has been named a Norman…
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Phuket Tech: A 3G auction in a 4G world
PHUKET: In last week’s Live Wire, I talked about the recent “3G auction,” wherein AIS, DTAC and TrueMove each acquired three of their own channels near the 2.1 GHz frequency, for delivering 3G services. The auction, plagued by delays, infighting, legal drama, bureaucratic wheel spinning, political machinations, and an unknown amount of tea changing hands, has finally brought legitimate HSPA/HSPA+…
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Phuket Property: Looking to expand in Asia
PHUKET: After an absence of two and a half years, Regent Hotels & Resorts is setting its sights on finding three properties to manage in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Hua Hin. The company currently manages a property in Phuket which is expected to open in December. Regent Phuket Cape Panwa offers 105 rooms and expects to keep 50 per cent…
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Phuket Property: Let it spin, spin, spin…
PHUKET: I’m in the midst of Sunday Bloody Sunday. Yes, the day journey to the crux has left me on the virtual edge of the cliff. There is no turning back. Is this jig up? Mastering the art of confusion takes practice. Jumping onto the turntable of life just keeps you returning back to the start all over again. This…
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Phuket Diving: Rise into Cathedral’s darkness
PHUKET: Our dive team surfaces into the blackness of “The Cathedral”, torch beams bounce off the yellow walls and catch stalactites hanging from the ceiling like delicate icicles well above us. With BCDs inflated the team relaxes. Below, the water glows, changing from a sapphire blue to an emerald green within the depths – this is Koh Haa Yai. In…
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Phuket Gardening: The three o’clock flower
PHUKET: Today we consider two purple bloomers new to these columns. One, the Indian rhododendron (melastoma malabathricum), with flowers a glorious shade of deep magenta, was discovered by your correspondent in a garden center on Chao Fa West, south of Phuket Town, better known for its range of rustic stone. For a moment I wondered whether it was the same…
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Phuket Life: 100 US Navy service projects in Phuket
PHUKET: THE USS Peleliu returned to Phuket recently and conducted the US Navy’s 100th Community Service Project in the greater Phuket area. In June 2006, the Rotary Club of Patong approached the US Navy Attaché’s office in the US Embassy in Bangkok about doing community service projects together with the US Navy ships that visited Phuket for rest & relaxation.…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Charity golf drive to empower rural school
PHUKET: The Phuket Real Estate Association (P-REA) will hold a charity golf tournament on Saturday at the Phuket Country Club in Kathu to raise money to support Koh Mapraw School. A press conference was held by the P-REA on October 12 at Phuket Country Club where P-REA president Thanusak Phungdet told the gathered media about the objective of the ‘P-REA…
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Phuket Gardening: More entries in the Annual Report
PHUKET: Last weeks’ list of annuals in the Phuket Gazette were predictable choices. The only surprise was that all of them even the so-called African marigold originated in America. Impatiens balsamina is a bit different, not just because it is Asian, but because it took me a while to discover its identity. But it is not uncommon. In fact the…
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Phuket Diving: Re-breather revolution
PHUKET: The pool is silent. Three divers, but not a sound. Then, right before our ascent, we flip the switch on our regulators to open-circuit. There is a roar of bubbles that destroys the silence – it’s inappropriate. Yet in reality, up until my recreational re-breather “Try Dive”, a cacophony of bubbles ballooning in my face was all I had…
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Phuket Food: Chalong’s Rimtang
PHUKET: The first thing you notice when walking into Rimtang@Chalong, Phuket, is its smart ambiance. Past the intricately carved wooden door, is a light and airy space, tastefully decorated with Thai objet d’art and minimalist furniture. Tall glass windows invite in the surrounding flower garden and the tantalizing views of Wat Chalong beyond. Talking to the staff, we learn that…
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Phuket Punchline Comedy: Sit down for stand-up
PHUKET: Seasoned stand-up comedians Eddy Brimson, Mickey Hutton and Marcus Ryan are in town for one night of no-holds barred, stand-up comedy at the Holiday Inn, Patong on Wednesday, October 24 at 8pm. This latest onslaught of close-to-the-funny-bone humor features the very best of the UK comedy circuit, namely: Mickey HuttonNewcastle-born comedian Mickey Hutton has performed all over the world…
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Phuket Gardening: An annual event
PHUKET: It’s been about a year since we talked about annuals. So that’s my excuse for returning to them today. The reason annuals don’t get much exposure in these columns is because they only exist for one year and will, like Wimbledon, make their statement – a floral one in this case – just once during that time. Shrubs, on…
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Phuket Books: A question of savages
PHUKET: I picked up Don Winslow’s Savages (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2010, 358pp) with a good deal of eagerness, having just finished the much-lauded prequel The Kings of Cool, which impressed me with its zany energy, veering between screenplay, poetic stanzas and wise-guy syncopated prose, deeply empathic with the surfer/grass dealer ethos of Laguna Beach, California. Winslow is a…
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Phuket Tech: Please play fair
PHUKET: The competitive business world can easily be compared to elite sports. In both, the stakes for winning or losing are extremely high, with people being stretched to constantly deliver their best results. At sports events, ethical behavior and values such as respect, honor and sportsmanship, get utmost importance. Cheating is not tolerated in world-class sports. And, in exactly the…
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Phuket Property: Where have the artists gone?
PHUKET: It’s hard to trace back exactly how Phuket came onto the global stage as a leading beach destination. These days the campfires of old gather round the internet, and storytelling is an arcane memory. While I hear some catcalls from the cheap seats way out back about how the island is finished, and its impending doom signed, sealed and…
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Phuket Gardening: Books on tropical gardening
PHUKET: Much of the knowledge one acquires about plants is learnt in the acid-bath of experience. And certainly there is no substitute for hands-on gardening. How often we find ourselves puzzled by the advice we find in books by so-called “experts”. Nonetheless, we often do need to check things – names, cultural requirements, growing habits and so on. And different…
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Land of smiles: An interview with Higgs Boson
PHUKET: The wonderful world of particle physics is agog at the recent discovery of the ‘Higgs boson’. This is not to be confused with the ‘Higgs bosom’, a stunning anatomical configuration possessed by Miss Fanny Higgs, an exotic dancer in Las Vegas. No. A Higgs boson is a subatomic particle. Through my extensive mafia connections I managed to score an…
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Phuket Lifestyle: The island’s own daredevil
PHUKET: Sometimes Phuket is compared to the Wild West, and, although a bit dramatic, it can be true. You never know what can happen here, or who you might find doing it. The island has a tendency to draw extraordinary individuals. Quiet neighborhoods overlooking the ocean that house the secretly rich and famous. You might meet the person who invented…
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Phuket Tech: Travel apps; Tech tips on start-up
PHUKET: We all take our mobile phones with us when we travel to far away destinations like Phuket, be it for business or relaxation. The costs of international roaming can become truly exorbitant; however, the explosion in phone apps, either free or with nominal download charges, could provide the solution. Most will require an internet connection, though “free WiFi” is…
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Phuket’s divers speak, the world listens
PHUKET: PADI dive professionals, from dive master to instructor examiner, united and made Phuket’s reefs their number one priority by taking part in Go Eco Phuket’s record breaking reef cleanup. Tasked with bringing up the bigger debris and the 4.5 ton net in Banana Bay those on board Khao Lak Scuba Adventures Manta Queen III were obviously excited about the…
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Phuket Property: Thai property investors facing AEC land ownership hurdles, local competition issues
PHUKET: Although the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) will open up opportunities for Thai investors in other countries in the region, the investors will have to be concerned about barriers to entering the property sector in those nations, experts have said.They voiced this view at a seminar titled “AEC: Pros and Cons for the Property Sector”, conducted by the Real Estate…
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Phuket Environment: Jellyfish are back in the spotlight
PHUKET: A piece published recently in a London daily newspaper may have created some unnecessary alarm in Phuket. The story concerned a British tourist who apparently fell overboard while on a boat in Thailand. She was so severely stung by jellyfish that she ended up in hospital with the equivalent of third degree burns, not only excruciatingly painful but which…
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Phuket Books: Peace Corps Redux
PHUKET: What to make of Paul Theroux? He has written 19 novels and 15 travel books. His traveling persona and fictional characters both share a certain mean-spirited crustiness. But, his latest novel The Lower River (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, New York, 2012, 323pp) is written close to the heart. Like Paul Theroux, the narrator Ellis Hock had been a Peace…
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Phuket Gardening: Having it both ways
PHUKET: I am aware that it may sound heinous, but having given the matter some thought, I don’t believe the tropical gardener should be too preoccupied with the hazards of poisonous plants. After all, only a few, such as the lantana, have toxic berries or fruit.Take the allamanda cathartica or ban burii. One of the best of all tropical climbing…
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Phuket History: Look back at the island’s changing climate
PHUKET: Climate change is becoming a big issue in our modern world. Changing temperatures are causing extreme weather conditions, and such changes are being noticed throughout the world. The Arctic ice caps are melting at an alarming rate and sea levels are predicted to rise even faster in coming years. Not only is the climate changing throughout the world, but…
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Land of smiles: Recapping the conventions
PHUKET: Here are some highlights of the recent US political conventions for readers who may have missed them on TV: The main thrust of the Republican convention was to emphasize Mitt Romney’s warm humanity. Mitt reminds people of one of those wooden statues of American Indians that used to stand outside cigar stores. To humanize him, they brought out his…
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