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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Phuket Property: Condominium law since 2008
PHUKET: In a move to address numerous complaints from condominium buyers, the Thai government enacted the Condominium Act No 4 (2008), which significantly expanded the scope of consumer protection by amending several provisions of the original Condominium Act made thirty years previously. The original Act has been amended three times in attempts to keep the law up to date with…
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Phuket Business: Tune in, turn on, pass out
PHUKET: Complementing the recent opening of the Tune Hotel Asoke in Bangkok, Phuket is looking to welcome its own premium yet low-cost, frills-optional hotel, to open in Patong in December. Owned and operated under a franchise agreement by Red Planet Hotels, the growing Tune brand presence in Thailand expands on existing branches in Haad Yai and Pattaya. Tune Hotels is…
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Phuket Diving: Knowledge trumps beauty of ignorance
PHUKET: A brilliantly colored mantis shrimp (stomatopoda) pops out of its burrow and scurries towards a broken piece of coral. Its legs spin out below it like the Road Runner – but it’s not that fast, at least its legs aren’t. We kneel in the sand to watch the biological wonder. It looks almost comical as it arches its head…
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Phuket History: Remembering an art master
PHUKET: Thai art students and enthusiasts recently celebrated Silpa Bhirasri Day, a Thai holiday, which is designated to commemorate the legacy of the late ‘Father of Modern Thai Art’. “Life is short … art is longer”, was the motto of Professor Silpa Bhirasri, an Italian sculptor who was born Corrado Feroci in 1892. Feroci came to Thailand at the age…
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Phuket Gardening: Red for danger
PHUKET: Today’s piece was intended to focus on shrubs, beautiful and not armored, but still unlikely to find a place in a garden frequented by children due to their poisonous qualities. But, another small tree has temporarily upstaged them. I was on a trip around Phuket, and ended up, literally, in a small soi which, as they often do, terminated…
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Phuket Property: Land art made from the heart
PHUKET: Phuket has participated in a project entitled ‘The King’s Land Art Project’ using Niwet Silpa, or ‘Land Art’ inspired by nine different national artists and erected in nine provinces around Thailand. Each of the nine designs across the Kingdom represent His Majesty’s talents and projects and range in size from four to 20 rai. The Phuket project was taken…
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Phuket Property: GM Christoph Berger stays with Outrigger
PHUKET: Outrigger Hotels and Resorts Asia-Pacific, who announced in July an agreement to buy the Phuket Beach Resort in Laguna, has retained Mr Christoph Berger as the General Manager of the Phuket resort. The beach front property is scheduled to reopen it’s doors on April 1, 2013. When it reopens, the new Outrigger Phuket Beach Resort will include a spa,…
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Phuket Environment: Fishing till the seas run dry
PHUKET: There are certain indisputable facts about fish. With very few exceptions, they look good, taste good and they do you good. Dietitians recommend at least two fishy portions a week. So-called “oily fish” – herring, mackerel, salmon, tuna and sardines – are especially good for you since they contain omega 3 fatty acids that help keep immune systems healthy…
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Land of smiles: Ye olde Curmudgeon’s imaginary interview
PHUKET: In the wake of the recent Republican convention, I thought I’d do an imaginary interview with US presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Imaginary interviews are always more fun than real ones, because you can make your interviewee say anything you want. This one would go like this:Me: Our readers want to know what experience you have in foreign affairs.Mitt: Well,…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Come fly with me
PHUKET: Suchard ‘Robert’ Raksangob wants to share his enthusiasm for flying airplanes with visitors and residents of Phuket. On Saturday, September 15 from 3pm, he’s inviting anyone with an interest in aviation to join him at the Phuket Airpark in Pa Klok where they can join the Phuket Flying Club.“I flew for more than 25 years with the Thai Flying…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Feeding the gypsy in you
PHUKET: If you’re passing through Cherng Talay, heading down to Surin or Bangtao beaches, you’d have to be blind not to notice the startling yellow and pink building on the left hand side of the road – opposite Tesco Lotus. This is Gitano Restaurant & Love, the latest incarnation of the innovative couple, Miguel Kirjon and Lin Prachakrich. Miguel and…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Expecting moms rejoice
PHUKET: Expats preparing to give birth in their domiciled home-away-from-home, will be happy to know of a new website recently launched. ExpectingExpats.com provides a forum for pregnant expat women and new mothers living in Thailand and adjoining countries to share their experiences, learn from one another, ask questions and seek advice. The first website of its kind in Thailand, ExpectingExpats.com…
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Phuket Diving: Out of the shadows ye self-reliant scuba diver
PHUKET: Ten years, five years, even two years ago, any conversations approaching the idea of “solo” diving were held in hushed voices in the back of small bars between experienced divers, or in the depths of online cave-diving forums. ‘Buddy diving’ was a philosophy heralded by Jacques Cousteau and the crew of the Calypso as early as the writing of…
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Phuket Gardening: A holy trinity of jasmines
PHUKET: What do the following tropical plants have in common? Jasminum, buddleia paniculata, gardenia, murraya, plumeria, wrightia, fiddlewood, alstonia, michelia alba, cestrum nocturnum. Well, actually they have two points of similarity. One, they are all white flowering shrubs or trees; two, they are all sweet-smelling. I have placed the jasmine first in the above list because, along with the lotus,…
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Phuket Property: The future expansion of Central
PHUKET: THE Central Group have engaged in dialogue about the prospects of expanding Central Festival Phuket to include the land situated on its south side across Wichit Songkram Road. The leasing rights to develop the 30-rai (48,000 square meters) plot, currently occupied by the iconic Thai Naan restaurant, were recently acquired by Central, the Phuket Gazette has learned. The dialogue…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Hanging out at the Monkeypod
PHUKET: We’ve been hearing about an exciting new dining experience out in the newly fashionable eastern zone of the island, past the Heroine’s Monument, but we were surprised to find such an elegant white designer restaurant as Monkeypod Coffeehouse sitting at the side of the road in Pa Klok.Monkeypod is the creation of Chaiyos Pinpradab, a local Phuketian who studied…
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Phuket Lifestyle: A place for old bones
PHUKET: Dinosaurs are taking a holiday in Phuket, along with all the other old bones on the island, in a travelling museum exhibition which opened on August 28. The free-entry exhibition, about paleontological and geological discoveries in Thailand, will be open daily at the Phuket Marine Biological Center (PMBC) between 8:30am and 4:30pm until September 16. “Our aim is to…
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Phuket Lifestyle: On the road to Mandalay
PHUKET: Thailand’s western neighbor, Myanmar (Burma), is now one of the hottest destination for a holiday. After decades of international boycotts and sanctions, the April elections in Myanmar brought not just hopes of democracy and investment, but also a surge in travellers once reluctant to journey to this amazing land. If you want to see Myanmar at its best, don’t…
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Land of Smiles: The mallification of Phuket
PHUKET: Get ready, Phuket people. It’s coming. It has already saturated Bangkok, and is moving rapidly southward, like an alien slime. I’m talking about mallification: the process by which a nation becomes overrun with enormous shopping malls. Now the mallification of Bangkok has progressed to the point where they are considering appointing a Minister of Malls to oversee the process.…
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Phuket Property: Baan Bua brings Nai Harn Luxury
PHUKET: Nai Harn has long been a popular area of Phuket among expats and holiday makers. The sense of being on Phuket, but in an area that feels a bit isolated from the rest of the island is one of the draws, along with the beautiful beach and lush landscape. Nai Harn Baan Bua was launched in 1999 and now…
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Phuket Property: Natural Selection
PHUKET: Kamala is an area full of designer condos and luxurious sprawling villas. To really find any privacy and escape the construction in a part of Phuket that’s being built every hour of every day is no easy task. Kamala Waterside will be a tropical oasis situated on one rai of land in one of the most sought after addresses…
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Phuket Diving: Just take a deep breath
PHUKET: Nobody wants to be the “heavy breather” – especially when you’re diving in Phuket’s waters. Unfortunately, they are out there, and for sometime I was one. My breathing was the limiting factor on any dive and not my decompression limit. Most instructors, dive masters and dive buddies are nice about it, but prematurely coming to the surface can hurt…
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Phuket Gazette: Book and film review
PHUKET: Oliver Stone’s new movie is Savages, a thriller about the drug trade in Laguna Beach, California. Starring a roll call of Hollywood A-listers – Blake Lively, Salma Hayek, Benicio Del Toro, John Travolta – the film is based on a crime novel by Don Winslow. A former Private Investigator in real life, Winslow has written 15 novels and is…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Mermaids do exist
PHUKET: We all know the power of a beautiful woman. It isn’t the power of brute strength – they have a much subtler influence. Sirens can confuse even the cleverest among men. In Homer’s The Odyssey, sirens sang an enchanted song to Odysseus and his crew. The song caused them to steer off course towards jagged cliffs – nearly colliding…
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Phuket Lifestyle: Paying it forward with a gift that keeps on giving
PHUKET: A student from Phuket who was forced to turn to charity to fulfill his dream of becoming a doctor has graduated as one of this year’s top honors graduates from Prince of Songkhla University in Nakhon Pathom. Thirawat Jewpakanon won first class honors, was named as a top-ten student in a class of 190, led his 30-member intern rankings…
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Phuket student wins national English-language speech award
PHUKET: Phuket Wittayalai School student Tevin Thiplueporn was among the winners in a national English-language speech competition organized by the Ministry of Education earlier this month. Winner of the Matthayom 4-6 category in the National Speech Contest 2012, Tevin impressed the judges with his off-the-cuff speech on the topic:”How to Encourage People to Enhance English Ability”. “Among tips of effective…
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Phuket Lifestyle: The big zipper
PHUKET: Keeping with the idea that people and modern primates were once related by a distant cousin, I’d like to make a comparison. Humans are social like primates, we use tools like they do and we have the same urge to swing recklessly through the tops of trees for sheer amusement. Such amusement is available in our back yard (a…
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Discovering Phuket’s “must have’ fashions
PHUKET: Trends in fashion can be bewildering from one generation to another, but they help us to recognize significant periods and events in time. This is true for Europe and other Western cultures, but it doesn’t seem to work like that for people living here in Asia. Spotting what will become a trend is something designers can do with ease.…
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Phuket Diving: PADI centers clean up Phuket
PHUKET: After coming face to face with shattered coral reef systems all over the world and confronting messes of plastic bags and tangled fishing nets, which are not-so-slowly strangling one of the world’s most important ecosystems, divers understand the importance of reef cleanups. There is of course that feeling of only delaying the inevitable, but isn’t that why we try…
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Phuket Property: Resort-property sales lag behind tourism
PHUKET: The hotel business in Phuket is booming as tourists flood the island, but sales of resort properties have failed to benefit, according to CBRE Research’s Phuket Property Report.“Despite healthy increases in tourism arrivals, [for now we are not] seeing a proportional increase in sales in the resort property market. Rising tourism numbers are mainly from Asia, whose tourists have…
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