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 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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Go-Eco Phuket takes on the ocean’s silent killer
PHUKET: Rubbish. It is ugly; it costs local communities and economies; and it destroys wildlife. Every year tens of thousands of marine creatures, mammals and birds die because of the litter we drop or the fishing nets we abandon and lose at sea. If you are fed up with seeing your local dive site trashed, or rubbish left on Phuket…
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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 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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Phuket Lifestyle: Authentic Kopi
PHUKET: If you happen to be in downtown Phuket and want a respite from the heat and a quick bite with refreshing drinks, you’d do no better than dropping at Kopi de Phuket on Phuket Road. Kopi, a Hokkien Chinese term derived from the English word “coffee,” is used up and down the Malay Peninsular to mean either coffee or…
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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: 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 Property: Drifting along the right track
PHUKET: Drift Interiors is an up and coming design company based out of a stylish Sino-Portuguese town house on Krabi Road in Phuket Town. Creative Director Craig Paterson and his Creative Partner Khun Yoo have worked their artistic flair on a number of projects ranging from resorts to residential villas on Phuket. Craig spoke to the Phuket Gazette.Phuket Gazette: What…
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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 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: Secret dinners keep guests guessing
PHUKET: Picture Phuket in 1785 (called Thalang then) when most of the island was still covered in virgin rain forest. Local people lived off the bounty of the nearby forests – roots, vines, leaves, barks, fruits, and seeds – and fresh seafood from the Andaman sea. At the time, when synthetic medicine was unheard off, people believed in the healing…
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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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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: Zcape condos
PHUKET: Local property investors are confident that Tri Property’s affordable new Zcape Condominium, currently under construction near Laguna, is just what Phuket’s residential property market needs. More than 70 per cent of Zcape’s smartly-designed compact units were reserved within days of the sales office opening at the site of the new, low-density development on Baandon Cherng-Talay Rd. Conceived by Bangkok-based…
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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 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 Gardening: Top operators hedge bets
PHUKET: Driving around Phuket today, I was interested to see what plants were being utilized in new developments: as ornamental additions to reception areas, flanking boundary walls, or as borders and hedges. It makes doleful reading, but it is sadly the case that almost all budget-priced condominiums and shop-houses – and there is a rash of new ones – simply…
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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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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 Gardening: Raising the roof
PHUKET: Have you ever felt surplus to requirements? I certainly did on a recent visit to a penthouse roof garden in Royal Phuket Marina. So imaginative in conception and so meticulously tended, there seemed little I could suggest to enhance its lavish charms. Of course, there are roof gardens and then there are roof gardens.Some are actually constituted of a…
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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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Phuket Diving: Gear and skills part the waters
PHUKET: When was the last time something truly fresh hit the dive market? Yes, every year we get niftier regulators, more swanky dive watches and new fin designs that we can’t resist at least window-shopping for. But, when was the last time something was put on the market for recreational divers that really parted the waters – changed the way…
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Phuket People: Raise a toast to a coffee roast
PHUKET: Each cup of coffee served at Hock Hoe Lee has more than 50 years of history steeped inside. It’s a taste to be savored. Three generations of one Phuket family have worked tirelessly to create the coffee served up today at Hock Hoe Lee, which has shops in town and in Rawai. Back in 1958, when Chinese migrant Cheng…
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