PHUKET: The daily wrap of Thailand news, with a Phuket perspective, plus relevant reports from national and international media. Beware of inconsistent imitations.
nationmultimedia.com Russian and Chinese visitors accounted for 38 percent of international airport arrivals to Phuket in 2012, according to consulting firm C9 Hotelworks. This trend is consistent with Thailand’s continued surge in the mass market where last year more than three million visitors from China and Russia came to the country.
bbc.co.uk Singapore and Malaysia have announced plans for a high-speed rail link, with a target completion date of 2020. The link would reduce travel time between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur to 90 minutes.
Phuket Update Phuket Governor Governor Maitree Inthusut is to provide 30-hour courses in basic English to 30 Phuket journalists as part of an education program for tourism and the Asean Economic Community in 2016.
abcnews.go.com Olympian Oscar Pistorius denied that he willfully killed his girlfriend, telling a South African court that he shot the woman through his bathroom door because he believed she was an intruder.
news.com.au The Olympic runner says he believed he would be forced to fight an intruder in total darkness without his prosthetic limbs. ”It filled me with horror and fear” he said about the moments before he fired shots into the bathroom door.
guardian.couk Belgian police are looking for eight masked gunmen who stole tens of millions of pounds worth of jewels from a security van that was loading the hold of a Switzerland-bound plane. Staff at Brusels airport were loading safes full of diamonds bound for Zurich.
news.com.au Shocking pictures have emerged of a group of asylum seekers rescued after two months at sea as they desperately tried to reach Australia. The 31 men and a boy had been at sea without food for 21 days when the Sri Lanka Navy rescued them after being informed by a local fishing boat.
huffingtonpost.com That the Burman majority that makes up 60 percent of Myanmar’s population has been engaged since the end of World War II in an ethnic cleansing campaign against 135 other ethnic minorities here is a modern tragedy. That the cleansing campaign continues in some villages to this day is an ongoing outrage that the world must bring to an end.
THE NEW Outrigger Laguna Phuket Beach Resort, has appointed Italian Roberto Conrad as Executive Chef and Dane Anders Olesen as Pastry Chef. The 255-key absolute beachfront holiday resort opens March 15.
bangkokpost.com Nok Air is unperturbed by criticism that it exploited women’s bodies as a marketing tool in its 2013 calendar featuring bikini-clad Maxim models. The budget airline is already promising that the 2014 calendar will be at least as daring.
nationmultimedia.com The Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservations is to campaign in Phuket and other tourism destinations to advise shops to stop selling ivory to foreign tourists.
AP Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio has called on the Thai government to ban ivory. DiCaprio sent an email to friends and supporters to sign a petition to Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra over the wildlife trade.
bangkokpost.com Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubamrung has appointed nine members of the Wadah group as his advisers on the deep South. The move has been criticised as some members of the group have been linked to insurgents in the region.
bangkokpost.com Want to win the hearts and minds of the Malay Muslims in the restive South? Stop thinking about using military force. Think instead of how to give them back their region’s once abundant food. Trawlers hurt not only the southern Muslim fisherfolk, but the whole country.
cnn.com Well-armed, motivated and increasingly audacious, the Muslim insurgency in the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, Satun and Songkhla has emerged with a clear goal: the creation of a separate Muslim state for the region’s 1.8 million Muslim ethnic Malays.
nationmultimedia.com The Business Development Department is closely examining the operations of 82 Phuket-based businesses suspected of breaching the Foreign Business Act, which prohibits foreigners from owning more than 49 percent of Thai companies.
scmp./com Sales of Hong Kong hotel rooms as residential flats will cut the city’s supply of accommodation and harm tourism, the Tourism Board has warned.
nooga.com The newspaper as we know it is dying. No matter how great a newspaper is, fewer and fewer people are going to buy it or subscribe to it.
ft.com The parent company of the publisher of 91-year-old Reader’s Digest magazine has filed for its second bankruptcy in four years as it seeks to slash $465m in debt amid wider pressure on print publications.
channelnewsasia.com A group of 26 Singaporean tourists lost some $50,000 in Italy when their belongings were stolen from their tour bus in Rome. The theft took place on the second last day of their 10-day holiday.
bangkokpost.com The Tourism Authority of Thailand chief has apologised to the families of the British couple who were killed by a pickup on a cycling trip. Comment: The TAT should have a department staffed with hundreds of workers whose job it is to apologise to visitors/victims.
goal.com Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal need a miracle in Munich to qualify for the quarter-finals after being completely outclassed by Bayern Munchen 1-3 in their home leg.
cnn.com Australian swimming officials have vowed to ”win back the admiration of a nation” following the release of a damning report that blamed a ”toxic” team environment at London 2012 which led to the country’s worst Olympic pool performance in 20 years.
February 21 Tsunami practice, Karon beach
February 22-March 2 Otop Fair, Saphan Hin public park, Phuket City. Day and night fair for food and fun, with produce and handicrafts from Phuket and all over Thailand on sale. Otop signifies one village, one product.
February 25 Makha Bucha Day (Public Holiday)
March 2 Phuket FC v BBCU FC Away
March 10 Phuket FC v Bangkok FC at Surakul Stadium, Phuket City
March 16 Phuket FC v Sriracha Suzuki FC at Surakul Stadium, Phuket City
March 21-24 Phuket Boat Show (Pimex) Royal Phuket Marina
March 31 Easter Sunday
April 6 Chakri Memorial Day (holiday the following Monday)
April 13-17 Songkran New Year Festival
May 1 National Labor Day
October 5-13 Phuket Vegetarian Festival
November 8-10 Long Distance Triathlon, Patong beach
December 5 HM The King’s birthday
November 14-21 Fourth Asia Beach Games, Phuket
Phuket Masses Multiply; Singapore KL Speed Link; Phuket Ivory Warning ...
