RIP for 2 British Traveler in Kor Tao

Rest in peace for 2 British Traveler in Kor Tao  

we hope the police keep  haunting the murderer soon as soon 

How amaz @phuket (1)

This review from user splendour Cultural Tour pantip.com


Start at Phuket Thai Hua Museum

Watching The Sun going Down at แหลมพรหมเทพ (Laem Phrom Thep) 

you must go early about 1 hr or 30 unless beacuse the car will stop at (Laem Phrom Thep) a lot 

(Wat Buddhamongkolnimit)  

Phuket Festivals

Phuket Festivals

Phuket Vegetarian Festival 

     is held from the first through the ninth nights of the ninth Chinese lunar month; that is, in September or October. It was first celebrated in 1825, when a troupe of actors enacted these rites toward off a plague. Vegetarian food is eaten by participants and white clothes worn during the period of the fest. Selfmutilization is practiced by those whose bodies become the temporary residence of powerful gods. Parades of worshippers brave fireworks while carrying images through the street; others walk on fire or climb bladed ladders. Participants number in the thousands.The whole forms one of the most bizarre festivals in Thailand. Por Tor Festival

Por Tor Festival 

     This is an ancestor's festival of the ethnic Chinese that falls on the seventh Chinese lunar month, which is the same as the ninth lunar month of the Thais. Special foods, flowers and candles are presented to the ancestor's altars. Cakes in the shape of turtles are made from flour. This is done because turtles live to great age and it is believed that by making such offering worshippers may extend the length of their lives. It is an important merit-making festival.

Thao Thep Krasatri-Thao Sri Suntorn 

     Festival is held on 13 Macrh yearly in memory of the two heroines who led the defense of the island against the Burmese in 1785.

Turtle Release Fair

     is held on Songkran, the nationwide Thai water festival, on April 13. It is also the National Fisherman's Day. Baby turtles are released into the sea at various locations.

Chao Le Boat Floating Festival 

     falls during the middle of the sixth and eleventh lunar months yearly. The fest is held at the Chao Le, or Sea Gipsy, villages in Phuket. The Rawai and Sapam villages hold their ceremonies on the 13th; Sire village celebrates on the 14th; and the village at Laem La (east of the bridge on Phuket's northern tip) celebrates on the 15th. Ceremonies, which center around the setting adrift of small boats similar to the Thai Festival of Loy Krathong, are held at night and their purpose is to drive away evil and to bring good luck. Fingernail clipping and strands of hair are put in the little boats before being released, along with little dolls fashioned from wood. Afterwards, the villagers perform their famous dance round their own boats, called the Ram Rong Ngeng.

Tourist Season Opening Festival

     is usually called the Patong Carnival in English according to from the place where celebrations occur, and is held on November 1. There are many stalls with merchandise and food, parades, sports event, and a beauty competition for foreign tourists. The fest is held to cement solidarity among the government, the private business sector, and the people

Phuket King's Cup Regatta 

      was first held in 1987 in honour of His Majesty's 60th birthday. The King of Thailand is a noted boating enthusiast and yachts come from around the world to participate in the competition, which is the largest and most popular in Southeast Asia. It is held yearly on the anniversary of His Majesty's birthday, 5 December. Site of the regatta is Nai Han Bay.

Laguna Phuket Triathlon 

     This annual year end event sees the world's top triathletes and hundreds of amateurs competing for prize money and placing on the world triathlon circuit. The course, which includes swimming, bicycling, and running through the beautiful natural surroundings of Laguna Phuket in Tambon Choeng Thale, takes from two-and-a-half to five hours to complete.

Phuket the Pearl of the Andaman

Phuket, a large island in the Indian Ocean, is 867 kms. from Bangkok. It is the only island having provincial status, and was a regional headquarters as well, with a rich and colorful history.

     Known as the Pearl of the Andaman, it derived much of its former glory and its enormous wealth from tin production, which in Phuket dates back over 500 year. Today, Phuket is the major tourist attraction of Thailand. The surrounding waters contain much varied marine life, and the town is notable for its Sino-Portuguese architecture. It is a very attractive island for sightseeing, with lovely seashores and forested hillsides. Its population of 1.6 million people ranks sixth among all provinces. Approximately 1.75 million Rai of the area is forest land. The main occupation here is rice farming. The average per capita income is 14,343 baht.

Location and Boundaries
     Phuket is an island connected by bridges to southern Thailand's Andaman Sea coast, in the Indian Ocean, lying between 7'45" and 8'15" north latitude, and from 98'15" to 98'40" west longitude on the map. Phuket, Thailand's largest islands, is surrounded by 32 smaller islands that form part of the same administration, with a total area of 570 square kilometers. Measured at its widest point, Phuket is 21.3 kilometers; at its longest, 48.7 kilometers.

Geography 
     About 70 percent of Phuket is mountainous; a western range runs from north to south from which smaller branches derive. The highest peak is Mai Tha Sip Song, or Twelve Canes, at 529 meters, which lies within the boundaries of Tambon Patong, Kathu District. The remaining 30 percent of the island, mainly in the center and south, is formed by low plains. Streams include the Khlong Bang Yai, Tha Jin, Khlong Tha Rua, and Khlong Bang Rong, none of which is large.

Climate 
     Phuket's weather conditions are dominated by monsoon winds that blow year round. It is therefore always warm and humid. There are two distinct seasons, rainy and dry. The rainy season begins in May and lasts till October, during which the monsoon blows from the southwest. The dry season is from November through April, when the monsoon comes from the northeast. Highest average temperatures, at 33.4 degree Celsius, prevail during March. Lowest averages occur in January, when nightly lows dip to 22 degree Celsius.

Phuket  part(2) is coming soon thx for watching

Thai Cultures

Thai Cultures

Thailand is located at the meeting point of the two great cultural systems of Asia, Chinese and Indian. In everyday life, Chinese culture has mixed very well with the Thai, whereas in Thai court culture, which has been based mainly on Buddhism and Brahmanism, India has exerted a strong influence. Thai culture can be divided into 3 aspects: linguistic culture, court culture, and traditional culture.

Court Culture • Traditional Culture • Linguistic Culture

Court Culture 

Court culture refers to the conception of beauty, perfection and harmony in the fine arts, including painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, drama and music. In the old days most of these originated in or received the patronage of the royal court and nobility. Most of the works served the Buddhist religion. Their styles were influenced by the Indians through the Mons and Khmers, and then were blended and developed in unique forms recognized as Thai. 

Court Culture : Painting 

Court Culture : Painting Classical Thai painting is mostly confined to mural paintings inside Buddhist temples and palaces. They are idealistic and the themes frequently depicted are those related to Buddhism, such as the Buddha's life stories, stories of the three worlds (heaven, earth and hell), and also those concerning customs and traditions. The subjects of the paintings reflect different purposes: to beautify and dignify the places of worship, to promote Buddhism, and to educate people through pictures.

Court Culture : Architecture 

Apart from the royal palace buildings, classical Thai architecture can be found in monastic monuments, pagodas and temples which have been the focal points of Thai community activities for centuries. 

Wat Phra Kaeo

Admitting Indian, Khmer and other influences such as Chinese and Burmese, Thai architects developed their own distinctive style of sloping multitiered roof-tops and soaring pointed towers, intricately ornamented with carved wood and stucco, gilded lacquer work, mother-of-pearl inlay, Chinese porcelain fragments and colour glass mosaic. Under the tropical sun, these buildings give out an artistic harmony of flamboyance and serenity. 
Examples of Thai architecture are seen in Wat Phra Kaeo, Wat Pho, Wat Suthat, the Grand Palace, etc. 

Court Culture : Sculpture 

Phra Buddha Chinnarat 
Phra Buddha Chinnarat Thai sculpture is concentrated on Buddha images that rank among the world's greatest expressions of Buddhist art. As a result, it is widely believed that the Buddha images in Thailand, from the Chiang Saen Period (11-13th c.) to the present Rattanakosin or Bangkok Period, are so numerous that they far outnumber the population of the country. Made in wood, metals, ivory, precious stones and stucco, they have been created to represent Rattanatrai of Buddhism, i.e., Buddha, Dharma (the Buddha's doctrine) and Sanga (Buddhist clergy).Among the most beautiful Buddha images in Thailand are Phra Buddha Chinnarat in Wat Mahathat (Phitsanulok province) and Phra Buddha Chinnasi in Wat Bowon Niwet (Bangkok).

Court Culture : Literature 

In the early days, Thai literature was concerned with religion, royalty and aristocracy and hardly anything else. 

Thai Literature : Hanuman and Thossakan
Hanuman (left) & Thossakan
in the Ramakian
They were written in verse of various patterns. Then, in the early 20th century, King Rama VI made a revolution in Thai literary history.Prose has become a favourite form of writing among Thai writers since then, and common life scenes have been depicted in their works. One of the most important Thai literary pieces is the Ramakian, an epic derived from the Ramayana of India.

Court Culture : Drama 

 Thai Culture : Khon
A khon scene from the Ramakian
In the purely classical form, Thai drama and dance are indivisible. The techniques of dancing are of Indian origin, but Thai people evolved them to be much more graceful and slow in motion.

Thai dramas include renowned khon (the masked drama), lakhon (a less formal dance drama with movements more graceful than khon), nang yai and nang talung (shadow plays) and hun (marionettes). In former days, dramas were normally performed only in the royal courts and noble mansions. Ordinary people could enjoy such performances only on festive occasions in the compound of a Buddhist monastery.

Court Culture : Music 

Thai classical music uses the diatonic music scale. The instruments are of four kinds: Those of plucking, drawing, percussion and woodwind. Apart from drama, Thai classical music is played in some religious ceremonies, traditional rites and on festive occasions. 

Traditional Culture

By traditional culture we mean customs concerning agriculture and human relations, and the art of making daily necessities such as utensils, clothing and basketry. 
The basis of the Thai customs and traditions lies in the family, whose structure is of bilateral descent. Like the Chinese and some other Asian peoples, the young are taught to pay respect to and follow the admonitions of parents, elders, teachers and Buddhist monks who, in the old days, formed a highly educated class. 
When speaking about traditional Thai culture, what cannot be left unmentioned is the wat or Buddhist temple and monastery combined. After Buddhism had been spread throughout Thailand for hundreds of years, the primitive animist belief of the Thai people was assimilated by the Buddhist one. The wat became the centre of the village. It was the place where people received education, attended rites and ceremonies, and observed feasts and festivals all the year round. 
Nowadays, due to the rapid advancement of technology, the traditional Thai way of living, especially in the big cities, has inevitably changed. However, it is still preserved to a large extent in the faraway rural areas where modern civilization has failed to penetrate.

Linguistic Culture 

The Thai language, or Phasa Thai, basically consists of monosyllable words, whose meanings are complete by themselves. Its alphabet was created by King Ramkhamhaeng the Great in 1283 by modelling it on the ancient Indian alphabets of Sanskrit and Pali through the medium of the old Khmer characters. After a history of over 700 years, the Thai alphabet today comprises 44 letters (including 2 obsolete ones), representing 20 consonant phonemes, and 15 vowel signs, denoting 22 vowels, diphthongs and triphthongs. 
As Thai is a tonal language with five different tones, it often confuses foreigners who are unused to this kind of language. For example, they have difficulty in distinguishing these 3 words from each other : "suea" with a rising tone, "suea" low tone and "suea" falling tone which means a tiger, a mat and clothes respectively. 
Like most languages of the world, the Thai language is a complicated mixture of several sources. Many Thai words used today were derived from Pali, Sanskrit, Khmer, Malay, English and Chinese.  

Chiang Mai !

Chiang Mai

Located approximately 700km north-west of Bangkok, and set at an elevation of around 300 metres, Chiang Mai is Thailand's second largest city. With over 300 temples and the backdrop of Doi Suthep Mountain rising to 1876 metres to the west, this is a visually striking city.

The old part of the city is a neat square surrounded by a moat. Several of Chiang Mai's most important temples are located within this area. To the east is the Ping river which cuts through the city from north to south. In recent years several luxury condominiums have been built alongside the river.

Chiang Mai has developed into a first class tourist destination, and is an excellent base from which to explore Northern Thailand.

During most of the year, thanks to its altitude, Chiang Mai is less humid and much cooler, especially at night, than elsewhere in Thailand. The present Royal Family spend a considerable portion of their time staying at Phuping Palace, set in beautiful grounds on the Buag Ha mountain, about 22 kilometres from Chiang Mai. It is possible to visit the grounds of the palace, when the Royal Family is not in residence.

Food and Drink

There are numerous food stalls serving noodles, curries, seafood and speciality dishes located with the old city walls. Just west of Chiang Mai Gate is a large night market where you can wile away an evening eating and drinking. International and Thai food buffets are available at the larger hotels.

Night Life

First class and tourist class hotels usually have a disco, and all have bars, several of which feature live music. Charoenrat Road on the east side of the Ping river also has plenty of night time entertainment.

Shopping

First port of call for bargain hunters has to be the night bazaar which is located mid way between the old city and the Ping river. The market has an extensive selection of Thai and northern Thai goods are low prices, but you will have to bargain.

Shops selling hill tribe crafts, silk, silverware, lacquer ware, carvings and beautiful paper umbrellas can be found all over the city. Chiang Mai is a good place to buy furniture, and there are several workshops which will arrange for shipping to your home country.

Sight Seeing

Photographers can get fine aerial views of Chiang Mai from Wat Phra That Doi Suthep which is located near the summit of Mount Doi Suthep. A staircase in the shape of a dragon-headed serpent leads up to the Wat from the mountain road.

The daily "elephants at work" show, about one hour by bus from Chiang Mai, is strictly for tourists but still worth a visit.

More adventurous souls might prefer one of the many trekking tours. These can be arranged through most hotels and travel agents.

Wat Prahat Doi Suthep

Close by is Wat Prahat Doi Suthep. The temple contains a highly venerated relic of Lord Buddha, which was brought to Chiang Mai and presented to King Kuenna, in the fourteenth century. The story goes that the King sent out an elephant with the relics on its back, and it climbed the mountain steadily. Then, quite suddenly, it died of a heart attack, so that spot was chosen for the temple.

The temple is located about 16 kilometres from the city and can be reached by road. The final ascent to the temple is via a highly decorative Naga staircase. For those who cannot manage the steps a cable car has been installed.

In the outer courtyard anyone can wander and there is splendid collection the bronze bells. From that level there is a beautiful view down onto the city way below.

To enter the inner courtyard of the temple all must be properly dressed, which means no short trousers or bare tops. There are paintings of historical and mythical scenes all round the inner courtyard between the 4 chapels that surround the central golden stuppa.

Chiang Mai Zoo

At the foot of Doi Suthep is the Chiang Mai zoo, which is well worth a visit. The grounds are extensive and vehicles are allowed in. In fact that is the best way to get around as the individual enclosures are well spaced and often hidden from each other in a jungle type setting.

The penguin enclosure was pleasantly cool, and quite popular with the Thais for the same reason. It was a shame they do not clean the glass to give a better view of the birds.

A new building houses the Pandas that arrived from China in 2003

San Khampaeng

Crafts Following the old road to San Khampaeng leads through the craft area of Chiang Mai where factories co-exist with the shops. This gives visitors the chance to see how the items are made, before making their purchases. Products include teak and bamboo furniture; the distinctive pottery of Thai Celadon, silverware, parasols and hand held fans, to mention a few.

Moon On Caves

About 30 kilometres beyond the village of San Khampaeng, are the San Khampaeng Hot Springs. However just before the springs it is worth taking the turning to the left to visit the Moon On caves. At the foot of the hill is an attractive Chinese Temple. The road then climbs much higher up the hill to the caves.

A visit to the Moon On caves is only for the fit. Firstly there is a long climb up a Naga staircase from the car park, before reaching the entrance to the caves. The caves are well lit and there are young guides available to point out the major sites, which are also Buddhist shrines. However to reach the famous stalagmite it is necessary to climb down a long concrete staircase, which means it is along climb back up to exit the caves.

Hot Springs

Over the last few years the hot springs have been developed and are now surrounded by a very attractive and mature garden. The water comes bubbling out of the ground at a temperature of 89°C. Packs of eggs are on sale in convenient wicker baskets, and there are instructions about how long to leave the eggs in the water to cook them correctly, 11 minutes gives hard-boiled. Hooks are conveniently provided around the water tank to hang the egg baskets.

There are also two geysers spouting a continuous flow of hot water into the air.

Bath houses are available for rent by the hour, for individuals or family groups to enjoy the waters or if you prefer there is also a swimming pool that is fed with the warm water.

Why they call Thailand "land of smiles"

Thailand: The Land of Smiles

Thailand is often called the "land of smiles," not only because visitors love its natural beauty and historical riches, but also because of the country's friendly people and fascinating culture.

5 Random Facts about Thailand

5 Random Facts about Thailand

1. The year is actually 2553 in Thailand. As well as the Gregorian calendar, Thailand runs by the Thai Solar Calendar, which is 543 years ahead of the West. Dates are often written B.E. in English. (Buddhist Era)

2. The Karen Hill Tribe in Northern Thailand are also known as the ‘Long Neck People.’ Girls from a young age wear heavy brass necklaces to elongate their necks. There are many theories as to why women wear the rings, ranging from them being a symbol of beauty, status or perhaps to give the women resemblance to a dragon, an important creature in Kayan folklore.

3. The elephant is one of the national symbols of Thailand. Particularly the white elephant is highly revered and associated with royalty. Closely connected with Thai people throughout history as an essential means if transport, the elephant is seen as instrumental in the building of the kingdom of Thailand itself.

4. South Thailand’s awesome Khao Sok National Park claims to be the amongst the oldest forest eco-system in the world. It is a protected wildlife reserve and home to many exotic creatures, such as tigers, clouded leopards, bears, tapirs, gibbons, langurs and pangolin.

5. Bangkok in Thai language has the longest name for a city in the world, consisting of 32 separate Thai words. (Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit)