The Hong Kong administration reduced its travel alert for Thailand from red to amber earlier this week. The downgrade means that residents of Hong Kong only need to be careful in public places when visiting Thailand and not avoid it altogether.
Thailand’s Foreign Ministry has officially confirmed it will introduce a new category of tourist visa with six months validity. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted up the confirmation on its Facebook page earlier this week and noted the new visas would be valid for unlimited entries.
A leading Bangkok academic says research has shown that only 10 per cent of the bus stops in the city are equipped for disabled people. Thammasat University’s Choomket Sawangjaroen says that means another 700 bus stops do not comply with the Transport Ministry’s regulations.
In its annual awards for 2015, TripAdvisor has named Hellfire Pass Museum as the best such facility in Thailand. The Kanchanaburi museum is dedicated to the WWII Death Railway and the Allied and Asian prisoners who lost their lives building it.
Thailand’s Transport Ministry says it wants an explanation of how a contract to supply new trains for Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport Link was awarded. The board of the State Railway of Thailand (SRT) endorsed a bid from China’s Changchun Railway Vehicles earlier this month to supply seven four-carriage trains.
A central Vietnamese province is preparing to open a unique cave and former hideout of Vietnam War soldiers for tourists. Nguyen Duc Chinh is the People’s Committee chairperson for Quang Tri and he says staff are drawing up a schedule which will see Brai Cave opened to the general public.
Thailand took one of the top awards at the introductory World Spa Awards ceremony recently held in Vietnam. The Southeast Asian nation scooped up the number one prize in the category for World's Best Spa Destination 2015.
Thailand’s meteorological division has forecast that the heavy rainfall the nation is experiencing will last a few days longer. Although the forecasters say tropical storm Vamco has diminished in power and been re-classified as a depression, it is not yet a spent force.
The contract to operate Phuket Town's iconic pink taxi-buses is up for renewal. The current agreement runs through until 1 October 2015, but the operator says it is time for a change and the provincial administration will be putting the contract out to tender.
Songkhla is a seaside resort town in the far south of Thailand. It is probably best known for its iconic mermaid statue and as the location of Ban Sattha, the former residence of HE Prem Tinsulanond. Despite the fact Songkhla’s beaches are not as stunning as ones on the Andaman Sea, they tick all the boxes when it comes to soft sands, great for swimming and innate natural beauty.
Tropical Storm Vamco left around 380 tourists stranded on Koh Lan Island in Pattaya Bay yesterday. Two-metre-high waves and gale-force winds swept across the bay as Vamco passed over the northern end of the Gulf of Thailand.
Thailand’s tourist police have launched an app giving cultural etiquette tips for international visitors as well as details about popular destinations in the country. The app is entitled the Thailand Tourist Trips and Tips AR Book and is available as a free download from both Google Play and the iOS App Store.
Thailand has tightened up its procedures for foreigners entering via land borders on back-to-back visas. An immigration officer confirmed that foreigners are now banned from crossing the border in Sa Kaew Province and then coming straight back unless they have valid visas in their passports.
Surgeons at the Police Hospital in Bangkok have successfully recovered a stolen gem from the stomach of a Chinese tourist. Following complaints that two tourists had stolen the THB10 million diamond, police arrested the suspects at the city’s Suvarnabhumi Airport on Friday.
In recent years, the unspoilt forests to the east of Chiang Mai have added another exhilarating activity to their repertoire. There are now two or three locations where adventure seekers can zoom through the treetops and view nature at its finest from an ultra-safe zip-line.
Last week saw the beginning of Cha-am’s annual seafood festival. The extravaganza is the 17th in the series and treats gourmands to delicacies concocted with the freshest produce of the sea and Thailand’s inimitable spices and cooking style. The festival runs through to Saturday 19 September.
Authorities in Vietnam’s Khanh Hoa Province say its flagship nature reserve and mountain peak will be developed in a bid to attract more tourists. A spokesperson told local media reporters that the project would see the nature reserve at Mt Hon Ba improved to cater to modern-day tourism and a cable-car built.
The Indian Embassy has issued a travel advisory cautioning its nationals about the scams that often accompany hiring a jet-ski at Thai seaside resorts. The Bangkok embassy noted that jet-ski owners in resorts, particularly Pattaya, threatened hirers with physical harm if they did not pay for damage which in many cases pre-existed.
The organisers of Bon Jovi’s latest tour have just confirmed the pop-rock group will perform a concert in Bangkok next week. The US band are all set to take the stage at 19:30 on Tuesday at Bangkok’s premier concert venue, the Impact Arena in the Muang Thong Thani event and exhibition complex.
Authorities in the northern Lao heritage town of Luang Prabang are set to roll out a new fleet of electric tuktuks. The first batch of the innovative e-Buses are about to hit the streets of this UNESCO World Heritage Site and environmentalists say they hope pollution problems in the surrounding valley will be alleviated.