PHUKET: The informal network of taxi drivers operating at Central Festival Phuket shopping mall will be registered as a formal co-operative as part of the drivers’ efforts to work as part of a fully-legal entity by November 30.
PHUKET: The Similan Islands National Park authority has warned tour operators over a group of people posing as park officers and offering reduced entry fees to the islands. “A couple of weeks ago, a number of tour operators informed me that there was a group of people who approached them, claiming to be national park officers,” Similan Islands National Park acting chief Nat Kongkaesorn told the Phuket Gazette today. “They said the tour operator could pay a reduced entrance fee based on the size of the boat engine instead of the number tourists on the vessel.
PHUKET: The first fifty people to contact local marine conservation group Go Eco Phuket will earn a spot at the Go Eco Camp, which plans on certifying and training islanders to be active marine conservationists. “Go Eco camp is now open for applicants. Applications will be accepted from expats, students and locals until November,” Jirayu Naragoonphithak, the project’s coordinator, told the Phuket Gazette.
PHUKET: A sounder of wild boar has settled on an 18-hole “Football Golf Course” in Chalong as their preferred dining area, but in the pigs’ quest for food, the squealers have left disturbingly large divots in the greens. “Our course is currently under attack by wild boars, which are rampaging through our course at night and ripping up our greens,” said Neil Simmons of Phuket Games Zone, located in Soi Palai (map
PHUKET: Police are on the lookout for a man who reportedly tried to sell a temple bell to a secondhand store in Thalang while drunk. Natthakarn Rattanaphan, 33, called the Thalang Police yesterday afternoon after a man arrived at her secondhand store in front of the well-known Term Fun housing estate in Baan Manik (map
PHUKET: The first cases heard in Phuket’s tourist court, which involved a jet-ski operator who attacked two tourists on Kata Beach, were resolved less than 36 hours after the incidents happened. Danaichet Yomjinda, 25, who pled guilty to charges of assaulting the two men on Friday with a “No Swimming” flagpole, was issued a 1,000-baht fine and put on probation for two years (story
PHUKET: Joseph Manuel Hunter, 48 – nicknamed “Rambo” and arrested at his rented Phuket home last Thursday, as originally reported by the Phuket Gazette (story
PHUKET: Faulty brakes almost resulted in a tour bus smashing into a house on Patong Hill last night, in a near-repeat of an accident that occurred at almost the same location about four months ago (story
PHUKET: A Russian dive instructor who worked in Phuket drowned off Racha Noi Island on Saturday afternoon. Denis Lipatov, 39, was at the island with friends when he developed a cramp while swimming at about 5pm
PHUKET: Phuket’s new Provincial Police Commander, Maj Genl Ong-art Phiewruangnont, has arrived in Phuket.