Portal:Thailand

Belief in ghosts in Thai culture is both popular and enduring. In the history of Thailand, Buddhist popular beliefs intermingled with legends of spirits or ghosts of local folklore. These myths have survived and evolved, having been adapted to the modern media, such as Thai films, Thai television soap operas, and Thai comics.

Some of the ghosts of Thai culture are shared with neighboring cultures. Krasue, for example is part of the Cambodian, Lao, and Malay cultures as well. A few of these, including the tall Preta, are part of the mythology of Buddhism. There are, however, others, such as Phi Dip Chin, which have entered Thai ghost lore through the Chinese community residing in Thailand for the past few centuries. (Full article...)

The Thailand national football team (Thai: ฟุตบอลทีมชาติไทย, RTGS: futbon thim chat thai, pronounced [fút.bɔ̄n tʰīːm t͡ɕʰâːt tʰāj]) represents Thailand in senior international football and is controlled by the Football Association of Thailand.

In the regional competition, Thailand is the most successful football team in Southeast Asia with seven ASEAN Championship trophies and nine senior-level gold medals from the Southeast Asian Games, the most of any Southeast Asian country. In higher levels, Thailand achieved the third place in the 1972 AFC Asian Cup where it was the host, and has a total of seven appearances in the AFC Asian Cup so far. Furthermore, the team reached the fourth-place in the 1990 and 1998 Asian Games and participated in the Summer Olympics twice. However, Thailand has failed to obtain higher achievements in the continental and global records. The team obtained their first win in the AFC Asian Cup in 2007 and had to wait 47 years to finally sneak out of the group stage in 2019. Thailand also advanced to the final round of World Cup qualification twice, in 2002 and 2018, but failed to qualify for the FIFA World Cup. (Full article...)

The Cambodian–Thai border dispute is a long-standing territorial dispute between Cambodia and Thailand over certain areas of their shared border. It began in the 1950s, shortly after Cambodia's independence from France, and first centred around ownership of the temple of Preah Vihear. The case was brought to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), who decided in 1962 in favour of Cambodia. The issue became dormant over the following decades as Cambodia fell into civil war, but remained unresolved as sections of the countries' borders were never jointly demarcated. The dispute erupted into open conflict in 2008, following Cambodia's nomination of the temple as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Thai protesters attacking their government over the issue. The clashes led to a request for clarification from the ICJ, which was decided in 2013. During this round of conflict, disputes also arose over other overlapping border areas, including that around Prasat Ta Muen Thom, another ancient Khmer temple. The conflict subsided for over a decade until it erupted again in 2025, with the worst fighting since the dispute began.

The dispute mostly stems from the Franco-Siamese treaties of 1904 and 1907, which defined the final boundary between Siam (as Thailand was then known) and French Indochina, the borders of which were inherited by Cambodia. While the treaty defined the relevant segment of the boundary along the watershed line of the Dangrek Mountains, demarcation of the border by French surveyors produced maps that deviated from the line in the now-disputed areas, including around the Preah Vihear temple. While Thailand argued at the ICJ that it never approved the maps and that the temple's location on a cliff, more accessible from the Thai side, indicated that it was on Thai territory, the ICJ decided in favour of Cambodia largely based on the fact that Siam never officially protested the map or claimed ownership of the temple while it was under French control. Cambodia also views itself as having rightful claims to the temples due to closer cultural affinity as successor to the Khmer Empire. (Full article...)

The United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD; Thai: แนวร่วมประชาธิปไตยต่อต้านเผด็จการแห่งชาติ; นปช., alternatively translated as National Democratic Alliance against Dictatorship), whose supporters are commonly called Red Shirts, is a political pressure group opposed to the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), the 2006 Thai coup d'état, and supporters of the coup. Notable UDD leaders include Jatuporn Prompan, Nattawut Saikua, Veera Musikapong, Jaran Ditapichai, and Weng Tojirakarn. The UDD allies itself with the Pheu Thai Party, which was deposed by the 2014 military coup. Before the July 2011 national elections, the UDD claimed that Abhisit Vejjajiva's government took power illegitimately, backed by the Thai Army and the judiciary. The UDD called for the Thai Parliament to be dissolved so that a general election could be held. UDD accused the country's extra-democratic elite—the military, judiciary, certain members of the privy council, and other unelected officials—of undermining democracy by interfering in politics. The UDD is composed of mostly rural citizens from northeast (Isan) and north Thailand, of urban lower classes from Bangkok, and of intellectuals. Although the movement seems to receive support from former prime minister-in-exile Thaksin Shinawatra, not all UDD members support the deposed prime minister. (Full article...)

In Thailand, cannabis, known by the name Ganja (Thai: กัญชา; RTGS: kancha), is currently (as of 25 June 2025) a controlled substance and criminalized. However, cannabis extracts and products are officially limited to 0.2% THC content. Only medicinal use is legal, but in practice there is wide recreational usage. Legislation has been proposed which provides for fines for non-permitted uses and fines and jail time for unauthorized sale.

Import and export of cannabis are still highly regulated. (Full article...)

Pad Thai (/ˌpɑːd ˈtaɪ/ or /ˌpæd ˈtaɪ/; Thai: ผัดไทย, RTGS: phat thai, ISO: p̄hạd thịy, pronounced [pʰàt̚ tʰāj] ^ⓘ), also spelled phat Thai or phad Thai, is a stir-fried rice noodle dish commonly served as a street food in Thailand as part of the country's cuisine. It is typically made with rice noodles, shrimp, peanuts, scrambled egg, sugar and bean sprouts. The ingredients are fried in a wok. (Full article...)

Ko Samui (or Koh Samui), often locally shortened to Samui (Thai: เกาะสมุย, pronounced [kɔ̀ʔ sā.mǔj]), is an island off the east coast of Thailand. Geographically in the Chumphon Archipelago, it is part of Surat Thani Province, though as of 2012, Ko Samui was granted municipal status and thus is now locally self-governing. Ko Samui, with an area of 228.7 square kilometres (88.3 sq mi), is Thailand's second largest island after Phuket. In 2018, it was visited by 2.7 million tourists. (Full article...)

After the 1978 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and subsequent collapse of Democratic Kampuchea in 1979, the Khmer Rouge fled to the border regions of Thailand, and, with assistance from China, Pol Pot's troops managed to regroup and reorganize in forested and mountainous zones on the Thai-Cambodian border. During the 1980s and early 1990s Khmer Rouge forces operated from inside refugee camps in Thailand, in an attempt to de-stabilize the pro-Hanoi People's Republic of Kampuchea's government, which Thailand refused to recognise. Thailand and Vietnam faced off across the Thai-Cambodian border with frequent Vietnamese incursions and shellings into Thai territory throughout the 1980s in pursuit of Cambodian guerrillas who kept attacking Vietnamese occupation forces. (Full article...)

Pattaya is a city in Eastern Thailand, the second-largest city in Chonburi province and the eighth-largest city in Thailand. It is on the east coast of the Gulf of Thailand, about 100 kilometres (62 mi) southeast of Bangkok, and has a population of 328,961 as of 2021.

Pattaya City (Thai: เมืองพัทยา, RTGS: Mueang Phatthaya, pronounced [mɯ̄a̯ŋ pʰát.tʰā.jāː]) is a special local government organization area within Bang Lamung district and has a population of 119,532. It covers the tambons of Nong Prue and Na Klua and parts of Huai Yai and Nong Pla Lai. Pattaya City has grown into all adjacent sub-districts and accounts for the largest population percentage in the district, making it de facto a part of the "Pattaya-Bang Lamung-Jomtien" area, otherwise known as "Greater Pattaya". (Full article...)

The COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand is a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Thailand was the first country to report a case outside China, on 13 January 2020. As of 2 April 2022, the country has reported a cumulative total of 3,684,755 confirmed cases, with 25,318 deaths from the disease, and currently ranked fourth in the number of cases in Southeast Asia, behind Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

Thailand was relatively successful in containing the pandemic throughout most of 2020, but has been experiencing an uncontrolled resurgent outbreak since April 2021. An initial wave of infections, mostly traced to nightlife venues and a boxing match in Bangkok, peaked on 22 March 2020 at 188 newly confirmed cases per day. As preventive measures were implemented, the outbreak subsided by May, and the country reported almost no locally transmitted infections until December, when it saw a surge of infections primarily clustered around large migrant worker communities in Samut Sakhon Province. The new outbreak spread to many provinces, with a maximum daily of 959 cases reported on 26 January 2021, before partially subsiding in February. In April, however, a new wave of infections originated from Bangkok's Thong Lo–area nightlife venues and rapidly spread in Bangkok as well as throughout the country. It was identified to be of the highly transmissible Alpha variant first reported from the United Kingdom, and by 14 April, over a thousand cases per day were being identified, causing a shortage of hospital beds as government policy required admission of all confirmed cases. (Full article...)