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KARON: Despite an intensive manhunt,
police have yet to apprehend the Caucasian man who held up the
Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) branch on Patak Rd in Karon on June
28, getting away with 420,000 baht in cash.
At the monthly Phuket Provincial Security Committee meeting held
at the ST Hotel June 29, Phuket Provincial Police Commander Pol
Maj Gen Decha Budnampetch said he believed the culprit was still
in the Karon area.
Soon after the heist, at about 4:30 pm, Chalong Police began checking
all guesthouses and motorcycle rental agencies in the area in
the hope of tracking down the man, confirmed by Gen Decha as being
a “farang”.
“I think he has been in Thailand [awhile] because he could speak
some Thai. I think he may have tried to copy the Dutchman who
held up the office at Phuket Villa California recently [and was
apprehended the following day].
“Witnesses said the man waited on his motorbike in front of the
bank for about 30 minutes before entering,” Gen Decha said.
The motorcycle used in the robbery had a license plate, but witnesses
did not notice its number, he added.
In carrying out the heist, the thief wore a face mask, a white
long-sleeved shirt and black trousers. He entered the bank quickly
and promptly held a gun to the head of Branch Manager Thurdsak
Chusap and demanded cash.
“Even though he was masked, I believe he was a foreigner because
he spoke both Thai and English. He kept shouting ‘ray-o ray-o!’
[faster, faster] and ‘More, more!’ He wasn’t a big guy, though.
Actually he was shorter than me at about 160 to 165 centimeters,”
K. Thurdsak told the Gazette.
“I was really frightened. Everything happened so fast, it was
over in just two minutes and he made off on a Suzuki Step motorbike
with the cash, about 420,000 baht. Fortunately, some people outside
got a look at his motorbike. That should provide the police with
some valuable clues,” he said.
The robbery was recorded on the bank’s closed-circuit television
cameras, but the images were not very clear, he said.
“Our bank is under 24-hour video surveillance and I am not sure
if the robber knows that images of him robbing the bank were recorded,”
he said.
The robber waited until just Click, he said.
The suspect was a bearded Caucasian foreigner, aged from 30 to
40, he added.
“None of the people questioned so far matched the bank robber’s
description, so we will have to investigate further,” he said.
Capt Thammasan encouraged anyone with useful information or a
possible suspect in mind to call him directly at 081-6413007 with
the information.
By Sangkhae
Leelanapaporn
& Natcha Yuttaworawit
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Sultan afloat!
-Photo by Gerd Wissemann
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PATONG: Eleven days after the
38-foot sailboat Sultan beached at the south end of Patong during
a storm, salvage efforts at high tide around noon June 30 finally
saw her afloat and sailing for safer waters.
Sultan made landfall on Patong Beach about 1 am on June 19 after
its anchor chain snapped during strong winds and large waves in
Patong Bay.
Skipper Michael Wilson said, “I would like to thank everybody who
has helped. I really do appreciate it."
He said he would now dock the boat to make necessary repairs before
embarking on his next trip.
Phuket to have
biggest aquarium in SE Asia
BANGKOK (Nation, Gazette):
Ripley Entertainment, operator of Ripley’s Believe It or Not
Museum, plans to build and open a 2.1-billion-baht aquarium
in Phuket within three years.
The firm will enter into a joint venture with Thailand-based
conglomerate Minor International Plc, the franchisee of the
Ripley museum in Pattaya.
The aquarium project will be Ripley’s second property in Thailand
and its first aquarium outside the US.
The aquarium is planned to cover 10,000 to 12,000 square meters
and would be bigger than Underwater World in Singapore, which
claims to be the biggest aquarium in Southeast Asia.
Ripley Entertainment President Robert Masterson said the group
intended to hold a major stake in the new project.
Mr Masterson declined to reveal the location and amenities of
the project, saying it was too early to go into details.
“The tourist market will be a major target,” he said.
Sombat Phuwatchiranond, former chief of the Phuket Marine Biological
Office (PMBC), told the Gazette that the Phuket aquarium draws
an average of 30,000 visitors per month, but he said that it
could be difficult for a private aquarium to draw as many guests
since the entry fees for the government-run facility are cheap.
“Investing in an aquarium is also very expensive, as is the
maintenance, so they have to set a high ticket fee,” he said.
“They also may run into problems because when people come to
Phuket they want to see the fish under the sea, not in an aquarium.”
OrBorJor closer to buying Phyathai hospital
building
PHUKET CITY: After years of
failed negotiations, the Phuket Provincial Administration Organization
(OrBorJor) has obtained permission to buy the abandoned Phyathai
Phuket Hospital building and re-open it as a hospital with public
organization status.
OrBorJor President Anchalee Vanich-Thepabutr met Phuket Governor
Niran Kalayanamit June 27 to discuss buying the building for
327 million baht, with 273 million baht from regular OrBorJor
budgets for fiscal 2006 and 2007 and the remainder from an OrBorJor
cooperative account.
The building, abandoned in 2000, is under the control of the
Thai Asset Management Cooperation (TAMC), a government agency
set up after the 1997 financial crisis to remedy non-performing
loans.
After the meeting, K. Anchalee said that Gov Niran had “no reservations”
about the new plan and that she expects him to grant the required
approval for the purchase from TAMC.
The plan will be put before the OrBorJor members for a vote
July 3. K. Anchalee believes the project will find little opposition
in the OrBorJor, which she has headed since May, 2004.
“This is a good project for the people and a public opinion
survey we conducted of more than 1,000 people showed strong
support for it…This project can help Vachira Phuket Hospital,
which is now overloaded with patients due to all the foreign
laborers who go there for treatment,” she said.
Treatment costs at the new facilities would be lower than at
private hospitals, she added.
“The first step is the purchase. After that we will discuss
how to administer the hospital in a way that will increase high-quality,
affordable treatment options for middle income earners. The
hospital can eventually hold 200 beds, but we expect to start
with 50 to 75 beds in the first phase,” K. Anchalee said.
Administrative experts will be brought in from Banphaeo Hospital
in Samut Sakhon Province, which already enjoys public organization
status. Medical staff will be recruited from hospitals outside
the province, she explained.
The OrBorJor has a plan to contact Mahidol University in Bangkok
about bringing in specialist on weekends, she added.
The OrBorJor plans to recoup its investment in the project within
six years.
However, K. Anchalee did not elaborate on whether a management
company would be brought in to operate the hospital on the OrBorJor’s
behalf, as mentioned in earlier proposals.
However, Gov Niran urged the OrBorJor to proceed step by step,
concentrating first on buying the building, which he said should
be completed by August.
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‘Slim’ survival odds for beached dolphins
The spinner dolphin was rushed
to a waiting pickup truck, which raced with sirens blaring
to the Phuket Marine Biological Center.
– Photo by Lars Dikander
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PHUKET: Two gravely ill dolphins
were taken to the Phuket Marine Biological Center (PMBC) after
washing ashore in separate incidents, the first at Karon Beach
on July 1 and the second in Phang Nga’s Tai Muang District the
next morning.
PMBC biologist Kongkiat Kittiwattawong told the Gazette that the
first, a 40-kilogram female spinner dolphin (S. longirostris),
washed ashore at Karon Beach about 7 am.
The spinner, 1.6 meters long and about five years old, was too
weak to swim back out into the heavy surf and showed symptoms
of a severe lung infection, but otherwise appeared healthy.
Officers at the Kata Fire Station tried unsuccessfully to push
the animal back out to sea through the heavy surf at Karon Beach,
then took the animal by pickup truck to a section of Kata Beach
with smaller waves, but the dolphin was too weak to swim away.
The second dolphin, in Phang Nga, was a 50-kilogram female striped
dolphin (S. coeruleoalba). It also showed signs of respiratory
infection and was covered in lesions.
They were being treated in separate tanks at the PMBC.
K. Kongkiat rated the chances of recovery for both animals as
very slim.
Blood samples were taken, but it was still too early to determine
if the two animals were suffering from the same type of infection,
said K. Kongkiat, though he added that was unlikely given that
they were of different species.
Experts to head Phuket property forum
PHUKET CITY: The Phuket Real Estate
Club (PREC) and Delice Thai Co Ltd will host a forum titled “Problems
and Solutions in the Phuket Real Estate Market” on Saturday, July
14.
Speakers will include Thawan Thimasarn, director of the Subdivision
of the Bureau of Standard Land Document Issuance; Lt Phummisak Hongsyok,
president of PREC; Eric Tomlin, secretary to the Association of
Phuket Property Agents; and John Magee, publisher of the Phuket
Gazette.
Registration begins at 3 pm in the Hay Nakha Room on the second
floor of the Royal Phuket City Hotel. Speakers will discuss the
issues from 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm with a question and answer session
until 6 pm.
The forum will be held in both Thai and English, with assistance
from a moderator.
For more information call the PREC at Tel: 081-6933000 or 081-3964222,
or Delice Thai at Tel: 076-258417-9 or 086-6823770. Email: info@phuket-realestateclub.com
Phuket art gallery gutted by fire
Firefighters were on the
scene at the Phuket Art Gallery, in the heart of Phuket
City, within 10 minutes, stopping the blaze from spreading
to adjacent Sino-Portuguese shophouses.
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PHUKET CITY: Firefighters were
called to Phang Nga Rd June 28 after flames engulfed the 111 Phuket
Art Gallery building, destroying up to 50 paintings on sale at
prices ranging from 10,000 to 50,000 baht each.
A local resident alerted police and fire officers at around 11:30
am, after seeing smoke rising from the building, located behind
the Sinthavee Hotel. Five fire trucks arrived within 10 minutes
of the call and police closed the road to help the firefighters.
A man and a woman who live nearby braved the heat to rescue a
number of paintings from the gallery.
“I helped a girl who lives opposite me to remove four or five
large pictures from the shop, but we couldn’t move any more than
that. The heat from the second floor eventually became too much,”
said the man, who declined to give his name.
Around 400 onlookers watched as the fire spread from the second
floor of the building to the gallery on the ground floor, causing
both the roof and the first floor to collapse.
The second floor of the building, made predominantly of wood,
is usually used as living quarters for artists who work for the
gallery.
Nobody was present at the time of the fire, said Aree Kongpol,
43, a partner of 111 Phuket Art Gallery business, which opened
about one year ago.
Firefighters contained the blaze around midday.
The cost of the damage and the cause of the fire have yet to be
determined.
Mixed messages from tsunami drills
Volunteers from the Kusoldharm
Foundation attend to a volunteer feigning injury during
the tsunami warning drill at Baan Laem Tukkae.
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PHUKET CITY: Mock tsunami evacuations
at Baan Laem Tukkae and Saphan Hin were staged on June 29 and
30, but with voice announcements that could not be understood
and firetruck sirens instead of the tsunami warning towers alarms.
However, government officials have insisted that the “quiet”
testing was intentional to avoid panic.
The tests, on June 29 in Baan Laem Tukkae and June 30 at Saphan
Hin, were held in preparation for a July 25 test throughout
the six Andaman provinces.
At Laem Tukkae, about 20 volunteers took part in the mock evacuation,
including several who feigned injury to allow rescue crews from
the Kusoldharm Foundation to practice helping citizens escape
from tsunami strikes.
The tsunami warning towers sounded the alarm, although people
taking part in the exercise could not understand the voice warnings.
Despite assurances from the Department of Disaster Prevention
and Mitigation (DDPM-Phuket) Chief Aroon Kerdsom said that the
sirens would be triggered from the National Disaster Warning
Center (NDWC) in Bangkok to fully test the system, the sirens
were set off from Phuket City Municipality offices.
Somkid Petchkor, head of Phuket City’s Disaster Prevention and
Mitigation Division, said that some 57 officers had joined the
exercise.
The following day at Saphan Hin, about 15 volunteers fled from
a mock tsunami as rescue volunteers again practiced retrieving
victims.
However, instead of the tsunami warning towers sounding the
alarm, a firetruck with a wailing siren cruised the streets.
Referring to reports that wiring had been stolen from tsunami
warning towers at Saphan Hin, K. Somkid said that the missing
wires had no effect on the sirens since the towers are solar-
and battery-powered.
The July 25 tests will be triggered in Bangkok, K. Kerdsom asserted,
and will include about 100 towers in the six Andaman coast provinces.
By Natcha Yuttaworawit
& Supanun Supawong |
Thai E-passport clinic to come to Phuket
PHUKET: The Thai Consul Department
will hold a mobile service center at Central Festival Phuket
for Thai nationals to apply for “e-passports” from July 27 to
August 4.
The center will be open from 11 am to 7 pm.
Valid for five years and at a cost of 1,035 baht, the passports
must be applied for with an identification card, government
officer card or state census card.
Minor applicants (aged under 20 years old) must be accompanied
by a parent and must present an identification card or birth
certificate, census registration and their parents’ identification
cards.
If the minor’s parents have divorced, the parent applying with
the minor must provide documents proving the parent’s right
as guardian of the minor.
Applicants will also be required to provide documentation of
any changes of name.
E-passports, which were introduced in Thailand in August 2005
to replace standard passports, are combined paper and electronic
identity documents that use a computer chip to store information
about the passport holder.
For more information contact Krissada Khosantiwichai of Marketing
& Promotion at Central Festival Phuket. Tel: 076-291111
ext 1201. Fax: 076-249000. Email: marketingpf@central.co.th
Rotting corpse found in Thalang
THALANG: Police made
a grim discovery on morning of June 25, when they found
the badly decomposed body of an unidentified man lying
in a ditch.
A local fisherman alerted police of a sickening odor at
Tambon Srisoontorn Village 1, where the body was discovered
by Pol Lt Col Kritthana Putluecha and his team around
8:30 am.
The victim, who suffered a fractured skull and multiple
lacerations to the chest, had been dead about two weeks,
said Col Kritthana.
Police will interview local businesses to see if the man
was employed locally.
Col Kritthana downplayed rumors that black magic may have
been involved in the apparent slaying.
The Kusoldharm Foundation, which recovered the man’s remains,
will keep the body while relatives are sought, he added.
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