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Aidan Jones
Aidan Jones is a Senior Correspondent on SCMP's Asia desk. He previously worked at the Agence France-Presse.
Aidan Jones is a Senior Correspondent on SCMP's Asia desk. He previously worked at the Agence France-Presse.
Languages Spoken:
English
While the lower prices may be a boon for visitors, businesses say ‘the stillness is unsettling’ as they brace themselves for hardship.
From Laos to Thailand, long queues are forming at petrol stations while residents are reeling from surging fuel prices.
Birth rates are falling. Populations are ageing. In Southeast Asia, the business of dying has never been bigger.
Facing economic challenges and border tensions with Cambodia, the prime minister has pledged swift responses to public needs.
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Stacked with military allies and ex-generals, the new assembly aims to legitimise a regime the United Nations and EU have branded a sham.
With Chinese investors seizing the supply chain, Thai coconuts now fetch less than a piece of chewing gum, wiping out profits for growers.
These firms used Thai nominees to control the coconut sector and resell the fruit by as much as 25 times the price paid to farmers.
As drivers panic buy diesel and the public is urged to limit air con use, Thai civil servants are ordered home to preserve dwindling energy.
Southeast Asia was already going electric. Then war broke out in the Middle East and it started going faster.
The energy firm will maintain prices for 15 days, even as Thailand says it will still export oil to Laos.
Bangkok has been here before: 46 Thais died in the Hamas assault that started the Gaza war. Now it fears history may be repeating.
Vietnam’s Communist Party chief is staking his legacy on 10 per cent growth, domestic megaprojects and an overseas charm offensive.
Around 150,000 young ravers are expected to flood Pattaya for the world’s largest electronic music festival in December.
‘By the time we realised they were sick, it was too late,’ said an official, as welfare groups decry a life of misery and confinement.
The country’s heavy investment in wooing Chinese visitors appears to have paid off as it overcomes safety fears to secure holiday growth.
With counting errors forcing revotes this Sunday, the reformist opposition is seizing on irregularities to demand a fresh election.
While Cambodia takes its border grievances to Trump’s Board of Peace, Thailand rejects its ‘false’ claims and threatens a border wall.
Shuttered borders have choked trade and sent migrant workers home, forcing Phnom Penh to seek new partners and markets.
Sasiphat Sinsamosorn, 54, had negotiated with the attacker for the release of a pupil in exchange for herself.
The People’s Party, among others, cites ‘clear evidence of irregularities during the tallying process’, including vote-buying and tampering.
Voters weary of upheaval embraced Bhumjaithai’s technocratic promises of debt relief and subsidies, sidelining the reformist People’s Party.
The Bhumjaithai Party is forecast to win nearly 200 seats as People’s Party concedes election.
Born in a Thai refugee camp and raised in Texas, Kham Paneboun is now stateless in Laos, one of thousands punished again for old crimes.
Whoever wins will become Thailand’s fourth prime minister in three years but face a daunting task to revive the economy and ease political gridlock.
Two Russians have been accused of murdering Mikhail Emelianov after his body parts were found across abandoned land near Pattaya.
Reformers, conservatives and populists face off in the coming election with lofty promises to fix the country’s economy and political system.
With the economy struggling and corruption rife, Thai voters will look to the February 8 election as a chance to turn the country around.
Chinese visitor arrivals slumped by nearly 30 per cent last year amid concerns over safety, the border war with Cambodia and the strong baht.
Disenfranchised citizens and migrants dismiss the election as a meaningless exercise designed solely to validate the military’s iron grip.
