Seven Thais have been arrested for smuggling Chinese nationals from Laos to across Thailand in cases that police are investigating further to see if they are linked to call centre gangs.
Seven Thais who appealed to be rescued from the hands of a scam ring in Cambodia through a livestreamed video session have safely returned to Thailand, according to the police yesterday.
How Thailand’s ‘Egg Boy’ statue became a tourism phenomenon
Tens of thousands of people are flocking to a provincial southern temple, seeking hope in tough times.
Visitors to Wat Chedi, a temple in southern Thailand, have donated countless chicken figures to honor Ai Khai (or Egg Boy), a statue housing the spirit of a boy said to bring good luck.Photograph by Amanda Mustard, National Geographic
ByAustin Bush
Email
When the coronavirus pandemic closed borders, Thailand’s massive tourism industry more than 20 percent of its GDP, by some calculations ground to a halt. Within months, word spread that the spirit of an 18th-century statue in southern Thailand, known as the Egg Boy, had provided someone with winning lottery numbers. Then an influential figure publicly attributed her wealth and success to Egg Boy. Soon Wat Chedi, the provincial temple housing the statue, was inundated with Thais seeking hope and good fortune.
Photograph by Amanda Mustard, National Geographic
Yet it’s hard to imagine that Por and his fellow monks aren’t at the very least overwhelmed by the estimated 8,000 visitors the temple is thought to receive on an average weekday. The parking lot that can now accommodate as many as 6,000 cars, and the ceaseless expansion of the temple grounds leaves much of Wat Chedi feeling like a vast construction site.
Despite the boomtown feel, this isn’t the first time that Nakhon Si Thammarat has found itself in Thailand’s spiritual spotlight. Hinduism is thought to have reached the area as early as the 5th century. By the middle of the 13th century, Nakhon Si Thammarat was an important centre for the spread of Theravada Buddhism to the rest of Thailand. In 2007, another temple in the province was the epicentre of a craze revolving around amulets known as Jatukham Ramathep.