AP Foreign fishermen on Friday rushed at the chance to be rescued from an isolated Indonesian island where an AP report revealed slavery runs rampant. Most of the boat captains are from Thailand.

afp Thailand's junta chief vowed to shut down critical media outlets as he faced a growing international backlash against his decision to replace martial law with new powers retaining his absolute authority.

ttrweekly.com Phuket will continue to see a solid growth in supply this year with 1778 new rooms heading for completion according to the latest Jones Lang LaSalle assessment. Total stock of branded hotels and resorts in Phuket stands at 47,000 rooms.

news.com.au Actor Nicole Kidman, who has just touched down in Sydney for Easter, has been slammed by a union representing 25,000 American flight attendants for her new ad campaign with Etihad Airways.
http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/nicole-kidman-slammed-for-new-etihad-airways-campaign/story-e6frfq80-1227290139382


PHUKET: The daily wrap of Thailand news, with a Phuket perspective, plus relevant reports from national and international media. Beware of inconsistent imitations.



washingtonpost.com Masked al-Shabab militants stormed dormitories at a university in northeastern Kenya early Thursday, killing at least 147 people in the worst terror attack on Kenyan soil in nearly two decades, officials said.

bloomberg Thailand is awash in corruption and the battle against it will be lost unless there is a fundamental shift in Thai politics and culture, a leading anti-graft official says: ''Corruption grows and grows because the people think they have the benefit from corruption too.''

bangkokpost.com UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein expressed alarm at the invocation of Section 44 that bestows unfettered authority on the NCPO chief.



AP A week after AP published a year-long investigation - including showing men locked in a cage - delegations from Thailand and Indonesia visited the island village of Benjina. Officials from Myanmar are scheduled to visit to determine how many citizens are stuck there.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/516423/thailand-two-asean-countries-investigate-fishing-slavery-reports



Phuket Update New warning signs in three languages have gone up around a seaside pond in Nai Harn on Phuket where six children have drowned since 2010. ''Please be careful to play water is sucked into the sluice water currents careful'' says the English.

ttrweekly.com Thailand's tourism needs to urgently reform its management systems if it intends to be a leading regional player.
http://www.ttrweekly.com/site/2015/04/thailands-tourism-needs-reform/

bloomberg They're coming back. Tourist arrivals in Thailand rose almost 30 percent in February from a year earlier, the biggest jump since Dec. 2012. Given that tourism makes up the equivalent of 10 percent of the country's GDP, this is cause for celebration.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-02/tourists-are-back-in-thailand-for-now

news.com.au When a beach club on Phuket posted images on its Facebook page showing drunk revellers riding a baby elephant near the pool this week, it was flooded with criticism. However, some baffled news.com.au readers wondered what all the fuss was about.
http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-advice/this-needs-to-stop-the-darker-side-of-tourism/story-e6frfqfr-1227289810819

bangkokpost.com Motorists are being warned of a ''fake-injury scammer'' roaming Bangkok streets and extorting money from drivers, particularly women travelling alone.

traveldailymedia.com Singapore's upscale hotel brand, Amara, has launched its first ever property in Thailand. The new Amara Bangkok has soft-opened on the Thai capital's Surawong Road, close to the Silom district. A brand new hotel, Amara features an eye-catching exterior with 597 timber ''fins''.

reuters The main TV debate of Britain's national election campaign yielded no clear winner with three opinion polls producing four different winners.

bloomberg Eight months after Thailand's military junta started selling rice into an oversupplied global market, the officers are taking a different tack amid a rubber glut. But this approach by Thailand, the world's biggest exporter of both commodities, may cause as many problems in global markets as the old one, analysts say.



ibtimes.co.in Villages in the Philippines have banned ''foreign tourists'' from participating in the annual crucifixion rites ahead of Easter, saying it is not a ''circus''. Last year, Danish volunteer Lasse Spang Olsen was allowed to participate after he converted to Catholicism to make a film on the crucifixions of Jesus. In 2006, Briton Dominik Diamond ended up creating public embarrassment after he backed out at the last minute, seeing the eight-inch-long nails that would be driven into his palms.

Try Phuketwan's Asean Today daily:
http://phuketwan.com/tourism/asean-today-thai-carriers-eyed-canadian-gets-years-journalists-wear-black-viet-tourism-drops-22166/



April 6 Public Holiday

April 11-19 Phuket Bike Week

April 13-15 Songkran Festival

May 4 Additional public holiday scheduled

June 20-21 Baba wedding at Old Phuket Town

July 15-19 Cape Panwa Hotel Phuket Raceweek