Koi Pla, a popular traditional dish consumed in Thailand and Laos is said to be responsible for the deaths of around 20,000 people every year.

Considered a salad by the Lao people of Laos and Thailand’s Isaan region, Koi Pla consists of minced raw fish, lemon juice, herbs, and spices. As you might have guessed, the fish is the problematic ingredient in this dish, although technically, it’s the parasites living in the fish. Koi Pla is most commonly made with raw freshwater fish from the Mekong basin which are often infested with parasitic flatworms known as live flukes. These parasites have long been known to cause one of the most aggressive types of cancer known to man, cholangiocarcinoma, or bile duct cancer, which causes the deaths of around 20,000 people in Thailand alone.

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Clips of a man bearing a shocking resemblance to Keanu Reeves’ iconic film character John Wick selling street food in Thailand have been going viral online, fueling theories that the stylish assassin had retired in the Asian country.

A few days ago, a short video with the caption “John Wick stopped killing people and turned to selling coffee and grilled squid” went viral on Thai social media, because the man featured in it bore a shocking resemblance to the popular action film character. Only here, he was not gunning down or beating up people, but selling street food and cleaning food bowls. Soon enough, other videos of the mysterious John Wick lookalike followed, including some in which he wore a suit and white tie, just like the action hero. People joked that he must be on a mission in Thailand, while others said that he was done with killing bad guys and had retreated as a street food seller.

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A UK man was recently arrested in Thailand for allegedly causing damage to a Phuket restaurant by posting a number of 1-star reviews online following an altercation with the restaurant owner.

The 21-year-old British national was arrested in Thailand earlier this month when police showed up at his apartment in Bangkok, but the incident that led to his arrest dates back to 2022 when he was staying in a rented property in Phuket. According to Thai media, the easiest way for the man, known only as Alexander, to reach his abode passed through an Italian restaurant and he didn’t hesitate to use it. Noticing that the man passed through his restaurant several times per day, the owner confronted him and asked that he use the public road instead because he wasn’t a paying customer and he was disturbing his guests. Shortly after the heated exchange, the restaurant owner noticed that the Google rating of his business had dropped from 4.8/5 to 3.1/5 because of a number of allegedly fake 1-star reviews. Suspecting Alexander was behind this online defamation campaign, he filed a complaint against him.

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A couple of enterprising students from Thailand have come up with an innovative business strategy – sleeping in problematic houses and apartments to certify that they are free of ghosts and paranormal phenomena.

21-year-old Wifei Cheng, a Thai-Taiwanese student at Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna in Chiang Mai province, knew about the problems realtors had selling properties where deaths had been reported in the past, and decided that there was a market for ghost-free home certifiers. And who better for the job that himself and his colleague and associate, 22-year-old Sretthawut Boonprakhong? The pair recently started advertising their services on social media, offering to sleep in problematic houses and apartments and then issue ghost-free certificates to put buyers’ and renters’ minds at ease.

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A Russian man vacationing in Pattaya, Thailand has been caught on camera shaving a local barber’s head in revenge for the disatisfactory haircut he had received.

The shocking footage that has been doing the rounds online for over a week shows a Caucasian man getting a haircut at the Salute Barbershop in Pattaya. According to eye witnesses, he walked into the venue and explained to one of the barbers there how he wanted his hair cut using hand gestures because he allegedly didn’t speak very good English. At one point, the man, who was later identified as a Russian tourist, looked into the mirror and flew into a feat of rage over the botched haircut. He started slamming his fists on the table and swearing at the barber, before picking up the shears and shaving part of his fringe as revenge.

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A 48-year-old English man vacationing in Pattaya, Thailand, ran out of money and tried extorting more from his family back home by having his mates pose as his kidnappers.

Time and money fly when you’re having fun, and Ian Robbie Day, a 48-year-old man from Portsmouth, England, was having the time of his life in Thailand’s party capital of Pattaya. After repeatedly prolonging his exotic vacation and asking his family back home to send him more money, Ian found himself with no more money to burn on booze, drugs, and other local pleasures. His family refused to fund his non-stop partying anymore, so he was forced to make a decision – either end his Thai vacation and return home, or find a way to get his hands on more money. It was a no-brainer, so he convinced his mates to beat him up and pose as masked gangsters, so he could fake his kidnapping and ask his family for ransom money…

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Burger King Thailand recently shocked the fast food world with its latest addition to the menu – a ‘real cheeseburger’ that consists of 20 slices of cheese between two sesame burger buns.

The Real Cheeseburger hit Burger King locations across Thailand last Sunday and immediately went viral online. People started posting photos of the tower-like burger, expressing their disbelief that something like this was actually being sold as food. Many people still didn’t believe it was anything more than a stunt, but Burger King clarified that “This is no joke. This is for real,” via its social media channels. The unusual burger, which consists of 20 slices of American cheese stacked between two buns, comes with no sauce, pickles, and most importantly, no meat patty. By some accounts, the cheese is sometimes not even grilled or melted.

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A businessman from southern Thailand recently went viral for claiming that the secret to his good health is to drink crocodile blood mixed with alcohol twice a day.

Rojakorn Nanon, a 52-year-old man from Thailand’s Trang province, starts his day with a glass of crocodile mixed with a Thai spirit called lao khao, and has another such cocktail before bedtime. The businessman claims that he used to be physically weak and exhausted all the time, but ever since he started drinking crocodile blood, things took a massive turn for the better, and now he swears by the stuff. He believes the blood does wonders for several organs, for the blood, and for the nervous system.

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A Thai doctor recently shared photos of a patient’s hand and the magnetic plates he had embedded in his fingers to help him cheat at a popular dice game without raising suspicion.

Dr. Wat Lun of the Wiwat X-ray Clinic-Lab in Chon Buri, Thailand, regularly shares photos of his medical cases on social media, but it was one of his most recent patients that drew unusual levels of attention on Facebook. The Thai doctor posted a couple of photos, one showing two black plates and another of the patient’s sewn fingers following minor surgery. The photos aren’t that impressive, but it was the story behind them that caused the post to go viral. Apparently, one of his patients had magnetic plates embedded in his fingertips for 40 years to help him cheat at Hi Lo, also known as Sic Bo, a popular dice game.

“You probably won’t believe it but a patient inserted magnets into the fingertips of his left-hand middle and ring fingers for 40 years. He put them there to play Hi-Lo,” Wat Lun wrote in his Facebook post.

The Thai doctor explained that the man, whose name has not been disclosed, only came in to have the magnets removed because he needed to board an airplane and he was afraid that the agents would be detected by airport security devices. His days of Sic Bo gambling were probably behind him as well, so he decided to visit a clinic.

Photo: Edge2Edge Media/Unsplash

“He came and asked to have them taken out because he wants to take a flight and is scared the magnets will set off an alarm at airport security,” the doctor wrote. “When I cut open his fingers, I found two very tightly embedded magnets.”

Popular in East-Asian countries, Sic Bo is a dice game in which players bet on whether the combination of three dice will be a high or low score. If the sum of the dots is up to 11, it is considered a low score, and anything between 11 and 18 is high. Although the exact cheating method was not disclosed, some Thai news outlets claimed that the man used the magnetic plates in combination with a small magnet in one or multiple dice to manipulate the score.

A Thai man is taking his ex-wife to court, accusing her of concealing a lottery win of 12 million baht ($352,000) from him before breaking up with him over the phone and marrying someone else.

Narin, a 47-year-old scorned man from Thailand’s Isan region, recently hired a lawyer to help him wage a legal battle against his wife of 20 years who allegedly left him to marry another man after winning the lottery. The man claims his ex-wife, 43-year-old Chaweewan, with whom he has three daughters, took advantage of the fact that he was working in South Korea to support the family and simply broke off with him over the phone last month without so much as an explanation. He returned home at the beginning of his month to confront the woman only to learn that she had already married another man, a local police officer, just days earlier.

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A Thai man surprised his wife by tattooing their marriage certificate on his forearm as a Valentine’s Day present.

A tattoo parlor in Kaeng Khoi, Central Thailand’s Saraburi province recently shared a photo of one of their latest projects, a lifesize copy of a marriage certificate tattooed on a person’s forearm. Apparently, the client wanted to surprise his wife with unique proof of his love for her, so he asked the tattoo artists to permanently ink his official marriage certificate on his arm.

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KFC Thailand recently teamed up with several scent experts to create incense sticks that not only look edible but also smell like KFC fried chicken when lit.

Colonel Sanders’ secret recipe containing 11 herbs and spices is notoriously hard to replicate in the kitchen, let alone in insence sticks, but KFC Thailand claims to have achieved the impossible. Partnering with a number of scent and perfume experts, the Thai branch of the international fast food chain managed to come up with an incense stick formula that not only looks good enough to eat, but gives off the same aroma as KFC fried chicken when lit. The only problem is that you can’t buy these incense sticks, only win them.

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A 33-year-old gorilla who has spent most of her life alone inside a metal cage on the seventh floor of a shopping mall in Bangkok, Thailand, has been dubbed the world’s loneliest gorilla.

Bua Noi was only one when she was put into the cage that would become her permanent home for more than three decades. She was one of the main attractions of a bizarre zoo – if one could even call it that – inside Bangkok’s oldest shopping mall, Pata Pinklao Department Store, and owners refused to relocate her to a more suitable location, despite numerous requests from animal rights activists and the Thai Government. Even today, Bua Noi’s owners refuse to let her live out the rest of her days in a sanctuary, with other members of her species.

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A 19-year-old man and a 56-year-old grandmother-of-three in Thailand have been making international news headlines after getting engaged to be married.

Wuthichai Chantaraj, 19, met his fiance, Janla Namuangrak, 56, almost 10 years ago, when the woman moved next to his family home in the Akat Amnuay district of Thailand’s Sakhon Nakhon province. Their first real interaction occurred when Janla asked the 10-year-old boy to help her move some potted plants, and from that day on Wuthichai would often drop by the divorced woman’s house to play and help her with chores. The two describe their early relationship as a friendship, but when Wuthichai turned 17, he started developing feelings for Janla, and they eventually became a couple. They only announced their romance to their families at the start of this year, and their love story has been making headlines in Thailand ever since.

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A boat tour organizer in Thailand has been getting a lot of attention because of his original-yet-controversial business idea – fishing trips in the company of nude ladies.

I’ve always found fishing quite boring – hot take, I know – but one Thai entrepreneur in Chon Buri recently came up with an intriguing way of spicing up the experience and thus getting a leg up on the competition. The mysterious person or outfit behind the controversial endeavor advertised on social media with a series of lewd photos showing two men apparently fishing on a boat next to two completely naked women posing for the camera with their legs spread open. That’s one way to get people’s attention…

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