Latest news with #KohTao
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
I'm raising my family in Thailand and feel less pressure to be a perfect mom
Sandy Cacchione left Switzerland and moved to Thailand with her husband to work at a diving center. They settled down in Koh Samui, where she gave birth to her daughter, who is now 5 years old. She feels less pressure to be an 'Instagram mom,' and says the island has allowed her daughter to be a child. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sandy Cacchione, a 41-year-old Swiss woman raising her daughter in Koh Samui, Thailand. She is also the founder of a destination-focused travel and events platform. It has been edited for length and clarity. I met my now-husband in 2009 on a popular diving island in Thailand. I was on vacation from my hometown of Basel, Switzerland, while he had stopped on the island to complete his divemaster training during a yearlong trip around the world. After dating long-distance for a year and a half, we decided to move to Koh Tao to work at the diving center where we had first met. It's an island in the Gulf of Thailand, just a ferry ride from Koh Samui. He became a diving instructor, while I started off as an underwater videographer and eventually became an instructor myself. We got married five years later, and although we loved the time we'd spent on that island, we were ready to settle down and start a family. Koh Samui, over 10 times bigger, offered the environment we were looking for, so we moved there instead. It's a perfect mix of the laid-back island lifestyle we love and all the amenities we need. There is a cinema, a shopping mall, an international airport, and hospitals and schools. When I was pregnant, my mother moved to Samui to be close to her first grandchild. I gave birth to my daughter in 2020, who is now five years old and enrolled in an international kindergarten on the island. I normally drop my daughter off by 9 a.m. and pick her up between 3:30 and 4 p.m. It's on the later side, since the earliest she can do is 8:30 a.m., but I don't like to rush in the mornings, and neither does she. It's a Montessori-inspired school that follows the English curriculum. In Switzerland, the school day usually starts around 8 a.m., so kids need to get up much earlier. In the afternoon, students typically return home for lunch. Moreover, different grades have different schedules. When I was visiting a friend in Switzerland, her two kids didn't have the same lunchtime. Coordinating is impossible; your whole day revolves around your kids. Many kids back in Switzerland also participate in lots of activities. As a mother, I probably would've felt pressured to enroll my daughter in something. While there are extracurricular activities for kids in Samui, there is no pressure to sign them up. Nobody will say, "Oh, your kid's not doing ballet?" Everyone's friendly and supportive. Social media here is more about traveling and breaking free from a conventional lifestyle. There is nothing about "I'm a perfect mom, this is what I did today." Even in my daughter's school, the kids get exposed to so many different cultures and learn to be more accepting of others from a young age. People living in Samui tend to be more open-minded. Most of the people I've met have already lived in other countries before; this is rarely their first stop. When my daughter sees videos of other children playing at a park on YouTube or from friends back in Europe, and she says, "Mommy, can we go to the park?" I say, "Well, there's no park." There are indoor play spaces but hardly any well-maintained outdoor playgrounds or parks like the ones I've seen back in Switzerland. I've found that if you don't want to do an activity, it's difficult to just go somewhere and meet other families. You need to know where to go or arrange to meet someone somewhere. For teenagers, it's much harder to find things to do. Some hang out at the shopping mall, but getting around the island can be difficult. Walking here isn't easy — it's hot, there aren't many sidewalks, and there's no public transportation like buses or subways. The roads can be dangerous, so I'd never want my child riding a motorbike here. They're really kid-friendly here. There's so much space almost everywhere, and she can run around. Even in restaurants, you never feel shushed. We live up in the mountains, about 10 minutes from the main road. There is no road noise, and we have a nice view of the valley and a little bit of the ocean. It's very quiet and slow, even in the mornings. If I'm 10 minutes late dropping my daughter off, it's not a problem. Even as a mother, I'm not stressed. Do you have a story to share about raising a child after relocating to a new country? Contact this reporter at agoh@ Read the original article on Business Insider
Daily Mail
19-05-2025
- Daily Mail
The deadly paradise luring in Brits: The worrying surge in UK holidaymakers of all ages getting caught up in bar brawls, drug smuggling, spiked drinks, lethal boat trips, and fatal violence in Thailand
Thousands of British holidaymakers have swapped the sandy beaches of the Costa del Sol for the cheap booze and breathtaking geography of Thailand in recent years. Today, Brits account for around 20% of all visits to the country, which has proven keen to welcome foreigners against the tide of anti-tourist rhetoric in Europe. But British visitors, drawn in by the promise of adventure on a budget, have warned of fresh perils travelling the south Asian country. In recent months, returning travellers have been stopped at airports accused of trafficking drugs, believed to have been exploited by powerful gangs. Only last week, a tourist from Manchester was left fighting for his life after allegedly being stabbed and thrown from a car in the notorious hotspot, Pattaya. And over the years, more than a dozen Western tourists have been reported to have died on the sinister 'Death Island' Koh Tao, often in mysterious circumstances. Thailand has a reputation among Brits as a quiet retirement destination and a rite of passage for gap year students seeking cheap thrills. But the growing array of Brits caught up in violent crime, unexplained deaths and drug trafficking adds an unsettling dimension to Asia's 'Land of Smiles'. David Miller and Hannah Witheridge met only by chance during their holidays to the picturesque island of Koh Tao in late 2014. David was a Jersey based civil engineer and structural engineering graduate. Hannah was studying for a masters degree in speech and language therapy at the time of her death. The pair were staying with friends in adjoining rooms of the Ocean View Bungalows, modest accommodation overlooking the sand and surf of Sairee Beach. After leaving a bar in the early hours of September 15, 2014, David and Hannah walked down to a nearby beach when they were attacked. Hannah was raped and beaten to death. Miller was bludgeoned, sustaining wounds to the head, and left to drown. They were found next to each other on the beach as the sun rose. Their deaths on the island reverberated around the world, prompting close scrutiny of a series of unexplained tragedies that followed. Koh Tao, it transpired, had long had a reputation as a haven for organised crime and corruption, where an allegedly 'corrupt' police force prioritised protecting local interests over full disclosure of events. Little has changed. The death of a young Irish diver earlier this year provoked a flurry of concern. The Thai Examiner noted that, 'significantly', the death was not being reported in the mainstream Thai press. Many deaths, they said, are only uncovered by later reports from their home country or formal death notices. In March, a tourist boat burst into flames and sank off the coast of the island with a British backpacker still on board. Police revealed that a crew member was filling scuba oxygen tanks with compressed air close to the boat's engine room when one of them exploded, causing the blaze. They detained the captain and crew member, citing 'negligence' in their preliminary investigation. But Koh Tao is only a microcosm of threats to tourists across the country. Police in Pattaya - an east coast hotspot renowned for its nightlife, debauchery and lax law enforcement - are currently on the hunt for a group of mystery attackers believed to have stabbed a British tourist and hurled him from a car. Andrew Joseph Cook, 36, from Manchester, was thrown to the pavement, covered in blood, on Friday, before the driver allegedly stabbed him. Medics rushed to the scene and applied bandages to catastrophic bleeding that continued to seep through the dressings. The left side of his face had sustained a deep 10cm gash, while his chest and abdomen were slashed so severely that internal fat protruded. Mr Cook was given first aid treatment before being taken to Pattaya Pathomkhun Hospital, where he was in intensive care on Saturday. Earlier this year, another British tourist returned home to warn of his 'holiday from hell' in the city, claiming he was robbed, beaten up by police, handcuffed in a cell and left to lie in his own urine after walking into a sign. Andrew Hopkins, 55, told MailOnline he had accidentally knocked into the entrance sign to his neighbours' residence. He was confronted by security and apologised, but things took a violent turn when police arrived. 'They threw me onto the back of a pick-up truck and locked me in a cell for around 36 hours,' Andrew told the MailOnline. 'An English guy in there told me to just do what they say, and they'd let me go. Eventually, an Italian man arrived and told me I had to pay 15,000 baht [£360] in cash to be released.' Andrew languished in a filthy cell before being released. When he was eventually freed, he returned to his AirBnb to find his money and valuables had vanished. The wife of the host flew into a rage and police arrived again, allegedly 'attacking' Andrew and hauling him off to jail again. He was stripped of all his belongings and handcuffed to the bars of his cell. Left lying on a grimy floor with his arm raised and bound to the bars if his prison cell, Andrew was forced to urinate over himself. 'I shouted for help. No one came,' he said. 'It was disgusting and there was no way to treat a human being'. Eventually, police officers released him. Again, he claimed, his possessions and money had been stolen in his absence. 'They call it the Land of Smiles, but my experience is that they're only friendly while you're paying,' he reflected. 'Tourists are seen as easy targets to be fleeced and robbed.' 'If you ever find yourself in trouble there – stay calm, don't raise your voice, and do not, under any circumstances, question their authority.' The story is not unique. A British holidaymaker in March described being chained up and beaten in a Thai police cell after, he believes, being spiked with a psychoactive drug. Lewis Green was arrested on January 24 - the day before he was due to fly home from a eight-week solo trip around the South Asian country - and suffered fractured ribs, a broken wrist and foot lacerations. He was also forced to drink his own urine in his damp cell at the Hua Hin Police Station and was only released after paying a £7,000 'bribe'. The builder, from Staffordshire, believes he may have been deliberately targeted by crooks and spiked with a powerful hallucinogenic drug known as Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, in order to make him an easy target. Lewis believes either his drink was spiked with the drug, it was injected into him or administered by a 'spiked vape'. He told MailOnline that his time in prison was 'terrible': 'My arms were chained up and I was handcuffed to the prison bars. 'You don't get fed any food or given any water. I had to start drinking water off the floor because they turned the tap on and flooded the cell and left the water in there for days.' 'I was chained up so every time I needed to use the toilet I had to go on the floor then drink the water I'd peed in. 'One day six of them [officers] came in the cell and just started punching me, beating the s*** out of me. I just covered myself as best I could. 'I was just lucky I was able to pay my way out but there were a lot of British and American lads out there getting caught up in stuff like this.' Spiking fears have come into focus since the deaths of six tourists in neighbouring Laos late last year. British tourists died after taking shots believed to have contained methanol at a hostel in Vang Vieng. But tourists warn that poor quality spirits in Thailand, too, have seen visitors losing their memory and acting out of character. British grandmother Janet West, from Swansea, recalled blacking out and ending up roaming her hotel naked for hours after drinking from a 'spiked' bucket of alcohol during the Thai New Year in 2019. She said that she had been drinking what she thought was whisky and coke from a bucket in Bangkok, before heading off to bed. Ms West said that she thought she had dreamt about being escorted back to her room by hotel staff. But she later discovered it wasn't a dream. They told her she had been wandering around naked for four hours. She later recalled she believed she was a pregnant teenager and had to get transport to a special delivery unit. She came to when hotel staff noticed her trying to leave the building and ushered her back up to her room, she was later told. She said: 'On that visit we were buying buckets of whisky and coke but I haven't a clue what we were really drinking. 'Afterwards people told me it was ethanol, because of the incomplete distillation process.' 'I was lucky to survive and to have no side effects but I'm frightened to drink the local spirits in Thailand now,' said Janet, who previously worked in a bar. 'The local alcohol is not distilled properly and, although it's cheap, it's not worth the risk - stick to imported spirits or bottled beer.' Thailand is renowned for its nightlife, and has done much to cater to the desires of Western tourists seeking to pay tribute to their hedonistic impulses in recent years. But bars and bravado have brought their own baggage. Street fights involving British tourists have been widely reported, presenting more risk to onlookers. British holidaymakers were implicated in a brawl in Phuket on May 11, alleged to have fled from a bar after stabbing a French tourist. Police said that a fight broke out inside a restaurant between a group of men, with tourists and security trying to intervene. The fight spilled out into the street, where 23-year-old Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighter Jugurtha Nubel Khaleche was allegedly stabbed. Only in December, a British man was arrested in Thailand on suspicion of stabbing a Japanese tourist to death after a street brawl. David Maensiri, 36, was said to be having a row with his girlfriend in Pattaya on December 29 when Japanese passer-by Seita Tanabe, 27, attempted to intervene. David was alleged to have attacked the holidaymaker before stabbing him. Medics arrived on scene to find Seita with a deep stab wound in his chest. He was rushed to a hospital but later succumbed to his injuries. The Brit was described as drunk and remorseless, and he even flashed a rock-and-roll hand sign at the cops while he was sitting in the back of the truck. The Brit was described as drunk and remorseless, and he even flashed a rock-and-roll hand sign at the cops while he was sitting in the back of the truck Experts warn that, beyond getting swept up in street brawls, British visitors to Thailand are at risk of becoming ensnared in organised crime. The arrests of British nationals Bella Culley, 18, and Charlotte May Lee, 21, in Georgia and Sri Lanka respectively after travelling from Thailand has renewed suspicions that gangs are using native holidaymakers to act as drug mules, crossing borders with huge shipments of narcotics. Jemal Janashia, a former police general in Georgia and one of the country's top drug crime experts, told the Mail that local investigators reviewing Culley's case will be keen to explore 'the possibility of a link' between the two cases - and, hauntingly, 'that Thai gangs may be attempting to recruit vulnerable British travellers'. In recent months, dozens of British nationals have been stopped at borders - ports and airports - in Europe, accused of trying to bring huge quantities of cannabis into the country. In the space of just two weeks of last year, more than 260kg of cannabis was found in suitcases at UK airports, carried by passengers arriving from Bangkok, SCMP reported. Some 800 people, including as many as 50 British nationals, were 'intercepted' between October 2024 and March 2025. British nationals have been among those police have detained on suspicion of orchestrating complex networks of smugglers in and out of the country. But the pattern of young people - often teenagers or people in their early twenties - being detained at borders has raised concerns that backpackers are being recruited to move drugs. Thailand has become a top global holiday destination, welcoming tens of thousands of Brits every year hoping to soak up the sun and unwind in peace - or, indeed, let off some steam. But the getaway is not without its troubles. Reports of bar brawls, drug smuggling, spiked drinks, lethal boat trips and fatal violence have marred the country's reputation as a relaxed, affordable paradise. The Land of Smiles remains a desirable destination for British holidaymakers seeking a change of pace.
