From everyday ideas to competition-ready innovations, the "Robot Playground Festival" gives Thai youth nationwide a platform to showcase creative thinking and explore technology, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Organized by the Thai Association of Robot Technology and Artificial Intelligence Teachers and the Thai Robot Teachers Club, with support from Panasonic Energy (Thailand), the festival celebrates student innovation.

Team SPIM-D from Phivatporn Institute Demonstration School won the Bigfoot Gundam Open category with a remotely operated robotic arm developed by 17-year-olds Chaiyapat Suwannarasmee and Nattadoan Sriratvatanakul. The team plans to evolve the project into a rescue robot capable of performing tasks in hazardous environments—including collapsed buildings and chemical leak sites—by adding thermal sensors, cameras, and 5G control systems.

Team KN3 from Kanjananutcharoen School won the Lite Beam Open competition with an autonomous line-following robot built by 18-year-old Pannakan Luengamornsakdi and 12-year-old Piraya Srisuksaibangtoey. The team hand-soldered circuits, adjusted resistances, and installed light-detection sensors—the robot's "brain" and "eyes"—and plans to develop an intelligent agricultural robot to monitor soil conditions, spray fertilizer, and transport harvests.

A mixed student team from Phivatporn Institute Demonstration School and Bangkok Christian College developed "Monk Assist," a robotic helper for monks that uses AI to identify food's nutritional value when inserted into the system, displaying health information for relatives and helping monks carry objects. The team aims to expand the concept into everyday and industrial carrying applications.

Team KIDS STEM-2 from Rungarun School, with members aged 8 and 9, created a "Smart Farm" equipped with moisture-detection sensors for automatic watering and AI-powered motion detection to identify and deter unwanted animals like birds, rats, and squirrels using a robotic cat replica and sound effects.

Panasonic Energy hopes the initiative will inspire Thai youth to pursue robotics, technology, and AI careers while demonstrating how innovation can drive sustainable social and environmental progress.

Six popular male actors are teaming up with Duang Prateep Foundation for a workshop where participants hand-paint jasmine designs on fragrance diffusers to raise funds and spread happiness. Thai luxury fragrance brand Divana, built on principles of nature, beauty, and sharing, partnered with the Make It Right 2026 cast to launch the "divana Bloom of Love: Mother's Day Workshop" at Duang Prateep Foundation. The initiative uses fragrance products as a medium for love, creativity, and opportunity for children and youth in the Khlong Toei community.

The highlight is the Divana Room Diffuser featuring hand-painted jasmine flowers created by actors Porn Mee Punpavee, Bungkee Surasee, Che Sikhon, Pen Nueng, Chen Thanachpong, and Pim Kritpat, together with foundation members. Each bottle is one-of-a-kind, reflecting different life stories but equally beautiful in their own way. Jasmine, a symbol of Mother's Day, represents unconditional love, gratitude, and the passing of hope from one person to another.

Make It Right 2026, part of the BL series, plays an important role in educating society about love, understanding, and acceptance of diversity. The latest season continues to convey the value of relationships across all dimensions—family love, friendship, and character growth—aligning with the project's belief that love, in any form, has the power to heal, inspire, and change society.

Duang Prateep Foundation has long worked alongside the Khlong Toei community, with a mission to improve quality of life through education, youth development, career promotion, and creating opportunities for underprivileged people. This collaboration links business, artists, and civil society to prove that small cooperations can create significant impact. Patpanpong Ranuruksana, CEO of Divana Global, stated that over 26 years, Divana has believed successful businesses must grow alongside society. The company emphasizes continuous social projects because true beauty lies not just in products, but in the value passed to people.

Duang Prateep Foundation has long worked in partnership with the Khlong Toei community to improve living standards through education, youth development, and creating opportunities. The collaboration demonstrates how business, art, and giving can build a sustainable society. The hand-painted jasmine Room Diffusers will be available at Divana, Central Park shopping mall, from today until sold out, priced at 1,450 baht. All net proceeds will go to Duang Prateep Foundation to support children and youth programs.

The Radio and Television Broadcasting and Telecommunications Research and Development Fund for Public Interest (BTRC) is supporting the VIPA Pitching Project 2026 run by Thai Public Broadcasting Service (Thai PBS), opening a platform for emerging creators nationwide to develop skills and produce short films or documentaries 10–15 minutes long on the theme "The Power of Human: Behind the Scenes," highlighting the everyday people driving hidden success stories.

The project, which opened applications online from March 16 to May 3, 2569, received overwhelming response from over 40 institutions including universities, schools, and organizations, plus independent teams nationwide. A judging panel selected 20 finalists with outstanding, creative ideas aligned with the theme, with results announced officially through VIPA's online channels on May 15, 2569.

All 20 selected teams will participate in two intensive workshops free of charge. Workshop 1: The Power of Story (June 25–28, 2569; 4 days, 3 nights) will develop documentary concepts and storytelling structure, followed by Workshop 2: The Power of Production (July 22–26, 2569; 5 days, 4 nights) covering cinematography, sound design, editing, and professional pitching to judges. Both workshops are led by prominent mentors in Thai film and documentary, including Nontawat Numbenjapol (director of "Doi Boy" on Netflix), Ekkapong Saranseree (winner of the Suphannahongsa Award for "Breaking the Cycle"), Nattapol Timmuang (Suphannahongsa and Nathral Award-winning editor), and Prasan Ingkanant (creator of "Manud Tang Wai" and "Kob Nok Kala"). Each team receives 10,000 baht in production funding for work between July and September 2569.

All 20 works will be distributed through VIPA and Thai PBS platforms, with public voting before an awards ceremony at a cinema. Prize pools total over 100,000 baht: first prize 50,000 baht, second 30,000 baht, third 10,000 baht, and special jury and popular vote awards at 7,000 baht each. Outstanding teams may also collaborate with Thai PBS on future projects. Details are available at www.VIPA.me/PitchingProject2026

Education Minister Prasert Chantharavong led Thailand's delegation in signing a memorandum of understanding with Indonesia's Primary and Secondary Education Ministry during Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul's official visit to Jakarta on August 3–4, 2025. Prasert said the partnership reaffirms both nations as "allies" in promoting educational cooperation across early childhood, primary, secondary, and vocational education, including teacher and student exchanges, expert sharing, and mutual recognition of qualifications under each country's laws and regulations.

During discussions, Thailand and Indonesia addressed AI Education to develop students' artificial intelligence and digital literacy skills for the digital age and future job markets, along with teacher capacity building. The two countries also discussed promoting Thai and Indonesian language learning through teacher exchanges and student scholarship programs, with particular emphasis on students from Thailand's southern border provinces.

American YouTuber leaves Thailand to Vietnam after six years: are his reasons fair?LegacyBen Marriott, the creator behind the YouTube channel The Borderless Office, has left Thailand after living here for six years and relocated to Ho Chi Minh City. His video setting out eight reasons for the move has circulated widely in expat communities, and it is worth engaging with seriously rather than dismissing or cheering uncritically. His central argument is that the gap between what living in Thailand costs and what it offers has narrowed. That is a defensible position, and several of his specific claims hold up.

What he says, and what the data shows On corruption and regulatory uncertainty, he is on solid ground. Thailand scored 33 out of 100 in the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, ranking 116th of 182 countries and its lowest result in nearly two decades. Within ASEAN, Thailand now sits below Vietnam on that measure. On economic growth, the comparison broadly holds. Vietnam grew 8.02% in 2025. Thailand grew 2.4%, and the NESDC forecasts 1.5 to 2.5% for 2026. For a remote worker building a career in technology and digital business, the energy of a faster-growing economy is a real, if intangible, factor. His point about overtourism, with Phuket as his primary example, reflects something genuine too. The volume tourism model has pushed certain areas toward a price-over-experience dynamic that makes them less interesting for the kind of long-term resident who wants cultural depth rather than a service economy built around short-stay visitors. The cultural infrastructure argument, that malls are not museums and that Bangkok lacks the academic and contemporary arts scene of cities like Berlin or Saigon, is fair as far as it goes, though it is also a preference rather than a structural flaw. His point about how government agencies treat long-term foreign residents as temporary visitors rather than contributors is something many expats who have spent years living in Thailand recognise on a practical level, particularly when dealing with visa renewals, property restrictions, or business registration. What the video does not cover Income per person still favours Thailand by a meaningful margin. Vietnam’s GDP per capita was US$5,026 in 2025 against Thailand’s US$8,201. That gap matters for the infrastructure and services that surround daily life. Thailand also holds advantages in healthcare access, electricity reliability, and international schooling depth that a single video cannot fully address. Freehold condominium ownership for foreigners within the 49% building quota is available here and not in Vietnam. That is not a trivial difference for anyone building long-term financial stability rather than moving from city to city. Ho Chi Minh City also has its own version of the problems he attributes to Thailand: serious air quality issues, flooding, and rapid rent inflation in central districts that is compressing the cost advantage Vietnam used to offer. Independent forecasters are also more cautious about Vietnam’s growth trajectory than Hanoi is. The OECD projects 6.5% for Vietnam in 2026 against a government target of 10%. That gap between official ambition and external projection is not unusual, but it is worth noting before making a life decision based on headline GDP numbers. Who this applies to, and who it does not The honest framing here is that his calculation is one person’s, made at a specific career stage, in a specific professional niche, with specific priorities. The question of whether Thailand has lost its edge looks different depending on what you are actually measuring and who is measuring it. A remote worker in their thirties building a tech or content career in a high-growth environment will weigh these factors differently from a retiree, a family with school-age children, or a business owner with established Thai relationships and infrastructure. Most of what Ben raises is real. Thailand’s cost advantage has compressed, its bureaucracy remains a genuine friction, and faster-growing regional economies are more compelling than they were five years ago. Whether that adds up to leaving depends entirely on what brought you here in the first place. Is it still worth living in Thailand or is Vietnam worth relocating to? Do you think his reasons are valid?

Source: The Borderless Office YouTube channel, July 2026. Economic data from NESDC, OECD, World Bank 2025 to 2026. Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2025. The story American YouTuber leaves Thailand to Vietnam after six years: are his reasons fair? as seen on Thaiger News.

PATTAYA — On August 4, 2026, Chinese national Mingchen Sun was sentenced to 46 years in prison after pleading guilty to illegally possessing a cache of military-grade weapons, C4 explosives and signal-jamming equipment in Pattaya.

The Pattaya Provincial Court delivered its ruling on Sunday in the case against Mingchen Sun, who was charged with unlawfully possessing firearms, ammunition, explosives, military equipment and radio communication devices.

Police seized the items on May 8, including Glock 9mm pistols, M4 and M16 rifles, ammunition, magazines, C4 high explosives, bomb-making components, bulletproof vests, radio signal jammers and communication devices.

Sun admitted all charges during the trial. The court found that the offences involved multiple violations of the firearms, military equipment control and radio communications laws. While his guilty plea was considered beneficial to the proceedings, the court said the scale and nature of the weapons cache posed a serious threat to public safety and national security. It reduced the sentence by one-third before imposing a total prison term of 44 years and 24 months, equivalent to 46 years.

A second defendant denied the charges. The court temporarily removed that case from its docket, giving prosecutors 15 days to file a new case and ordering the defendant held in custody pending further proceedings.

The court also ordered the confiscation of all seized items, including firearms, ammunition, explosives, body armour, chemical-protection masks, signal-jamming equipment, remote-control transmitters and other military gear.