A recent social media reel shared that Thailand earned the title of being the world’s top retirement country for many decades. Back then, retiring in Thailand entailed low living costs, warm weather, top-tier private hospitals, and a cultural embrace that truly welcomed foreigner retirees.
However, the last few years have changed this situation as new foreign income tax rules, stricter visa requirements, and rising costs in Bangkok and Phuket were implemented. As for the country’s direction for travel, Thailand is now pivoting to attract wealthy long-term residents through LTR and Elite visas, and not the budget-conscious retirees who made the country famous for retirement.
It is believed that Thailand has not figured out if this is a smart change or a big mistake. Regardless, the retirees who left the county are now happy living in other places.
With this issue, netizens shared their thoughts and opinions on the said post. One netizen shared his own experience and stated, “I just left Thailand after 8 years. A number of reasons, but seems like they want your money but not you.”
Another comment admitted: “The rich can live everywhere, don’t need to think about Thailand,” and it gained a response stating: “Exactly the point. Thailand’s appeal was never primarily to the wealthy. It was for people whose lifestyle upgrade was genuinely life-changing. Pricing that demographic out doesn’t replace them with millionaires; it just loses them.”
A retiree who is relocating to Thailand remarked that many people are now becoming scared of the stricter laws and income verification, and he thinks that these income requirements will help the country as a whole, keeping the low-income retirees away and not competing with the locals for housing.
One more retiree who has been living in Thailand for 28 years and has been retired for 13 years claimed: “No problem at all, and nobody of whom I know is leaving. Actually, more and more people are coming. From all backgrounds with all kinds of different incomes.”
“I’m not retiring in just one country. I plan to be a nomad around the world, if God says the same. 2-3 months here and there. Wherever life takes me,” another netizen declared.
Regardless of where people choose to retire after years of working, whether in Thailand or in other countries, it is important to remember that true home is where love and joy live. True belongingness does not need to be priced out.
This article (Netizens react as to why they choose other places to retire instead of Thailand, which was once known for the best place of retirement) first appeared on The Independent Singapore News.
What is unfolding along the Thailand–Cambodia border is neither a collapse of diplomacy nor a path to settlement, but a managed cycle of instability in which both, ceasefires and use of limited force coexist between two sovereigns. Understanding why this cyclical pattern of conflict recurs requires a need to move beyond immediate triggers and gauge the structural politics of the frontier itself along with its colonial past. Writes Deepanshu Mohan**
In late December 2025, Thailand and Cambodia agreed to yet another ceasefire after weeks of intense fighting along their disputed border. The agreement followed nearly twenty days of clashes which left more than a hundred people dead and forced over half a million civilians to flee their homes, according to humanitarian reporting. Artillery exchanges, rocket fire, and air operations marked one of the most serious escalations in tensions between the two neighbouring countries in years.
The truce was framed as an extension of the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord, signed in October 2025 under external mediation, which sought to stabilise the frontier through demilitarisation and confidence-building measures.
Its durability, however, was tested immediately.
In early January 2026, a Thai soldier was wounded by Cambodian mortar fire during the ceasefire period. Phnom Penh described the incident as an operational error, while Bangkok issued warnings but stopped short of abandoning the agreement.
What is unfolding along the Thailand–Cambodia border is neither a collapse of diplomacy nor a path to settlement, but a managed cycle of instability in which ceasefires and limited force coexist.
The January incident was not an anomaly. It was the latest episode in an escalation cycle that took shape in mid-2025. A skirmish near Chong Bok earlier that year resulted in the death of a Cambodian soldier, followed by the wounding of Thai troops by landmines in the same contested area. By July, the confrontation widened, with Thailand launching retaliatory airstrikes and both sides mobilising forces along multiple stretches of the border.
Reporting by the United Nations documents the use of heavier weaponry, including rocket systems and combat aircraft, alongside mass civilian displacement across border provinces. Diplomatic interventions punctuated this cycle but failed to arrest it.
July mediation efforts brokered with the involvement of the United States, China, and Malaysia collapsed within weeks amid mutual accusations and the absence of credible enforcement.
The October Peace Accord promised demilitarization but offered little in the way of binding compliance. The December truce froze active hostilities, as it left intact the incentives that had driven escalation in the first place.
Understanding why this cyclical pattern of conflict recurs requires moving beyond immediate triggers to the structural politics of the frontier itself. The roughly 800-kilometre Thailand–Cambodia border is a colonial construct shaped by the Franco-Siamese treaties of 1904 and 1907, with disputes around sites such as Preah Vihear and Ta Muen Thom carrying enduring symbolic weight.
While International Court of Justice rulings clarified sovereignty, they failed to depoliticise the frontier, leaving history less a cause of conflict than a resource repeatedly mobilised for contemporary political leverage.
For Thai governments, the contested border with Cambodia has long functioned as a reliable site for asserting sovereignty during domestic uncertainty. The December 2025 escalation coincided with leadership instability and civil–military strain, making firmness vis-à-vis Cambodia a low-cost signal of sovereign authority incentivising Thai movement along the border.
This vulnerability was exposed months earlier. On 18 June 2025, a leaked phone call between then prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and former Cambodian leader Hun Sen suggested a breakdown in civilian authority over border commanders at a moment of rising tension.
The political fallout was swift: more than 20,000 protesters rallied in Bangkok, the Bhumjaithai Party withdrew from the governing coalition.
What followed were legal petitions alleging ethical and national security violations leading to Paetongtarn’s removal from office within weeks. Her successor, Anutin Charnvirakul, assumed office on a platform centred on restoring sovereign resolve, dissolving parliament on 12 December 2025 amidst active air operations near Poipet and effectively synchronising military escalation with electoral positioning ahead of the February 2026 polls.
What distinguishes the current escalation cycle is the expansion of Thailand’s justificatory framing of its use of force. From early December 2025, military deployment operations were presented not only as responses to territorial violations but as efforts to dismantle industrial-scale scam centres in Cambodian border provinces.
Airstrikes and artillery targeted sites in Poipet, Banteay Meanchey, and Bavet long linked to casino economies such as O’Smach resort, online fraud, human trafficking, illicit finance, and alleged military purposes. This reframing embedded territorial escalation within a broader transnational security narrative centred on cybercrime and organised criminal networks.
The political utility of this approach was significant. It justified airpower, artillery, and counter-rocket fire as clashes intensified.
By mid-December 2025, at least 15 Thai soldiers were killed, civilians died in Sisaket and Surin, and evacuations exceeded 400,000 people on Thailand’s side. Framing operations as counter-crime measures limited the diplomatic backlash and sustained external engagement. The resulting is managed escalation, wherein sovereignty claims and transnational security narratives reinforce political legitimacy while leaving instability intact.
During the December 2025 escalation, Cambodia’s leadership adopted a de-escalatory public image even at moments of intense tension. Yet this restraint did not emerge in a vacuum. The pattern began earlier: on July 25, the Royal Thai Air Force deployed F-16s in two waves, striking Cambodian military positions near Preah Vihear Temple, Ta Muen Thom, and Phu Makua.
Four jets hit two targets at noon and two more struck additional targets later that afternoon, with Thailand claiming these were firing bases used to attack Thai civilian homes and hospitals. This escalation set the stage for Cambodia’s subsequent diplomatic strategy. Deputy Prime Minister Sun’s call to “lower the temperature” was a posture that functioned as a diplomatic strategy aimed at reassuring domestic elites and foreign investors. This diplomatic restraint unfolded alongside active Thai military operations.
Cambodia’s trade with the US reached $13.5 billion in 2024, while China’s exports to Cambodia totalled $15.33 billion in the same year. China represents 43% of Cambodia’s FDI inflows, with foreign direct investment accounting for 13.5% of GDP as of 2019, significantly higher than Thailand’s 1.1%.
Against this backdrop, diplomatic restraint can be viewed as a signal directed as much at Washington and Beijing as at Bangkok. By projecting itself as the stabilising actor, Phnom Penh seeks to reassure its principal economic partners that it will not become a source of regional disruption, while implicitly shifting responsibility for renewed instability onto Thailand.
As Bangkok expanded its justificatory framing of the use of force, Phnom Penh moved to narrow it, directly contesting the use of ‘anti-scam’ narratives to legitimise cross-border strikes. By rejecting Thailand’s claim that scam centres justified military action, Phnom Penh sought to prevent law-enforcement narratives from legitimising cross-border force.
Phnom Penh has accepted ceasefire arrangements while avoiding language that could be read as retroactively endorsing Thailand’s military actions. As active hostilities have eased, contestation has increasingly shifted to official statements and diplomatic exchanges.
Violations are masked under defensive operational errors or miscommunication, which preserves the foundation of the ceasefire while simultaneously refusing to concede that Thai operations were justified or proportionate. Cambodia continues to demand that Thailand withdraw from the disputed areas, favouring boundary commissions and international legal mechanisms over military pressure.
External powers have actively shaped the latest Thailand–Cambodia border crisis, seeking to stabilise the frontier but without altering the domestic incentives that drive recurrent escalation. In January 2026, the United States announced a $45 million aid package to support implementation of the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accords, a ceasefire framework agreed in October 2025 under U.S. and Malaysian auspices.
According to U.S. officials, the funding includes $15 million for border stabilisation and displaced persons’ support, $10 million for demining and unexploded ordnance clearance, and $20 million for anti-scam, drug-trafficking and transnational crime initiatives. This assistance follows intense clashes in July and December 2025 that killed at least 101 people and displaced over half a million civilians on both sides of the frontier, with artillery barrages, fighter-jet sorties, and rocket exchanges reported along sectors of the 800-kilometre border.
China has also sought to cast itself as a stabilising actor. Beijing confirmed that the December truce was being “gradually implemented,” noting Thailand’s return of eighteen Cambodian soldiers as a confidence-building step. The Chinese foreign ministry publicly expressed hope that the ceasefire would be “comprehensive and lasting,” signalling Beijing’s interest in a peaceful outcome.
Yet much of this engagement is transactional. ASEAN has largely followed the conflict rather than shaping it. Observer deployments and mediation arrive after violence, constrained by consensus rules that limit enforcement and leave escalation incentives untouched. Aid disbursement and diplomatic traffic follow moments of crisis without embedding mechanisms that address domestic incentives that drive renewed escalation.
The civilian cost has been severe yet politically contained. By mid-December 2025, Cambodian authorities reported 518,611 people displaced by artillery, rocket fire and Thai F-16 airstrikes, while Thai officials acknowledged around 400,000 evacuees across eight border provinces.
Fighting around crossings such as Poipet left up to 6,000 Thai citizens stranded after Cambodia closed checkpoints, disrupting labour mobility and informal trade. Markets, schools and hospitals across Sisaket, Surin, Oddar Meanchey and Banteay Meanchey were repeatedly shut, agriculture near the artillery range was abandoned, and tourism hubs suffered abrupt demand shocks, affecting investors and production networks tied to regional connectivity.
Durable de-escalation would require shifting escalation management away from military signalling and towards shared civilian mechanisms. Joint civilian border structures involving local authorities, community leaders, and other elements of civil society could manage the essential cooperation, such as evacuation protocols, incident logging and rapid clarification of alleged violations. Independent monitoring of buffer zones would also help in narrowing down the space for fabricated claims and tactical ambiguity.
However, these measures do not signal progress toward settlement. They constitute a conflict-response architecture — protocols for border closures, labour movement, evacuation, and incident clarification — designed to absorb shocks rather than prevent escalation. They function as buffers, not bridges.
Finally, legal and technical demarcation would not resolve the dispute, but it could provide a platform for structured engagement through joint mapping, transparent cartography, and incremental reference to past ICJ rulings. Such processes would not eliminate nationalist claims, but they could channel contestation into procedural arenas rather than military ones.
*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
**Saksham Raj, Aditi Lazarus & Simar Kaur, as researchers from Centre for New Economics Studies (CNES) also contributed to this column.
***Banner photo by Bram Wouters on Unsplash
The post A Border in Disarray: Understanding the Complexities of Thai-Khmer Regional Conflict first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.
In this article, Marcus Andreopoulos examines the renewed hostilities between Thailand and Cambodia, arguing that the unravelling of a fragile peace deal overseen by President Trump exposes the limits of his peace-making credentials. Not only did Thailand’s suspension of the truce in November undo Trump’s efforts over the preceding month to end the conflict, but Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul’s declaration that he does not ‘care about trade and tariff negotiations’ was a direct challenge to the tariff pressure that has become Trump’s preferred tool for ‘ending’ conflicts.
In early December 2025, Thailand launched fresh military strikes against Cambodia as tensions continued to escalate since the two countries’ brief and fragile pause in hostilities was agreed. The renewed fighting followed an announcement on 10 November, by the supreme commander of Thailand’s military, General Ukris Boontanondha, who declared that he was ‘halting all agreements’ between his country and Cambodia. This announcement came after a landmine explosion injured four Thai soldiers along the country’s border with Cambodia. The two sides had been observing a precarious peace brokered by Trump in Kuala Lumpur at the end of October, itself following an earlier ceasefire agreement months earlier for which Trump had also claimed credit. Since returning to office, Trump has repeatedly positioned himself as a global peacemaker, taking credit for ending ‘eight wars in eight months.’ However, critics of the U.S. president have pointed out the fragility of his peace-making, which has been overly reliant upon the threat of increased tariffs, rather than attempts to resolve the fundamental grievances underpinning the conflicts.
In the case of Southeast Asia, the limits of Trump’s tariff-peace diplomacy have now been laid bare. Following the suspension of October’s Kuala Lumpur peace agreement, Washington sought immediately to apply the same economic pressures that had proved so effective in forcing an initial ceasefire back in July. Having already agreed to a blanket tariff rate of 19% for Thai goods exported to the U.S., the pair had been set to negotiate a potential further reduction of tariffs. This was before the Trump Administration suspended negotiations in light of renewed hostilities. Rather than force a reversal of policy in Bangkok, however, the strategy backfired, with Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul boldly declaring that he ‘no longer care[d]’ about trade and tariff negotiations. In doing so, Anutin undermined the principal element of Trump’s peace-making strategy.
In the end it was Washington that blinked first. Soon after this exchange, the Thai government issued a clarification, affirming that ‘tariff negotiations [would] move forward and remain separate from border issues.’ This announcement followed a phone call between Anutin and Trump, during which the U.S. President is said to have insisted that he did not ‘wish to interfere in the Thailand-Cambodia issue.’ That private assurance did not align with Trump’s own remarks made aboard Air Force One that same day, in which he claimed to have ‘stopped a war just today through the use of tariffs, the threat of tariffs.’ The disparity between these two claims suggests that whilst Trump had intended to lean upon economic levers to force Thailand’s adherence to its peace deal with Cambodia, Anutin’s public dismissal of the threat forced an urgent change in strategy. To avoid a direct, and embarrassing, challenge to his authority, therefore, Trump chose to quietly backtrack on his earlier suspension of trade negotiations. For Trump to claim that the two issues are separate contradicts the publicly declared principles that have guided his peace efforts over the past year.
Thailand’s unwillingness to overlook Cambodia’s alleged breach of their peace deal is understandable, even if it posed economic consequences for Anutin. The explosion along the disputed border, which severed the leg of a Thai soldier, demanded a forceful response from the Thai government. Anutin recognised this reality, visiting the wounded in Sisaket province before declaring that peace with Cambodia had effectively ended. Bangkok rejected Phnom Penh’s claims that the land mine was a remnant of ‘past conflicts,’ viewing the incident instead as a clear violation of any peace agreement. Public support throughout this clash has also leaned far more toward the Thai military than the government. Under these conditions, it would have therefore not been politically viable for Thailand to look past the explosion simply to preserve trade negotiations with a third country, even if that country was the U.S.
Trump had touted October’s agreement in Kuala Lumpur as a major diplomatic victory. Yet even then there were doubts as to its durability. Of the three parties involved, only Trump seemed jubilant, launching into a monologue about how ‘momentous’ the day was for the region. The Thai government, by contrast, was more reserved, with Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow describing the agreement only as a ‘pathway towards peace’ rather than the definitive peace accord that Trump was insisting it was. The statement in itself suggested that the peace was already precarious even without a potentially deadly explosion occurring along the border.
Washington’s immediate turn to the threat of tariffs as soon as the peace between Thailand and Cambodia began to fray in November 2025 reveals just how much importance Trump attributes to the approach as a means of mediating conflicts. Anutin’s dismissal of the threat, however, followed by Trump’s rapid reversal and private insistence that the tariffs were unrelated to the border clash, demonstrated the fragility of this strategy. Shortly after meeting with his wounded soldiers, Anutin forcefully declared that ‘no one can claim sovereignty over Thai territory.’ In doing so, the Thai Prime Minister underscored not only the depth of the decades-old territorial dispute and conflict but also the sheer inadequacy of tariffs as a means of resolving it. Trump will now hope that this affair has not diminished his ability to leverage tariff threats as a means of conflict resolution in the future.
*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
**Banner image generated by ChatGPT.
The post The Limits of Trump’s Peace Efforts in Southeast Asia first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.
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