Beijing  - The wife and children of leading Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng have escaped from close police surveillance and travelled via Thailand to the United States, US-funded Radio Free Asia reported Friday.

Gao's wife, Geng He; their 15-year-old daughter; and 5-year-old son walked into Thailand after fleeing from virtual house arrest in Beijing and crossing a border in southern China, the broadcaster quoted Geng as saying.

"I left China because my family had been under tight surveillance for a long time," she said.

"We experienced in our careers and daily life great hardship and difficulty," Geng added.

Bangkok  - Frogmen on Thursday retrieved the bodies of five foreigners from a boat that sank in a sudden storm over the weekend after a diving tour to Thailand's Similan Islands in the Andaman Sea.

"We found the bodies of three foreign men and two women who had been trapped inside the boat when it sank," Marine Police Lieutenant Colonel Wanlop Phuangbaka said.

On Tuesday, authorities found the body of a Caucasian woman floating near the area where the boat sank Sunday. One Thai national, a member of the dive boat's staff, was still missing.

Bangkok  - Coup-ousted former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra Thursday thanked the military for freezing his fortune in Thai banks, thus saving it from unwise investments in stocks.

"I don't know whether I should condemn or thank the military junta when they froze my assets in Thailand, otherwise I probably would have invested a lot in the stock exchange and lost it," Thaksin said, in a live televised speech to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong that was relayed on to Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand.

Bangkok  - The Thai government on Thursday changed the venue for the upcoming summit between South-East Asia and Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea from the resort island of Phuket to the beach resort of Pattaya.

Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya confirmed the venue switch for the summit, scheduled for April 11 to 12, at a press conference Thursday.

Bangkok  - Tourist arrivals to the Asia-Pacific region fell 2.8 per cent in the last quarter of 2008, with Thailand leading the plunge with a 28 per cent decline, the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) revealed Wednesday.

PATA compiles travel statistics for 37 destinations in Asia, the Pacific islands and the Americas.

The association noted a "dramatic downturn" in arrivals last quarter of 2008 in Japan, Thailand and Sri Lanka, reflecting "both the worsening global economic climate and regional/national issues."

Bangkok - Thailand's tax collections fell 29.1 per cent last month, to 82.43 billion baht (2.3 billion dollars), government sources said Tuesday.

Fiscal Policy Office director-general Somchai Sujjapongse said the government had collected 451.52 billion baht (12.54 billion dollars) in tax revenues between October and February, the first five months of the fiscal year.

That amount was 16.4 per cent below projections, the Bangkok Post online news service reported.