Kaweewat Siwanartwong

Bangkok hides some of its best galleries down side streets and up quiet staircases, right in the thick of its busiest neighbourhoods. Hop off the BTS, walk for two minutes and you can land somewhere cool, calm and blissfully air-conditioned – free to linger over a painting and, perhaps, dodge another visitor’s tote bag. This month brings plenty of reasons to make the trip. Mystical by Nattiwut Choomanowat turns old Thai sayings and folk beliefs into playful paintings, while The Blursed Sandwich leaps  to 2067 and imagines monkeys inheriting human civilisation. For something quieter, A Gray Lens explores memory, identity and how we understand the world. WHITE EYES, meanwhile, removes the eyes from its portraits to ask how much we rely on a person’s gaze to read them. Whether you fancy a full gallery crawl, a slow afternoon with contemporary art or simply an escape the usual Bangkok routine, see what’s showing and make a day of it. Need more ideas? Explore our guides to Bangkok’s best bars, restaurants, parks, galleries and interviews, or work through our bucket list of the best things to do in Bangkok. From galleries to creative spaces, discover  Bangkok’s best spots to live the art life. Track down alleyway masterpieces and paint-splashed corners you might otherwise miss with our guide to the top spots to see street art. Subscribe to our free Time Out Bangkok newsletter and get the best of the city delivered straight to your inbox.

Bangkok’s weekend line-up gives the sofa some serious competition. The Click Five bring back 2000s pop-rock, while modified cars, vinyl crates and book-inspired tattoos all make a strong case for proper clothes and a night out. Anyone who wore out ‘Just the Girl’ as a teenager should clear their diary. The Click Five return with Kyle Patrick, Joe Guese and Ethan Mentzer reunited on stage, nearly two decades after their hits soundtracked a generation of crushes. Expect glossy hooks, singalong choruses and ‘Throwback’, their 2025 reunion single. At Terminal 21 Rama 3, Bangkok Underground Riverside gathers modified street cars, Tokyo-style builds and DJs for anyone who likes their engines loud. Book(s) Your Ink turns seven books into exclusive tattoo designs, while BKK Vinyl Fair fills REM Hotel with crates, hi-fi gear and secondhand finds. Prefer dinner? A seven-course journey through Kolkata's home kitchens opens with a burnt mango welcome drink, with Alex Zaldua on music duty. However you like to spend a weekend, Bangkok has it covered. Still undecided? Browse our guides to Bangkok’s best bars, restaurants, parks and galleries, or start ticking off the city’s essential things to do. Planning ahead? Map out the rest of September with our monthly events guide, and keep an eye on our latest picks of Bangkok’s best things to do. Subscribe to our free newsletter for the best of Bangkok, straight to your inbox.

Welcome to September, Bangkok’s wettest month – a proper test of patience involving umbrellas, soaked trainers and downpours timed for the moment you step outside. Make it through without losing a shoe to a flooded soi and you’ve earned a reward. Luckily, the city stays busy when the rain sets in. Art lovers have plenty to explore. Giving Life at Dib Bangkok gathers more than 160 works by 33 Thai and international artists, including kinetic-art pioneer Alexander Calder. For something more hands-on, Beyond the Rainbow explores the bond between people and their pets across three experiential zones – and you can bring yours along in a carrier or stroller. Music leans into nostalgia. Pink Symphonic Concert reworks songs from Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper and Barbie of Swan Lake for an orchestra of nearly 45 musicians, while The Click Five reunites in Bangkok. Art Battle Bangkok adds live painting, timed rounds and audience voting. Elsewhere, centralwOrld fills up with Disney characters and collectibles, Thailand Coffee Fest brings together everyone from farmers to baristas, and ‘Drag Race Thai Fans vs The World 3’ stars Raja Gemini, Morphine Love Dion and Gawdland. If that sounds like too much effort, ‘Do F**ing Nothing’ offers the opposite: pocket your phone, sit quietly and do nothing for an hour.  When in doubt, fall back on our guides to Bangkok’s best bars, restaurants, parks, galleries and interviews, or tick off our bucket list of the best things to do in Bangkok.

News of club closures and sober youngsters might have you thinking that nightlife is dead. We’re here to tell you – with proof! – that you couldn’t be further from the truth.  The way we go out might be different, but people are by no means staying in. Cities are adapting to our changing nightlife habits: as summers get hotter, street parties and rooftop raves are bigger than ever. Rather than heading to one or two big-name venues, locals are flocking to new nightlife districts for an evening of bar-hopping and curbside drinking. And, trust us, the nightclub isn’t going anywhere – in fact, communities and local governments have successfully rallied to save historic nightlife venues (in Berlin’s case, they’ve even managed to grant techno UNESCO-listed status). So, we’re here to celebrate going out in the city. From Bangkok to Berlin, Medellin to Mexico City, Time Out’s Best Cities for Nightlife with Intrepid Travel is the ultimate guide to today’s after-hours capitals. To curate the ranking, we went straight to the people who know their city best – the locals – and asked them to tell us all about the nightlife scene in their hometown right now. We asked them about everything from clubbing to cocktail bars, how affordable it is to go out at night, the overall quality of nightlife in their city, how easy it is to find community, and how safe, exciting, welcoming and diverse their city is. After crunching all that data, a panel of nightlife experts – Time Out’s city editors, cult

You might never have met Ray MacDonald, but if you grew up in Thailand in the 1990s he was part of your week all the same, on the telly after school, up on the big screen with your mates, or talking you through a train ride halfway across the map. Ray, one of the most recognisable faces of a generation of Thai youth, died on August 19. His career runs close to three decades and takes in film, television and the travel programmes that sent a lot of us reaching for an atlas. Plenty of people first know him from the show Teen Talk; others picture him in O-Negative, Dear Galileo or Phobia 2. And for a whole crowd of viewers he plays a travelling companion they never actually meet, someone whose journeys make the wider world seem that bit closer from the sofa. So his story runs richer than the word 'actor' lets on. Over the years he turns up as a shy young man, a hitman, a monk, a graphic designer and a traveller, each part catching a particular moment in his life and the times around it. Here are 14 of his screen roles, from his first day on set to the work that still brings him to mind.   Fun Bar Karaoke Photograph: Fun Bar Karaoke, 2540Ray Macdonal Ray's first screen appearance comes in Pen-ek Ratanaruang's debut feature, and it wins him Best Actor at the Suphannahong National Film Awards straight out of the gate. He plays Noi, a shy convenience-store worker who turns hitman the moment he falls asleep. The character is odd, cheeky and quietly lonely, and you can already hear

This year hands us more choice than we know what to do with, the parties rolling on til the end of December. A little strategy pays off. The schedule stretches from gentle seaside sets in the cooler months to giant year-end send-offs, so plan ahead.  Do you want a slow day by the water or a midnight thrash in a warehouse? Can you handle a tent, or does the shower queue alone put you off? Loyal to one sound or happy to gamble on whatever lands next, one of these has your name on it. Sandy chill-outs, rooftop hip-hop, jazz under the trees, all-night electronic marathons that run til dawn – Thailand serves the whole spread, often across a single week. From Bangkok venues to island beaches and jungle clearings, the map fills up quick. Yet to book? No stress, because we keep this rundown current with day parties still holding tickets. Get moving before you miss the big names. 808 Festival, DIAGE Festival, Wonderfruit and Tomorrowland Thailand all touch down on Thai soil in the months ahead. Give our guide a scroll, refreshed constantly as new line-ups drop, and pick out whatever grabs you. Still undecided? You can always turn to our guides to Bangkok’s best bars, restaurants, parks and galleries, or consult our bucket list of the best things to do in Bangkok. Map out the rest of the month with our guide to what’s on, and keep an eye on our picks of Bangkok’s best things to do.  Subscribe to our free newsletter for the best of Bangkok, straight to your inbox. 

Craving ice cream? Course you are. Bangkok has a way of sending even the most grown-up among us in search of something cold and sweet  – and the city’s gelato scene has never offered more ways to cool down, dairy-free included. The only problem is choosing. We’ve rounded up the spots worth seeking out, whether you fancy a cone or cup of the good stuff, soft-serve that actually delivers, a cheeky ice cream sandwich or a sundae big enough to share (or not). The choices border on absurd, in a good way: brioche and tacos, fairy floss clouds, candied bacon, charcoal, sea salt and ube. However you roll, here are 16 of the best gelato and ice cream spots across Bangkok and the greater metro area. Still undecided? You can always turn to our guides to Bangkok’s best bars, restaurants, parks and galleries, or consult our bucket list of the best things to do in Bangkok. Subscribe to our free newsletter for the best of Bangkok, straight to your inbox.

Vinyl ruled the way we listened long before streaming put millions of songs at our fingertips. Yet the warmth and crackle of a needle hitting the groove still draw collectors and casual listeners back to something a playlist cannot quite replicate. Listening bars are flourishing around the world, and Bangkok is no exception. New spots keep appearing down sois and above shophouses, paying as much attention to turntables, valve amplifiers and acoustics as to what lands in your glass. Everything is tuned for switching off and listening properly.  Whether you collect rare pressings, simply love a good song or fancy a change from the usual after-work haunt, few things beat watching a record turns slowly through the night becomes one of those small, perfect hours. That's the whole appeal. We round up 14 vinyl bars around Bangkok that stand out for their atmosphere, their selections and their pours. Pick the one that catches your eye, and go make a night of it. Still undecided? Turn to our guides to Bangkok’s best bars, restaurants, parks and galleries, or consult our bucket list of the best things to do in Bangkok. Map out the rest of this month with our guide to what’s on, and keep an eye on our picks of Bangkok’s best things to do. Subscribe to our free newsletter for the best of Bangkok, straight to your inbox.

Fried chicken belongs to everyone. From the United States to Korea and Taiwan, almost every country and culture has a version. But ask Bangkok diners where Thailand’s best comes from and one answer rises above the rest – Hat Yai.You know the type: skin that shatters, meat still steaming underneath and fried shallots piled so high they border on showing off, with sticky rice to catch whatever survives. It is Southern Thailand’s great contribution to the fried chicken canon, and the rest of the country has happily claimed it.The strange part is that half of Bangkok advertises Hat Yai fried chicken, yet very little tastes as it should. The marinade lacks depth, the oil goes tired or the shallots come straight from a packet. Anyone raised down south can tell in one bite.We went looking for the real deal. Four proper Hat Yai and Songkhla-style specialists made the cut, joined by one Bangkok fried chicken institution too good to leave out.Order at the counter, wait for the batch that is still spitting and eat with your hands. Obviously.   What is it?Hat Yai fried chicken begins long before the oil gets hot. Garlic, coriander root and white pepper worked are worked into the meat, which is left to marinate for hours before frying to a deep gold: crisp skin outside, juicy flesh within. Unlike fried chicken that depends on the dip, the seasoning runs through the meat – peppery, savoury and faintly herbal. Crisp, sweet fried shallots are scattered over the top by the fistful. Att a road

 What beats a margarita or two after a long day? Not much, honestly. And this month, Bangkok gets a whole run of them. PATRÓN launches Margarita Your Way, a month-long love letter to the world's most famous tequila cocktail, on now until July 31 and turning the city loose on flavour, discovery and a proper bit of self-expression. The heart of it all sits on the M Floor of Siam Paragon, where the Margarita Your Way Pop-Up poses one simple question. Which one are you?  Four personalities set the tone – classic, fruity, spicy and cool – each a different attitude, a different flavour, a different way of drinking. Are you the purist? The fruity show-off? The one who orders a chilli rim and dares the table to keep up? Photograph: PATRÓNMargarita Your Way Come Friday evening, the guest shifts hand space to some of Bangkok's sharpest bartenders, who reimagine the drink their own way. And the fun spills out across town. All July, PATRÓN teams up with a hand-picked cast of bars, restaurants, hotels and lifestyle spots. Sunset rooftops, buzzy nightlife dens, tucked-away cocktail hideaways and plush hotel lounges – each one shaking up its own take on the classic. So, thirsty yet? Here’s where to go.

When it comes to art and exhibitions, Bangkok has a lot. From poky little independent spaces to avant-garde galleries and the big crowd-pleasing museums, the city brims with shows that perplex, challenge, inspire, educate and leave you thoroughly awestruck. The trouble is, there's an absolute mountain to get through. Too much, you might say. So we're here to tell you where to spend your precious time. Whether you're a bona fide art connoisseur or simply the type who likes to stand about looking pensive in front of a canvas (we've all done it), these galleries promise to inspire and entertain in equal measure. So if you're wondering what's genuinely worth a trip across town, start right here. Have a browse through the best museum exhibitions and art in Bangkok at the moment, take your pick and make a day of it. We refresh this list regularly, so do pop back regularly for our latest and greatest picks.Stay one step ahead and map out your plans with our round-up of the best things to do in Bangkok. Whether you're a regular gallery-goer or just art-curious, these are Bangkok’s best spots to live the art life. From alleyway masterpieces to paint-splashed corners you might walk past without noticing, here are our top spots to see street art.

You've probably seen the look before you've heard the name. The head tilts back, the eyes go wide, there's a held beat of silence, and then the camera swings up to a neon skyline or a stretch of white sand. The man doing the looking is Travis Leon Price, and at 35, the Donegal-born creator has spent the last five years in Bangkok, amassing more than 500,000 followers across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram who tune in for that signature slow, upward gaze of awe before a skyline or a shoreline reveals itself. Photograph: Travis LeonTime Out Bangkok His tagline, 'Bringing you the magic of Asia', sounds like marketing until you realise he means every word of it. He has slept in a 24-hour Chinese spa for the price of a takeaway, crawled the bars of Yaowarat and built a whole second life on an iPhone and a refusal to film anything corny. As busy as you would imagine, we never actually speak on the phone. The whole conversation is over WhatsApp, his replies are in clusters from elsewhere while Bangkok goes grey around me, then the little 'typing…' that flickers and stalls and starts again. He writes the way he talks on camera: warm, fast, unbothered by punctuation, a 'haha' dropped in before he's finished a thought. So, everyone, pour yourself a rooftop something and settle in. What follows is a love letter to a city that refuses to let him leave. Photograph: Travis LeonTime Out Bangkok A long way from a famine village Donegal to Thailand is not exactly a casual commute, and Travi

If you grew up hearing ‘save the last piece for your beautiful girlfriend’ or ‘don’t sing while eating’, you already know how strange Thai folk wisdom can be. In Mystical, Nattiwut Choomanowat revisits familiar sayings and beliefs, including the idea that sticking lemongrass in the ground can stop the rain. His playful contemporary paintings turn these everyday stories into humorous characters while asking why we still follow advice whose origins we rarely question. Rather than deciding whether the beliefs are true, the show explores how they enter daily life and pass between generations. September 5-27. Free entry. NUMBER 1 GALLERY. 10am-7pm

Forget zombies and flying cars. The Blursed Sandwich asks what might happen if monkeys inherited human civilisation instead. Created by anxiety storage and Uninspired by Current Events, the exhibition jumps to 2067, when our simian successors look back at the mess we left behind. Its title comes from ‘blursed’, internet slang for something both blessed and cursed – an apt fit for a show mixing humour with unease. Expect absurd works skewering technology, environmental problems and our questionable ideas of progress. August 1-September 27. Free entry. VS Gallery. 12.30pm-6pm

Polish artist Marcin Białas examines how we live alongside nature, technology and an increasingly digital world. His drawings and intaglio metal prints pair a centuries-old printmaking technique, prized for precise lines and fine detail, with the language of contemporary art. The works probe where the physical world ends and the artificial begins, tracing connections between biology, culture and technology. Białas has taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice since 2020 and exhibited widely across Europe, Canada and Japan. September 3-October 11. Free entry. ARDEL Gallery of Modern Art. 9am-5pm

A Gray Lens traces how we learn to understand ourselves and the world, moving through childhood, objects, material culture, change and identity. The exhibition uses the Tree of Knowledge – System, Matter, Life, Mind and Culture – as a framework for considering personal growth and everyday experience. Here, grey doesn’t simply signal sadness; it lies between happiness and melancholy, certainty and doubt. Monochrome paintings, found materials and familiar signs turn memories and ordinary observations into quiet questions about growing up. August 22-September 26. Free entry. KICHgallery. 10am-6pm

Michael Shaowanasai’s latest solo exhibition spans painting, photography, performance, installation and participation, all laced with dark humour. Drawing on different periods of the artist’s life, the works take familiar things – language, food, photographs, beliefs and cultural symbols – and place them in new contexts. Jokes turn slightly uncomfortable; ordinary objects raise bigger questions about how we assign meaning and value. Michael also prepared a special food menu for opening day. Expect plenty to examine, read and question as you move through the show. August 24-September 30. Free entry. Blacklist Gallery, MATDOT Art Center. 10am-6pm

Feelings are hard to pin down. They appear, change and vanish, often before we can understand them, yet remain tangled up with memory, experience and daily life. When I’m Feeling… brings together 11 emerging artists, each exploring these shifting states through their own practice. Rather than settling on one definition, the works consider emotions that are positive, difficult, confusing or simply hard to name, turning fleeting personal experiences into something visitors can stop and think about. July 18-October 31. Free entry. Xspace Gallery. 10am-5pm

What do we really notice when we look at someone? In WHITE EYES, Pannaporn Tantithamthiti replaces the eyes in her portraits with blank white spaces. Carefully rendered clothes, possessions and familiar settings remain, but the missing gaze makes each figure harder to read. Those photorealistic details also pull attention away from the people themselves. The exhibition asks how heavily we rely on appearances to understand others, particularly as screens, images and visual cues increasingly shape the way we see them. Now-September 13. Free entry. BNC Creatives, RCA. 11am-7pm

Inspired by Eastern traditions and belief systems, Unus Mundus brings together paintings and sculptures by two artists exploring the idea of ‘One World’. Human figures, animals, nature and everyday objects recur throughout, interpreted differently by each artist. Symbols form a visual language for emotion, memory and belief, while the exhibition asks how faith shifts with society and how people make sense of the world. Take your time and see which connections emerge. August 1-September 26. Free entry. Gallery VER. Midday-6pm

Mustard and memories returns for a sixth edition with seven courses inspired by Kolkata’s late-summer home kitchens and recipes passed through generations. A burnt mango welcome drink opens the evening, while the much-loved flambé rosogolla returns. The recipes are gently adapted without losing their stories or familiar flavours, and Alex Zaldua provides the soundtrack. Expect a shared table, a changing menu and every reason to linger. September 6. B1,700. Reserve via LINE OA: @fvevents. F.V Sukhumvit 39. From 5pm

One of the most influential bands of the era, officially announce their first full-scale concert in Thailand. Formed in 2012, Higedan reshape the J-Rock and J-Pop scene, blending intricate arrangements with melodies that stay instantly accessible. Their aim stays clear: create music that moves across generations, earning worldwide recognition and a loyal global fanbase. In 2026, momentum builds with ‘Make Me Wonder’, opening theme for trending anime ‘THE DARWIN’ on Prime Video and TV Tokyo, alongside behind-the-scenes footage and a glimpse of their striking ‘LED Box’ production set for Bangkok. September 6. B3,500-4,600 via here. UOB Live. 6pm

Dream Alone makes its debut at Bar Temp, bringing together DJs from Japan and South Korea for a night built around local connections and underground club culture. Founded by CowboyFamily Records’ Wada Yosuke, the new series pairs one guest from each city, starting with Seoul’s Mihak and Bangkok’s Sarayu. Yosuke’s sets move between minimal, deep house, electro and raw house, while Mihak draws on more than 15 years in Seoul’s house and techno scene, mixing vinyl selections with precise, understated technique. Expect a late-night session shaped by the DJs themselves rather than big-name bookings. September 5. B300-400 via here. Bar Temp., 9pm onwards

Badego.bodega and P.S. Publishing give bookworms and tattoo fans a fresh reason to visit Somewhere Bookshop & Home Cafe. Book(s) Your Ink pairs seven books by seven authors with exclusive flash designs inspired by their stories, characters and ideas, with tattoo artists working side by side. Not ready for permanent ink? The bookmark workshop draws on the same seven titles, offering an altogether less committed way to ear your reading taste. September 5-6. Free entry. Somewhere Bookshop & Home Cafe. 11am-7pm

You already know the hook, even if the name draws a blank. ‘Incredible’, the 1994 track General Levy records with producer M-Beat, is the first jungle tune to break the UK top 10, peaking at number eight and hanging around the charts for 12 weeks. Three decades on, it still empties the bar and packs the floor. Now the man himself comes to Bangkok, again. General Levy plays BLOQ on October 2, the Thai date on his Incredible Asia Tour, which also stops in Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam and Bali. He grows up in Park Royal, west London, on reggae, ska and sound system culture, works the mic from his teens and builds a name toasting over dancehall long before jungle comes calling. That crossover moment costs him, though. After ‘Incredible’ takes off and Levy tells The Face he ‘runs jungle’, a committee of scene DJs effectively freezes him out, and the story only gets better in the retelling. These days the grudge is ancient history and the track is a rave staple, wheeled up worldwide. So what does a night with him look like? Quickfire toasting, a rig turned right up and a room that knows every word. Just one catch. General admission tickets for the Bangkok show are not live on local platforms yet, so keep an eye here and we’ll flag it the second they drop.  

September in Bangkok means rain, and plenty of it. Rather than sulk under an umbrella all month, though, let a live orchestra handle the soundtrack. Lumphini Hall opens its doors for a run of free weekend concerts, staged in the park while the wet season hammers away outside. The programme spreads across three afternoons, moving from big band jazz to classical arrangements and traditional Thai music, all of it a short walk from the skytrain and none of it costing a baht. Photograph: Music Division BKKBangkok Here's what's on: Big Band Sound by BBB (Bangkok Big Band), Saturday, September 12, 5pm-7pm Nut Letana & BMO by the Bangkok Metropolitan Orchestra, Saturday, September 19, 5pm-7pm Enjoying the Arts with Lumpini Youth (Bangkok Thai Music Ensemble and Khlong Toei Youth Center), Sunday, September  20, 5pm-7pm Admission costs nothing, so it's an easy one to turn up to on a whim. Getting there is simple, too. Take the BTS to Sala Daeng (exit 6) and cross the skywalk straight to the entrance, or ride the MRT to Silom (exit 1) or Lumphini (exit 3) and you land more or less at the gates. The concerts run at Lumphini Hall, Lumphini Park, from September 12-20. Entry is free.

Fancy a run that costs you nothing? Bangkok's city administration has one lined up, and every registered runner walks away with a commemorative medal for their trouble. The free event takes over People's Plaza at Parliament House on Sunday, October 4, pulling together the Faculty of Medicine Vajira Hospital at Navamindradhiraj University with the Dusit and Bang Sue district offices. The idea is a simple one: get out, move a bit, look after yourself and have a laugh doing it. No entry fee, no catch. You pick your distance depending on how ambitious you're feeling that morning – 3km, 5km or 10km – with routes winding through Dusit, Bang Sue and past Vajira. Early risers get the best of the city before the heat sets in, so it's worth the alarm. Photograph: Bangkok BMAFree city run Registration opens on September 9 at 9am through the hospital's website. Turn up in whatever you like to run in – nobody's checking. If you want the official 'Healthy City' shirt, you can make a B250 donation to claim one, which counts for a double tax deduction. Just note the shirts are collection in person only, so no posting them out. Miss the sign-up window? Don't write the morning off. The medal and shirt are reserved for those who register, but the run itself is open to anyone who shows up wanting to stretch their legs. Bangkok's free community run takes place at People's Plaza, Parliament House, on Sunday, October 4. Registration opens September 9 at 9am via here.

Thailand's Royal Gazette has published four Ministry of Interior announcements, and the biggest of them affects anyone who loves a Thai holiday. Until now, passport holders from 93 countries and territories could turn up for tourism, business meetings or urgent work and stay for up to two months without filling in a single form. That easy run is over. The new rules carry the signature of Anutin Charnvirakul, who signs off as both prime minister and interior minister, and follow cabinet approval on July 14 2026. They split entry rights across three tiers. First, a tourism visa exemption for a stay of no more than 30 days, covering 60 countries and territories: Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Bhutan, Brunei, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Malaysia, Maldives, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States. Good news for Brits, Aussies, Americans and most of Europe, then, though it's half the time you had before. Second, a tourism visa exemption capped at 15 days, applying to two countries: Seychelles and Mauritius. Third, a visa on arriva

Most of us are winded climbing the stairs, so spare a thought for the rest of the field squaring up to Sawang Janpram. The 107-year-old from Thailand is the oldest of more than 11,000 athletes at this year's World Masters Athletics Championships in Daegu, South Korea, and he flies home with two gold medals. Sawang goes first in the discus on August 27, stepping up in the men's 95-and-over bracket as the only entrant over 100. He uses the regulation 1kg discus, follows every rule to the letter and lands 7.59 metres, beating his own record of 7.50 set in Taiwan last year. He is back on August 29 for the men's 100-and-over javelin, once again the only name in his age group, and a first throw of 10.04 metres seals a second gold. Photograph: WMAC DAEGU 2026Thailand Here's the part that gets us. Sawang only takes up regular exercise at 80. His daughter Siripan, now 74 and his coach, talks him round, and he enters his first competition at 97. Roughly 78 medals follow, gathered at meets all over the world. The mayor of Daegu hands him a special award as the oldest track and field athlete on the planet, and Sawang keeps his verdict short. 'I hope young people remember this and exercise every day,' he says. At 107, Thailand's oldest champion still trains, still throws and still wins.

We've all sat refreshing an EMS tracking page, willing a parcel to hurry up and land on the doorstep. Now Thailand Post has built a whole race around that very impatience, and you're invited to run it. To mark 40 years of its EMS express service, the national postal service hosts 'Thailand Post EMS RUN 2026' on Sunday, October 18 at the Bangkok General Post Office in Bang Rak. Photograph: Thailand PostThailand Post EMS RUN 2026 Start with the shirt, a crisp white number whose sleeves tell you how far someone's going. Grey means 2.5K, blue is 5K and red is 10K. Your bib borrows its look straight from an EMS tracking slip. And the medal is the real talking point. Shaped like a postage stamp with perforated edges, it lands in three designs, E, M and S, handed out at random as you cross the line. You won't know which letter is yours until it's in your palm. Slot it together with your mates' and, if you gather all three, you spell EMS. Turn each one over and a local landmark sits on the back, from Wat Ratchabophit to the post office itself. Photograph: Thailand PostThailand Post EMS RUN 2026 Winners do rather nicely too. The champion of each age group takes home a trophy modelled on a classic Thai letterbox, while the two overall 10K victors, one man and one woman, collect silver cups presented on behalf of the Supreme Patriarch. Everything runs on chip timing, so it's your real pace that counts, not how quickly you shove your way to the start. You can enter on your own, spli

Bangkok tops a lot of lists, and its first-place position on Time Out’s latest ranking of the world’s best cities for nightlife comes as no surprise to us locals.  We Bangkokians are proud night owls, and we’re blessed with a city that actually runs seven nights a week. Mondays stay quiet enough to chat with the bartender, while Saturdays will have you queueing a dozen deep for a drink. You’ll find a room for every mood and every kind of night out in the Thai capital. A night out here never stays in one place – you start in a dark little cocktail bar with no sign on the door, move up to a rooftop strung with plants and fairy lights, then end up in a Silom club, dancing until the sky turns light. Each spot draws its own crowd and runs by its own rules. Here are a few of my favourites. Bar Us  Let's start with a drink. Tucked down Sukhumvit 26, Bar Us is a pitch-black cocktail lab: you push through a glass door and the room drops away into near-total darkness. Walls, ceiling, tables – all black. The only light falls on the bartenders in crisp white coats, herbs and glassware laid out on the counter in front of them. There are just 14 seats, so settle in close and watch them work.  Photograph: Bar UsBar Us, Bangkok Co-founders Taln Rojanavanich and Aum Sawaengsupt taught themselves mixology on graveyard shifts at their backpacker hostel. The savoury cocktails are the draw, featuring fermented fish paste, nam prik (spicy Thai pastes), and other gloriously unhinged ingredients

Eleven days, films from 113 countries and not a single baht to pay at the door. What the Doc Film Festival (WTD!) 2026 is back, and the promise is a simple one. Every screening is free, start to finish. Organised by Documentary Club, the festival hands the microphone to people whose stories have often been silenced, forgotten or written out of the record, and puts them back on the big screen. Photograph: What the Doc Film FestivalDocumentary Club Four of this year's highlight programmes come with an international guest flying in to present in person: Jasper Hokken, a programmer from IDFA in Amsterdam (widely called the Cannes of the documentary world), brings six award-winning films and a talk on how festivals pick their line-ups. Khavn De La Cruz, the godfather of Philippine indie cinema, screens three films, one with live music played alongside the picture. Mania Akbari, a bold voice working out of the UK, presents three documentaries that lay her life and her art bare. 'Are We Monsters?', a Thai short that took Best Short Film in Argentina, gets its first-ever home screening – one night only.   Fancy a prize while you're at it? Watch something, then review or comment on it and post with #wtd!2026 for a shot at a share of B30,000. You can also sit in on live Q&As with filmmakers from all over. Photograph: What the Doc Film FestivalDocumentary Club Opening night, September 3, brings the world premiere of 'Song Sakan', the latest from Uruphong Raksasad, a Suphannahong

If you got the chance to visit Beyond the Rainbow, the gentle art exhibition made for anyone who's lost a pet, you'll be pleased to know it's coming back. Eyedropper Fill's show returns to River City Bangkok, the arts complex down by the Chao Phraya, running from September 18 to November 22. The angle shifts a little this time. The show centres on an idea its makers call ‘Growing Together’. We tend to assume we're the ones doing the caring, but the exhibition suggests the opposite, that our animals have been looking after us all along. Photograph: River City BangkokBangkok You move through three rooms. The first, First Hello, takes you back to the day you met, where you pin a photo and a few scribbled lines to the Memory Wall before carrying on. Growing Together supersizes the small routines of pet ownership. A litter box the size of a paddling pool. A giant 'Bowl of Love' from Pramy. A quiet corner where you sit and write a proper letter to your dog or cat, the sort of thing you'd never say out loud. Some people manage a sentence, others fill the whole page. Forever in Our Hearts closes things out, and it's the tender one. Designed with psychologists, the room helps you sit with the grief and edge a little closer to acceptance instead of staying stuck. The nicest touch this time? A dedicated space where real pets are welcome to join. Dogs and cats only, mind, and they stay in a stroller or a fully enclosed carrier the whole way round, so they experience the show alongside

Bad news, Bangkok Posties. Live Nation Tero confirms that Post Malone Presents THE BIG ASS Stadium World Tour, booked for September 22 at Rajamangala National Stadium, is postponed indefinitely.  The good news, if you can call it that, is that everyone who bought a ticket gets their money back. Paid by debit or credit card? The refund goes in your account automatically. Used another payment method? You put in a request between August 29 and October 31, during normal business hours, either on the website or at any of the 11 main ThaiTicketMajor branches around town. Worth a diary note so the window doesn't slip past you. It's not just Thailand, either. Post Malone postpones dates right across Asia and Oceania, and a few festivals on the same run are off or delayed too. For now, we wait and see whether any of these dates return at all. We'll keep this page updated the moment we hear anything new, so check back before you give up on the gig entirely.

The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration opens the first phase of the Rajavithi Skywalk, the biggest overhaul of this part of the city in two decades. The Rajavithi–Phahonyothin section runs roughly 1.3km, from Victory Monument to Tuek Chai Intersection, and links straight up to the BTS. It also folds in the existing pedestrian overpasses, so the whole thing works as one connected system rather than a string of dead ends. Photograph: bangkok_bmaRajavithi Skywalk What makes it properly useful is where it goes. The route ties the BTS to five major hospitals. Rajavithi, Phramongkutklao, the Queen Sirikit National Institute of Child Health, the Institute of Dermatology and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases all sit at the heart of the city's medical district. The path measures 4 metres across, kept clear of planters and clutter so wheelchairs and hospital beds pass without a squeeze. Four lifts run along the way and tactile paving covers the full length for anyone with low vision. Photograph: bangkok_bmaRajavithi Skywalk The flooring is a non-slip PU surface coated with sand, the same spec used on the Green Bridge, so it holds up in the rain and needs little upkeep. The whole design follows Universal Design principles, built around a simple idea of a walk that stays convenient, safe and sheltered from the sun and the wet. The first phase opens in early October, with more of the network to follow.

Drive out along the expressway to Bang Na and the area changes fast. New condo towers line the road, more places keep opening and the district is coming good. It's a small city taking shape, and the latest arrival comes on August 21. That's Happitat, and it opens in style. The Grand Celebration on August 21 runs under a 'Butterfly Phenomenon' theme, with the butterfly symbolising how small moments of happiness can be shared, spread and grow into something bigger. All three buildings open at 10am. More than 100 artists, celebrities and special guests from home and abroad turn out, a mascot parade winds through the crowd and workshops run from August 21-23, and live performances take place across four stages throughout the site.  Photograph: HappitatBang Na Come evening, the site moves up a gear. Stars walk the Green Carpet at Festie Town, among them Chinese actor and singer Zhou Yiran, Chompoo Araya’s family, Freen Sarocha and Butterbear and Bianca,Then comes the night's big spectacle, The Sky Canvas of Happiness, with more than 2,222 drones lighting up the sky in the biggest drone display the country has staged. Mahidol Chamber Orchestra, with more than 40 musicians, provides the soundtrack alongside pianist Tor Saksit and singers Violette Wautier and WIM (Karn Kasidej), bringing music, live performance and technology together. The celebration then carries on with an After Party featuring THE TOYS and Nittaya Boonsungnern. Photograph: HappitatBang Na So what is it? Happit