The best things to do in Bangkok this weekend (October 16-19)

Think of it as a collision rather than a merger. Gamescom Asia, usually the buttoned-up business end of the industry, meets Thailand Game Show, Bangkok’s annual carnival of controllers, cosplay and chaotic fandom. The result: Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show, an event so big it needs more than 30,000 square metres to breathe – a footprint closer to a small airport than a convention. Inside, billion-baht negotiations meet neon fandom and the mood swings between suited seriousness and euphoric chaos. Expect appearances from Glen Schofield, the mind behind Dead Space and Call of Duty, alongside developers showing prototypes with the nerves of first-time performers. It’s a world of gaming: messy, ambitious and impossible to keep in one genre.

October 16-19. B200 via here. Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre, 9am-8pm

Halloween isn’t all broomsticks and bad costumes. At Iron Fairies, it’s about sharp wit and a pint of dark humour, courtesy of Leaf, Laugh, Love Comedy. Hosted by Alex from The Thaiger, the night gathers an unholy lineup of comics who seem more likely to raise the dead than bore a crowd. Wes Dalton, that mischievous Irish export, proves why he’s Bangkok’s Funniest Fecker. Greg Andersen’s Canadian charm hides the fact his audience banter could resurrect anyone six feet under. Jock Mackay brings a lilting Scottish menace, while Eric James channels noir with the confidence of a man too close to a Hollywood crime scene. And then there’s Teddy Mulvagh – less man, more myth – fuelled by monstrous energy and questionable potions. It’s ghastly, hilarious and just the right amount of wrong.

October 18. B500 via here. Iron Fairies, 8pm onwards

Martin Constable doesn’t just exhibit art – he rearranges your sense of time. His survey show under the theme ‘Future History’ feels like standing in two centuries at once, where technology works in the background and humanity shrinks to a whisper beside the universe. In Space 1, machines and matter blur, leaving viewers to question what progress even means when set against infinity. Next door, Space 2 goes quieter, yet heavier. Constable’s digital and video works unfold like dreams caught between loading screens – serene, but edged with unease. They speak to that quiet panic of wanting to be remembered while knowing everything fades. The rooms feel less like galleries and more like waiting rooms between worlds, asking what remains once the timeline ends and memory begins to pixelate.

Until November 29. Free. Bangkok University Gallery, 9.30am-4.30pm

Bryce Watanasoponwong’s latest exhibition feels like walking through the afterimage of a dream – one you’re trying to recall before it slips away. Across 18 mixed-media works, he asks what lingers when memories lose their edges and scatter. Drawing on Buddhist philosophy and the writings of Daisaku Ikeda, the show wrestles with how to create meaning in a world that never stops shifting. Each piece starts with a photograph, then bends light through kaleidoscopic lenses and slide film until form and colour drift apart. Layers of soft hues blur, framed in white like the border between presence and recollection. Tiny 3D-printed figures populate these worlds – standing, reaching, fading – until only one remains. It’s hauntingly beautiful, a quiet meditation on the way memory thins but never fully disappears.

Until December 7. Free. The Charoen AArt, 11am-7pm 

Three selectors, one night, and a promise that the floor won’t stay still for long. Jia The Menace lands from Manila, carrying the raw pulse of her city’s hip-hop underground. A veteran of Black Market’s Bad Decisions nights and co-founder of Bodies at Apotheka, she’s the kind of DJ who treats genres as suggestions – flipping from hip-hop to baile to house with a grin that dares you to keep up. From Kuala Lumpur, Smooth Brain Girly brings a different kind of electricity. The YouTube sensation is known for sets that swing between trap, jersey club and speed house before you can catch your breath. Holding it all together is Kade, whose Bangkok-honed instinct knows exactly when to turn the night from wild to unforgettable.

October 17. B400 via here and B700 at the door. Beam, 9pm

Bangkok’s design scene loves a good rethink, and this weekend’s gathering feels like a conversation that won’t stop at the gallery door. Across three days, designers, makers and curious minds swap stories, advice and a few quietly radical ideas. At A Playground, expect craft, fashion and food all jostling for attention – the kind of creative sprawl that makes inspiration feel contagious. Over at A Stage, Techin Kraikhajornkitti, Sarran Youkongdee and Vickteerut Wongwatanasin sit down with Jareyadee Spencer to talk risk, identity and the strange satisfaction of starting over. Then A Bridge brings UK design alumni back home to unpack what studying abroad really takes – late nights, rejection emails and all. It’s less a showcase, more a shared sketchbook of what’s next.

October 17-19. Free. Register via here. Woof Pack Building, midday-9pm

Act 2 of Doi Dum Punk begins the way all good mischief does – with a plan that spirals gloriously out of control. At 8pm, Soi Ari becomes the stage for a ‘modernisation’ experiment gone wrong, where the sleepy mountain village of Gong’s memory is remade through the eyes of tourists. With Daisy, a weed-dealer tour guide whispering bad ideas in his ear, Gong sets out to build paradise – complete with long-neck tribes, elephant trousers, tuk-tuks and those ever-smiling faces that sell a certain version of Thailand to the world. By 10pm, the village has transformed again, this time into a street drag show that feels both absurd and painfully familiar – a reminder that the line between performance and identity in Bangkok is always beautifully blurred.

October 18. Free. Doi Dum Punk, Soi Ari 5, 8pm onwards

The Warlock lingers like a half-remembered nightmare you can’t quite shake. The performance follows a man who trades his soul for power and finds himself eaten away by what he thought he controlled. Partly inspired by Home within Home, that uncanny exhibition where domestic spaces blur between comfort and dream, this staging turns the idea of ‘home’ on itself. Rooms stretch, close in, and breathe – becoming both shelter and snare. The familiar starts to feel menacing, as if affection itself could rot. With its mix of myth, fantasy and sharply stylised imagery, The Warlock sketches a world that feels too close for comfort, reminding us how desire, once unrestrained, doesn’t just cost – it consumes.

October 17, 18, 31 and November 1. B600 via here. PoA White Box, Yellow Lane, 8pm-9.30pm

A four-month experiment that asks what happens when those guiding us through exhibitions stop being mere explainers and start becoming storytellers, confidants, maybe even co-conspirators. Curated by Pongsakorn Yananissorn, the programme gathers twelve hosts – to rethink how knowledge moves through art spaces. Through workshops and shared encounters, they explore what lingers after the lights dim and the last viewer drifts out. The focus rests not on the artworks alone but on the people orbiting them: the artists, the visitors, the community that quietly sustains it all. GHost 2568 turns the act of guiding into something intimate and alive – a reminder that art, at its best, is a conversation still unfolding.

Until November 16. Free. Bangkok Citycity Gallery, 11am-6pm

Bangkok has a habit of erasing its own stories. In a city that never stops rebuilding, the buildings that once defined its skyline are quietly slipping away, taking people’s memories with them. Vanishing Bangkok catches those final moments before they’re gone for good. Through photographs of three icons – Scala, Sri Fuangfung and the Robot Building – the exhibition mourns the city’s fading modernist past while preserving its fragments. The works hang inside Vanich House, a creaking wooden structure once used as a garage, now reborn as a vessel for remembrance. Concrete prints lean against weathered beams, creating a strange tenderness between decay and revival. The show doesn’t simply document what’s lost – it reminds us how forgetting happens, brick by brick, until nostalgia becomes the only architecture left.

Until November 2. Free. Vanich House, 10.30am-5.30pm

Pasutt Kanrattanasutra’s latest project builds one tile and one conversation at a time. The exhibition transforms ceramic painting into a communal act, inviting volunteers to leave their mark across 50 tiles, each representing a district of Bangkok. Lines twist and colours bloom, shaped by shared stories of change, memory and belonging. What emerges is less a map than a living archive, where everyday voices replace curators and the city itself becomes collaborator. It’s a gentle rebellion against forgetting, stitching fragments of neighbourhood life into something tactile and enduring. More than an artwork, it feels like a gathering – a reminder that cities aren’t only built from concrete, but from the hands and histories of those who call them home.

Until November 9. Free. MunMun Srinakarin, 11am-7pm

Forget the usual paint-and-sip routine – this ceramic workshop is all about getting your hands gloriously messy. Picture a table scattered with clay, chatter filling the air, and the slow satisfaction of shaping something that didn’t exist an hour ago. Participants create their own ‘jungle bell,’ a small ceramic piece that can be as strange, sweet or seasonally unhinged as they like. It’s less about perfection and more about seeing personality form between your fingers. Every work, from delicate to delightfully misshapen, will later gather in a year-end exhibition that celebrates collective imagination over craftsmanship. Think of it as a group portrait in clay – fired, glazed and slightly cracked in the best way – proof that creativity is rarely neat, but always worth the mess.

October 18-19. Free. GalileOasis, midday-7pm

Rui Tang cooks with music. Nicknamed the ‘Sichuan pepper,’ she’s spent the summer setting clubs ablaze from Berlin to Chengdu, each set a heady mix of bite and burn. Now she’s back in Bangkok, ready to serve the kind of heat that makes you forget the night’s supposed to end. Sharing the decks is Sunyoung, her equally fiery counterpart from Chongqing, that neon-soaked city where cyberpunk feels like fiction. His sound drifts through deep tech, minimal and breaks, stitched together with an instinct that keeps bodies in motion. Founder of Cicipark and the now-legendary Echobay, he’s the sort of DJ who doesn’t announce his arrival – you feel it in the floorboards first.

October 18. B300 via here and B500 at the door. Beamcube, 9pm onwards

Coffee takes centre stage at Morning Affair, but it’s the people around you who turn the ritual into something unexpectedly lively. Imagine sunlight spilling across tables stacked with croissants, a soundtrack that doesn’t just play but seems to bend the room, and the chatter that makes strangers feel like old friends. Over time, these Sundays have shaped more than full mugs – they’ve sparked a small community that gathers as much for connection as caffeine. Bring friends, linger over cups and flaky pastries, and let conversation drift as easily as steam from your latte. For those who like a little mischief with their morning, guilt-free cocktails slip seamlessly into the mix, adding a cheeky note to a laid-back ritual.

October 19. B490-990 via here. Sphere Hall and Tictactoe, 10.30am-4pm

Bangkok-based photographer and curator, Pavel V. Khon, leads a workshop where cocktails and cameras share equal billing. Born in Russia and living in the city since 2010, he moves seamlessly between worlds. By day he manages airline catering for over 60 carriers at LSG Sky Chefs, mapping logistics with precision. By night he roams the streets and rooftops of Bangkok, capturing the city’s hidden rhythms and curating exhibitions that reveal its unexpected beauty. This duality informs the workshop, where making drinks becomes performative and photography transforms into storytelling. Guests sip, stir, click and connect, leaving with more than a cocktail in hand – they take a slice of the city’s restless energy home with them.

October 19. Free. Le Cafe des Stagiaires Bangkok, 2pm onwards

KAMUILIM paintings start with the traditions of Thai Buddhist art but unfold in ways that are unmistakably contemporary, each brushstroke carrying a rhythm that is at once meditative and mischievous. Colours flare and fade like fleeting thoughts, shapes suggest stories that never fully reveal themselves, and yet linger in the mind long after you look away. Each canvas holds subtle cues designed to spark reflection, guiding the viewer from seeing to feeling, turning simple form into quiet virtue. Through Vicaraṇacit – the wandering contemplative mind – KAMUILIM translates introspection into pigment, creating works that feel alive, capable of nudging thought, shaping perception and reminding us that art, like insight, is often found between the lines.

Until October 26. Free. GalileOasis, 10am-7pm

Home within Home turns a familiar neighbourhood house in Ari into a labyrinth of memory and feeling. Patcharaporn Kwansangwan, an independent Thai artist, expands her illustrated book Where’s a Home? into a full-bodied experience of light, sound and installation, each room unfolding like a question. Walking through the two floors, you navigate hallways and corners that mirror your own inner spaces, asking what home really means, where it lives, and who – or what – makes it feel whole. The exhibition spills beyond visual art, with music, theatre and workshops layering movement and voice over the installations, creating a quiet dialogue between visitor, body and space. Each step feels intimate yet expansive, a reminder that home is rarely one place; it exists in the fragments, echoes and gestures that we carry with us, often without realising.

Until November 2. Free. People of Ari, Yellow Lane, 10am-7pm

Bangkok’s literary scene is tuning up again, this year under the playful theme ‘Melody of Books’ with the question: ‘Have you read? Have you listened?’ The fair stretches across aisles packed with titles from every imaginable genre, a mix of publishers old and new, while corners hum with workshops, talks and interactive sessions. It’s less a market and more a symphony, where pages turn like notes and voices carry stories beyond the spine. Visitors wander between author meet-and-greets, live readings and unexpected performances, discovering that books aren’t just for reading but for experiencing, hearing and feeling. By the time you leave, your bag is heavier, your mind noisier and your appreciation for narrative a little more… orchestral.

October 9-19. Free. Queen Sirikit National Convention Center, 10am-9pm

If you’ve ever tumbled into a Junji Ito spiral at 2am, you’ll know his horror isn’t about sudden shocks. It’s the kind that worms under your skin and refuses to leave, lingering long after the page is closed. Think cursed beauties that regenerate no matter how many times they’re destroyed, balloon-headed predators dangling from nooses, and entire towns spiralling into obsession. The Junji Ito Collection Horror House brings those worlds to Bangkok, a walk-through that turns manga dread into something physical, sprawling over 1,500 square metres. Tomie’s ruinous charm and Souichi’s nail-chewing mischief are ready to greet visitors. The real kicker? Ito himself lands on October 11 at SF Cinema, MBK, a chance to meet the mind behind the nightmares and feel, just a little, like fiction is bleeding into life.

October 10-January 5. B300-1,000 via here. MBK Centre, 11am-8pm

For the first time, the Prix Pictet has arrived in Thailand, bringing with it 12 photographers whose work has been shortlisted for the award’s tenth cycle. The theme, ‘Human’, is both vast and uncomfortably precise. Each artist approaches it from a different angle, tracing the mess and wonder of being alive – whether through documentary, portrait, or images that test the very limits of light. The subjects are unflinching: the violence of borders, the fragility of childhood, the slow collapse of economies, the endurance of Indigenous communities, the marks left behind by industry. Collectively, they ask who we are and what we have done to the planet entrusted to us. Founded seventeen years ago, the Prix Pictet has never felt more urgent.

Until November 23. Free. Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, 10am-8pm

Chaiyot Jindakul’s latest series was born during a turning point in his life: becoming a father. Each canvas is threaded with the quiet astonishment of watching his first son grow, the weight of new responsibility balanced with the wonder of innocence unfolding before him. Love here doesn’t appear as sentimentality but as something sharper, etched into colour and form. For Chaiyot, art is never detached from living – it begins with action, discipline and a stubborn fidelity to searching. Every work becomes a record of perseverance, a refusal to accept easy conclusions, a reminder that beauty alone cannot measure value. What emerges instead is an intimate cartography of fatherhood, labour and faith in process, where each painting feels like both witness and offering.

Until October 26. Free. Joyman Gallery, 11am-6pm

Thursday nights in Bangkok now come with a side of belly laughs. The Comedy Joint’s weekly takeover of The Live Lounge isn’t the kind of evening where a nervous stranger reads half-written jokes from their phone. It’s slickly produced, confidently staged and has quietly turned into the heartbeat of the city’s comedy calendar. What makes it sing is the mix – international acts passing through with sharpened sets sit alongside local comics who know exactly how to skewer life here. The result is never the same twice: new punchlines, fresh chaos, the sort of laughter that rattles the tables. Add to that pints of Tiger, Asahi and Heineken running on happy-hour repeat and you’ve got a Thursday night that feels less like routine and more like ritual.

Every Thursday. B300 via here. The Live Lounge, 7.30pm

Jiajia Qi arrives in Bangkok with her first solo exhibition in Thailand, but this isn’t a simple retrospective or a neat display of greatest hits. Supported by Mondriaan Fonds, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Thailand, the show stretches across her past works and new experiments, each piece circling back to her obsession with place and the slippery ways it shapes us. The framework leans into Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s idea of ‘nomadic thought’ where history isn’t pinned down and geography refuses to play by institutional rules. It’s less about tidy narratives and more about movement, flux and the sensation of being caught in between. Expect to leave with the feeling you’ve wandered somewhere unfamiliar, yet strangely close.

September 25-November 8. Free. SAC Gallery, 10am-6pm

Ploenchan ‘Mook’ Vinyaratn has turned Bangkok Kunsthalle into a space where weaving isn’t just craft, it’s conversation. Her most ambitious institutional installation to date reimagines fragments of past textile works, letting textures, colours and forms collide in ways that feel both deliberate and accidental. The building itself – once the Thai Wattana Panich printing house – anchors the work, with 399 circular fabric pieces echoing its original logo, each stamped with words from children’s books once produced on-site. Collaborating with other Thai women, Vinyaratn deconstructs looms and rebuilds them into monumental forms, creating works that pulse with collective memory, resilience and quiet audacity. By the time you leave, the fragments have stitched themselves into a living narrative, a reminder that history, imagination and community can fold seamlessly into one.

September 26-November 30. Free. Bangkok Kunsthalle, 2pm-8pm

Tintin Cooper has a way of holding up a mirror that doesn’t flatter but fascinates. Her latest exhibition peers at Thailand and Southeast Asia through the eyes of outsiders, before flipping the lens back onto locals negotiating endless waves of tourism, migration and the cliches both sides quietly cling to. Here, the works are stitched together from the messy fabric of online life: animal memes, TikTok clips of holidaymakers misbehaving, ‘passport bro’ forums and Thai news headlines. Cooper treats this digital chaos as autobiography, shaped by a childhood spent adapting to languages and gestures that were never quite her own. Even the titles read like cultural fragments. One canvas lifts from Matichon’s bleak June headline I’m Ok, Not Ok, while another lovingly immortalises Moo Deng, Thailand’s internet-famous pygmy hippo, as if memes were scripture.

Until November 8. Free. SAC Gallery, 11am-6pm

Shereif Eldesouky’s new exhibition is a meditation on how we break apart and find our way back. The Egyptian mixed-media artist, now based in Bangkok, draws on memory and sibling love, framing both as fragile yet astonishingly resilient. His chosen metaphor is the reef: sometimes bleached, sometimes reborn, always in flux. The pieces trace cycles of sorrow and repair, suggesting that the same emotional currents that pull us away can, in time, return us to one another. Eldesouky mirrors this in his process, painting, dismantling, then reassembling fragments into forms that speak of survival and renewal. It’s at once personal and planetary, asking us to see our own bonds in the same light as coral – vulnerable, but never beyond revival.

September 20-November 15. Free. Bangkok 1899, 11am-6pm

Leather has always been more than surface – it carries memory, texture, even contradiction. Unveiling Leather: The Language of Modularity gathers seven artists to test just how far that thought can stretch. Here, leather isn’t draped neatly over chairs but stitched, folded, bent and layered until it becomes structure, not skin. Some works recall architectural precision, sharp and geometric, while others surrender to the material’s natural instincts, twisting and flexing into forms that feel almost alive. The exhibition lingers on modularity, on how shapes adapt as easily as lives do, shifting to meet new spaces and new demands. There’s tradition woven through each piece – craftsmanship and heritage intact – but the focus tilts firmly toward the present, where innovation and imagination tug leather into uncharted terrain.

September 20-December 7. Free. Four Seasons ART Space by MOCA Bangkok, 10.30am-7.30pm

Bangkok doesn’t really need another rooftop, but it does need a pool party worth ditching your Saturday plans for. Sunset Splash x Innerbloom is angling for that spot – set high above the city with the skyline as its backdrop. The dates are scattered across the year (September 13, October 4, November 8 and December 6) like seasonal markers for when you should probably bring your swimsuit. Expect the Innerbloom DJ crew working the decks, joined by live sax and percussion, plus dancers who make the whole thing feel more festival than hotel amenity. Drinks are dialled up with bubbles and cocktails – free-flow for women between 2pm and 4pm – and the food is just as curated as the soundtrack. 

September 13, October 4, November 8 and December 6. B500 via here. W Bangkok, 2pm-9pm

75 years after Charles Schulz first drew a small dog with improbable dreams, Snoopy is still everywhere – dancing on T-shirts, perched on mugs, drifting across the cultural imagination with the ease of someone who never grew up. This anniversary exhibition, arriving in Bangkok for the first time, asks what it means for a cartoon beagle to outlast presidents, wars and changing fashions. More than 100 works are on display, gathered across four zones that slip between art, couture, pop culture and nostalgia. Contributions from Thai and international artists sit beside collaborations with major fashion houses, while archival strips remind us that friendship and humour are never dated. 

September 6-December 7. B350-890 via here. RCB Galleria 1-2, River City Bangkok, 10am-8pm

Weekend rituals in Bangkok rarely feel new, yet Namsu’s brunch manages to create one. Every Saturday and Sunday, Chef Honey Rae Zenang draws from her Shan roots and years of training in Japanese kitchens to compose something that resists easy categorisation. The table becomes a conversation between cultures: Yunnan comfort, Japanese precision, Shan heart. There are noodles that carry memory, onsen bowls that blur culinary borders, and drinks – sparkling tea, poppy milk – that refuse to behave like background notes. Nothing is arranged for spectacle, yet each plate has the quiet assurance of food made by someone who understands both restraint and abundance. What emerges is less an event than a rhythm, a gentle reminder that eating together can still feel both unexpected and necessary.

Every Saturday and Sunday. Reserve via here. Namsu Bangkok, 11am-3pm

In Bangkok, something strange is happening on the banks of the Chao Phraya – and it’s glowing blond. Iconsiam has become ground zero for Dragon Ball fever, hosting the largest exhibition the franchise has ever staged. A full-throttle homage to the Super Saiyan universe in all its loud, spiky, slow-motion glory. Iconic battle scenes have been pulled from the anime and built to scale, letting visitors wander through Namek like it's Sunday shopping. More than 40 life-sized figures lurk in corners and float mid-air, poised for battle or just waiting to be in your selfies. There's Kamehameha practice, a Dragon Ball scavenger hunt via app, even fusion zones. It’s half playground, half pilgrimage – and entirely designed for those who never quite left their Goku era behind. 

Until October 19. B400-1,110 via here. Attraction Hall, Iconsiam, 10.30am-8.30pm

There’s a certain kind of visual maximalism that doesn’t beg for attention so much as demand it – Hugo Brun’s work is exactly that. Loud in the best way, his pieces flirt with chaos: clashing colours, cartoonish proportions and the bold swagger of pop art unbothered by subtlety. His furniture sits somewhere between sculpture and set piece – chairs that feel like they might wink at you, tables that seem halfway to melting. It’s no surprise they’ve become backdrops for a thousand selfies, but there’s more to them than surface spectacle. Beneath the gloss and playful disorder lies a wink to nostalgia, a rebellion against beige interiors, and the refusal to be tasteful in a world that insists you should be. Burn isn’t decorating – he’s declaring.

Until October 18. Free. River City Bangkok, 10am-8pm

There’s a curious magic in stepping back millions of years – a chance to wander a world before ours, where giant creatures roamed freely. This event offers just that: an immersive trek alongside Thai dinosaurs and prehistoric beasts, as if the clock has unwound to a forgotten era. Each step pulls you deeper into a landscape shaped by colossal terrestrial rulers, their shadows still lingering in the imagination. It’s less a simple exhibition and more a portal to ancient earth, where awe and curiosity collide. For anyone who’s ever been fascinated by the primeval, this is an invitation to experience wonder unfiltered – a rare glimpse of a world lost but never forgotten. July 1-November 2. B150-350 at the door. Museum Pier, 10am-6pm

CRAFT doesn’t serve meals so much as curate moods. Tucked inside Kimpton Maa-Lai Bangkok, this all-day refuge operates on its own tempo – where a burrata-loaded toast feels just as right at 9am as it does at noon. Breakfast isn’t a time slot here, it’s a mindset. The menu meanders from bacon-draped French toast to Thai seafood porridge that lands somewhere between comfort and ceremony. For those in pursuit of chlorophyll, there’s a smoothie bowl so green it feels almost virtuous – kale, mango, spinach, all spun together with the quiet insistence of health. But indulgence lives here too. Tofu and tempeh arrive with chilli peanut sauce, a sort of soft rebellion for the plant-based crowd. Burgers come double-smashed, wraps are generously stuffed, and yes, there’s lobster – perched Waldorf-style, open-faced, unapologetic. Gluten-free options appear, if you ask nicely. Come Friday and Saturday evening, the space slips into a new rhythm with live DJs spinning laid-back grooves as daylight fades. Every day. Reserve via 02-056-9999 and craft.kimptonmaalai@ihg.com or via Line @craftbkk. CRAFT, Kimpton Maa-Lai Bangkok, 7am-11pm    

By the time Friday limps to a close, The Mesh on Sukhumvit 22 has already started to hum. Not with the polite clink of cutlery or background jazz, but with live voices – raw, melodic, sometimes heartbreaking, occasionally euphoric. Each week, the space shapeshifts into something looser and louder, as solo artists and acoustic duos take their place beneath the warm spill of lights. The soundtrack drifts from indie originals to bittersweet covers, filtered through the kind of intimacy only a small venue allows. You’re invited to nurse a cold brew from their Best Brews list, pick at something smoky or fried, and stay longer than you planned to. It’s not groundbreaking, and that’s the point. It’s familiar in a way that feels grounding. A soft exhale after the week. A room full of strangers mouthing the same chorus. Something to look forward to. Every Friday. Reserve via here or 02-262-0000. The Mesh, Four Points by Sheraton Bangkok, 7pm onwards

At Ms.Jigger, lunch isn’t just a break in the day – it’s a curated escape, reimagined through the ‘Pranzo Perfetto’ experience. Let’s begin with the star: weekend lunches. Served from 11:30am to 5:00pm, the set menu is accompanied by a generous spread of free-flow antipasti – an unfiltered celebration of Italian flavor. Expect bruschetta, marinated olives, seabass carpaccio and golden fried dough balls glazed with tomato and anchovy. Focaccia arrives warm and unapologetically indulgent, filled with mortadella and mascarpone. This is a leisurely interlude – a stylish Italian affair that’s perfectly designed to sabotage your dinner plans. Prices start at B950 and B1,050 for the weekend set lunch with antipasti. During the week, weekday lunches offer a shorter, yet no less satisfying, detour into Italian comfort. Served from 11:30am to 2:30pm. Think beef carpaccio with rocket and parmesan, or citrus-cured salmon dotted with balsamic caviar, followed by mains like wagyu fettuccine, wood-fired pizza or a rustic Luganega sausage that hardly needs the side of mash. At B750 for two courses and B850 for three, it’s a surprisingly affordable luxury. Everyday. Starts at B750. Reserve via 02-056-9999 and msjigger.kimptonmaalai@ihg.com or via Line @Ms.Jigger. Ms.Jigger, Kimpton Maa-Lai Bangkok, 11.30pm-5pm

Reap Factory offers a quick and affordable tree-course lunch starting at B450. Available daily, the Express Set Lunch Menu features six options that include Thai, Western and Japanese dishes, all made with fresh, responsibly-sourced ingredients. Thai choices include Set A, which comes with satay gai, pad krapao salmon or salmon kra-thium prik Thai, and chao guay for dessert. Set B features a spicy glass noodle salad, sweet and sour pork or golden-fried chicken, and pandan noodles in coconut milk. It’s a delicious and speedy way to enjoy a variety of flavours. Reap Factory Courtyard, daily

Biscotti welcomes chef Giuseppe Bonura, a native of Syracusa in Sicily, to the team. Imbued with a modern twist on traditional Sicilian flavours, chef Giuseppe’s new menu spotlights authentic ingredients and contemporary flare. Dishes include Panzanella Alla Siciliana, a refreshing tomato salad with almond cream, pine nuts and balsamic red onion; Arancini, Sicilian croquettes filled with beef ragu and caciocavallo cheese, served with a spicy tomato sauce; and Risotto Al Branzino, a wonderfully fragrant sea bass risotto. His stunning main course offerings feature stars such as pan-fried sea bass with spelt, mussels, clams and artichoke in a rich prawn bisque, and fantastic desserts like sweet mandarin cannolo, which combines orange ricotta, mandarin compote and hazelnut ice cream for a perfect finish. Reserve via 0-2126-8866. Biscotti, midday-10.30pm

This collaboration presents a fitness experience with The Ripple Club’s transformative aquatic workouts. Offering two class types – Ripple Signature and Ripple Box – The Ripple Club introduces aqua cycling and aqua boxing to Thailand, providing a fresh approach to aquatic fitness. The program delivers a low-impact, full-body workout suitable for all fitness levels, using water’s natural resistance to strengthen muscles while reducing stress on the joints. Combining high-intensity cardio with targeted strength training, both classes maximise efficiency in less time. Participants enjoy benefits such as stress relief through rhythmic movements, enhanced muscle recovery, and decreased soreness, creating the perfect balance between fitness and rejuvenation. Every Sat and Sun. Check the program here. W Bangkok, 8.30am-9.20am and 9.30am-10.20am