Sunday 17 May 2026

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🌡️ Weather: 28-35°C (82-95°F). Cooler start with cloud cover and scattered showers through today and tomorrow. TMD forecasts continued rain across upper Thailand through mid-week. A welcome break from last week's extreme heat. Good morning to be outside before afternoon showers build.

🌫️ AQI: 42-120 (Good to Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups). At the lower end this is the cleanest air Bangkok has seen since early April. At the upper end, sensitive groups should still check their local sensor. Overall a genuinely good day to be outdoors, particularly in the morning.

Thailand's premier custom car and motorcycle event is running its final day today at IMPACT Exhibition Center Halls 11-12, 12PM to 10PM, ฿300 entry. The show has drawn custom builders from across the world: from Japan, legendary workshops Cherry's Company, Custom Works Zon and Cheetah are all exhibiting. Winston Yeh of Rough Crafts has come from Taiwan. From the United States, Powerplant, Beware Choppers and Sosa Metalworks are showing work. European names include Hillside Classics, Pepe Lazzara Los Sicanos and Italian helmet manufacturer 70's Helmets. Motor Bike Expo, the major Italian custom motorcycle show based in Verona, has sent its Head of Communications Federico Agnoletto to sit on the international judging panel. Perhaps most significantly, Shige and Emi Suganuma, the founders of Japan's Yokohama Hot Rod Custom Show, which is widely regarded as Asia's most prestigious custom event, are both in attendance.

What makes this event worth covering beyond the spectacle is what it says about Thailand's custom culture. The Thai custom motorcycle and hot rod scene has been growing steadily for years, producing builders and artists whose work now competes on the global stage alongside Japanese, American and European workshops. The fact that Motor Bike Expo is sending a jury member, that Yokohama's founders are here, and that builders from five continents are exhibiting in Bangkok rather than just Tokyo or Los Angeles is a genuine signal. The show is built around custom culture expressed through both motorcycles and cars, with hot rods, vintage vehicles, art installations, Thai artists and clothing brands filling the two halls. Even if you have zero interest in engines, the craftsmanship and design on display are the kind of thing that makes you stop and look.

Bottom Line: Today is the last day. IMPACT Exhibition Center Halls 11-12, 12PM to 10PM, ฿300 entry. If you like design, machinery, craftsmanship or visual excess in any form, this is worth the trip to Muang Thong Thani. The Thai custom community that has built this event into an international-calibre show deserves the audience.

Thaiger reported this week a very interesting story, a Thai man posted a detailed warning on a Facebook photography group after being drugged and robbed during what he believed was a legitimate camera transaction. The victim had arranged to sell photography equipment to a buyer through a Facebook buy-sell group and agreed to meet at a university campus in Bangkok, a location chosen for its perceived safety. During the meeting, the buyer offered him an orange juice. Shortly after drinking it, the victim lost consciousness. When he woke up, his camera equipment, valued at approximately ฿85,000, was gone. He filed a police report and shared the account publicly to warn others in the photography community.

The story has spread rapidly through Thai photography groups, buy-sell communities and Facebook Marketplace user forums, generating thousands of shares and comments. The pattern is not new, but the details make it particularly concerning: the meeting took place in a public, seemingly safe university setting during daytime, and the victim had no reason to suspect the juice had been tampered with. Thai police have not confirmed an arrest as of this writing. The broader context is that Facebook buy-sell groups and Marketplace remain the primary platform for secondhand transactions in Thailand, and the volume of high-value items changing hands through informal meetups creates opportunities for exactly this kind of targeted crime. Multiple commenters noted that similar drugging-and-robbery incidents have been reported in Thai buy-sell groups before, though few generate the same level of attention.

Bottom Line: Three rules for anyone buying or selling high-value items through Facebook groups in Bangkok: meet in a well-lit, CCTV-covered public location (a police station lobby is the safest option), bring a friend, and do not accept food or drinks from the other party under any circumstances. The university campus felt safe. It was not.

Nueng Nom Nua is built entirely around one idea: a thick, fluffy square of Japanese milk toast called Shokupan, served warm with your choice from 19 different dipping sauces, and it turns out that one idea is more than enough. The toast itself is the thing: baked in-house, golden on the outside, impossibly soft on the inside, and cut into a cube-shaped portion that holds its structure long enough for you to dip it through condensed milk, Nutella, pandan custard, salted egg, chocolate ganache, honey butter, or any combination from the lineup. The format is simple, the pricing is under ฿100 per serving, and the result is the kind of dessert that makes you wonder why anyone needs a 12-item menu when one item done this well is enough. The cafe has built a genuine cult following among Bangkok's late-night crowd because it stays open until 1AM, which makes it one of the rare dessert options that works after dinner, after drinks, or after the point in the evening when nothing else is open and something warm and sweet is exactly what the night needs. On a Sunday afternoon when the rain has cooled the city down and you want something comforting without committing to a full meal, Nueng Nom Nua is the call. The queue moves fast, the toast comes out hot, and the whole experience takes about 15 minutes from ordering to leaving happy.

TIP: The condensed milk and the salted egg sauces are the two to start with. Order one sweet and one savory and work from there. The queue builds after 9PM on weekends, so afternoon visits are quieter.

See you tomorrow morning.

— Devon