Wednesday 13 May 2026

🌡️ Weather: 28-37°C (82-99°F). Morning starts cool before building into another hot afternoon. TMD forecasts scattered thundershowers and gusty winds across upper Thailand through Friday. Flash flooding possible in some areas. Morning remains the clean outdoor window.

🌫️ AQI: 114-165 (Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups to Unhealthy). Elevated across the city. Mask strongly recommended for any outdoor time. At the upper end, outdoor exercise should be avoided. Children and elderly residents should limit time outside during peak afternoon.

The order, confirmed this week by Nation Thailand, is the largest in AirAsia's history and one of the biggest single aircraft purchases by any airline in Southeast Asia. The deal covers A321neo narrowbody jets, the workhorse of short-haul Asian aviation, and signals a long-term bet that demand for low-cost regional travel will not only recover but grow significantly once the current crisis passes. AirAsia CEO Bo Lingam described the order as positioning the group "for the next decade of growth across ASEAN," with deliveries expected to begin in 2028 and run through the early 2030s.

The contrast with the present is striking. AirAsia is currently operating at 30% reduced capacity across May and June, with multiple Don Mueang routes suspended outright including Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Kathmandu and Denpasar, some through October. Jet fuel prices have risen more than 80% since February. The airline is managing daily fuel cost exposure through hedging and route-by-route profitability analysis. And yet, in the middle of the most severe aviation fuel crisis since the Gulf War, the company signed a $19 billion aircraft order. The logic is not contradictory: aircraft orders placed now lock in production slots and pricing that will look very different by 2028, and airlines that wait until the crisis resolves will find themselves at the back of a very long queue. AirAsia is betting that the Hormuz disruption is temporary and that the structural growth story for Southeast Asian aviation is permanent.

Bottom Line: For Bangkok-based travellers, the short-term reality has not changed: fewer flights, higher fares, route suspensions through October. But the $19 billion order is the strongest signal yet from an airline that the industry expects the crisis to end and demand to return. If you are frustrated by the current flight situation, the same airline that cancelled your route to KL last month is telling you with $19 billion that it believes the problem is temporary. Whether that is reassuring or infuriating depends on whether you need to fly this summer or next year.

IKEA Thailand unveiled the first three designs from the PS 2026 collection last week ahead of today's full global reveal on May 13. The initial pieces include an air-filled easy chair and a rocking bench by in-house designers Mikael Axelsson and Marta Krupińska, and a three-directional lamp by Rotterdam-based designer Lex Pott. The PS (Post Scriptum) line has always been IKEA's experimental range, the collection where the company tests ideas that are more playful, more design-forward and less constrained by the mass-market pricing that defines the core catalogue. The 2026 edition's design concept blends functionality with fun and creativity, and the air-filled chair in particular has already generated attention for being exactly the kind of object that looks like it should not work and apparently does.

Bangkok being included in the global reveal window is not accidental. Thailand's position as a regional design hub has strengthened significantly over the past three years, with Bangkok's creative economy, its furniture and homeware manufacturing base, and its growing community of international designers and architects all contributing to the city's visibility in the global design conversation. The IKEA PS launch sits alongside the Dib museum opening, the Jim Thompson Art Center programme, and the growing Charoenkrung creative district as evidence that Bangkok is being taken seriously by international brands as a market that cares about design, not just price. The full PS 2026 collection is available from today at IKEA Bangna, Bang Yai and online.

Bottom Line: If you have an IKEA trip in your near future anyway, the PS 2026 range is worth seeing in person. The air-filled chair is the conversation piece. The lamp is the practical buy. And the fact that Bangkok is seeing the same collection on the same day as Stockholm, London and New York is a small but meaningful marker of where the city sits in the global design landscape.

Samlor means "three wheels" in Thai, a reference to the tricycle carts that once carried food through Bangkok's streets, and the restaurant treats that history as a starting point rather than a gimmick. Chef Prin Polsuk, who previously ran the kitchen at Nahm under David Thompson, opened Samlor to do something deceptively simple: cook century-old Thai recipes sourced directly from historical cookbooks and present them with the precision and care of modern fine dining without stripping out the soul. The menu changes based on what is available at the market that morning, which means repeat visits produce different meals, and the dishes that appear consistently are the ones where the sourcing is reliable enough to maintain year-round. The flavours are rooted in central Thai cuisine, with curries, relishes and preparations that feel both historically grounded and unmistakably alive. Michelin recommended. The space is a restored shophouse on Charoen Krung Road in Bang Rak, with exposed brick, warm tones and an intimacy that matches the scale of the cooking: this is food made for a table of two or four, not a dining hall. For a Wednesday evening when you want something that feels genuinely Thai, genuinely serious and genuinely worth the trip to Charoenkrung, Samlor is the call.

TIP: The menu changes daily so go with an open mind rather than a fixed order. Ask the staff what came in from the market this morning. Reservation recommended.

(Confirm times and ticketing directly before heading out.)

See you tomorrow morning.

— Devon