Thailand Guide
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Angkana Koh Phangan: Where the Island Becomes the Menu
Chef Annie Angkana grew up eating the food of Koh Phangan. Her mother's cooking. Her grandmother's evening meals. Every family gathering centered around ingredients from the island. Then she left. Washington DC. Bangkok. Years building a career far from home.
She came back with a clear purpose: to preserve what was already here before anyone else thought to protect it.
Angkana is the result. A restaurant where every single ingredient comes from Koh Phangan, where the menu changes because the island changes, and where a dish made from a giant squid found only in these waters, a GI-certified local coconut, and a centuries-old shrimp paste tells you more about this island than any tour ever could.
"If local people don't preserve and tell our own culinary stories, they could gradually disappear."
Come hungry. Leave knowing the island differently.
House of Heals Bangkok: Drag, Culture, and the Art of the Stage
House of Heals sits on the 33rd floor of a hotel on Ploenchit Road and runs one of Bangkok's most distinctive nights out. The show is Thai drag: high production, mixed crowd, performers who have been doing this for years. Founded by Pangina Heals, hosted by Dearis Doll, and built around the idea that a room full of strangers can all end up laughing at the same thing. We went twice, saw the changing room, and talked to the people who make it happen.
Spice Koh Phangan: The Beach That People Never Leave
There is a beach on Koh Phangan that most people never find. You take a taxi boat from Haad Rin. Ten minutes. And then you arrive somewhere that has been making people not want to leave since 2008.
Spice started as a restaurant. One bamboo hut a year later. Now twenty private houses, a brunch cafe, a minimart, two talking birds that cannot fly, and a resident who has been there for fourteen years. We sat down with Fin, who grew up on Koh Samui and came back to run it after studying hospitality in Switzerland.
Mycelium Festival and Double Dick Tiger 2026: Your Complete Guide to Thailand's Most Intimate November Gatherings
Every high season in Thailand begins the same way. People plan December. November gets forgotten.
That is a mistake. Chiang Dao in November is one of the best places in Thailand to be. And tucked into the jungle, two of the most unusual festivals in the country are happening within days of each other. Mycelium Festival is a music and arts gathering in the forest. Double Dick Tiger is 150 people, a Funktion One system, moonshine in bamboo cups, and cows near the speakers. This guide covers both in depth.
VIVIN: The Farmers Market Table That Became One of Bangkok's Best French Bistros
VIVIN started as one table selling terrine at the Bangkok farmers market in 2013. Today it's three branches, a monthly changing bistro menu, and one of the most honest founder stories in the city. Ready to hear how a failed sunglasses business turned into one of Bangkok's best French Thai bistros?
People of Bangkok: Bunny Heals
Bunny Heals grew up in Khorat knowing she was different. A teacher woke her up during nap time in kindergarten to rehearse a traditional Thai dance. That was the beginning. Her father secretly gave her money for a dress her mother refused to buy. Her mother came around, slowly, and then passed away two months ago. Today Bunny is the head performer at House of Heals in Bangkok, the person who builds every show the audience sees. She has been living her dream since she was five years old. She just did not know it yet.
Read the full story.
People of Mongolia: Ami
Ami was born in a ger in the middle of July in western Mongolia. Her mother had no experience with childbirth. The ambulance did not arrive in time. She came into the world much as her ancestors had.
She believes this shaped everything about her.
Eight years later her parents sold their herd and moved to Ulaanbaatar so their children could go to better school. Later in her 20’s, a painting by Egon Schiele pulled her to Europe. She studied in Budapest, worked at the Venice Art Biennale, and explored parts of Europe, and returned home.
"Somehow, I always feel that it calls me back," she says of Mongolia.
Best Neighborhoods in Bangkok for Expats and Digital Nomads
Bangkok's neighbourhood question sounds simple until you're actually trying to answer it. Everyone says Sukhumvit. But Sukhumvit isn't one place. It's fifteen kilometres of city that changes character almost block by block, and picking the wrong end of it costs you months and a lot of baht.
This is an honest guide to eleven areas, where to live, who each one actually suits, and the trade-offs nobody puts in the brochure.
Ready to find out which part of Bangkok is actually yours?
Between Wonderfruit and Tomorrowland: The Best Thing You Can Do Is Leave
Wonderfruit ends on 7 December. Tomorrowland starts on 11 December. Four days in between. Everyone will tell you to stay in Pattaya.
We are telling you to get on a boat.
Koh Mak and Koh Kood are two of the most untouched islands in Thailand. No flights. No airports. Just a van, a catamaran, and four days of exactly what your body needs between five days at The Fields and three days at Wisdom Valley.
Timo has done it. This is his honest guide to making the most of the gap.
People of Bangkok: Dearis Doll
Dearis Doll has been doing drag for sixteen years. He did not plan it. He was covering for a sick colleague one night, had never worn heels before, and when the curtain opened the audience screamed before he said a single word.
That was the beginning. Before that was six years in Cologne, a mother dying in Bangkok, two weeks of singing lessons, and twenty seconds on Thai television that his boyfriend missed because he went to the toilet.
This is his story.
People of Bangkok: Zeena
Zeena grew up between Dhaka and Bangkok, cooking her mother's Bengali recipes from memory in a city that did not always have the right ingredients. What started as cooking for friends became Mustard and Memories, a dinner series that has quietly become one of Bangkok's most intimate food experiences. We sat down with her to talk about food, community, and what it means to cook from a place you carry inside you.
Best Festivals in Thailand This High Season 2026/2027: Our Picks and the Complete Guide
Tomorrowland is bringing its full production to Asia for the first time. EDC Thailand is back in Phuket. Wonderfruit enters its 11th year. And somewhere in the mountains of Chiang Dao, 150 people are gathering in the jungle with a Funktion One sound system and cows wandering near the speakers.
Thailand's 2026/2027 high season is the most diverse festival calendar the country has ever seen. Nine festivals from November to January. Mountain gatherings and mega-events. Jungle camps and beach resorts. Underground techno and the biggest Mainstage in Asia.
I have been to Wonderfruit three times. I live in Bangkok. This is the guide I wish I had when I first started navigating Thailand's festival season.
Ready to plan your trip?
Escape Portal Bangkok: Bangkok's First Cinematic Escape Room Experience
Escape Portal started at a dinner party. Someone mentioned, almost by accident, that May used to design escape rooms. That was the beginning of it.
A meeting the following week. A flight to Japan the month after. Construction starting in September 2025 on the 13th floor of a building so difficult to find, the founders decided to make the search part of the story.
Lily and May built something Bangkok has not seen before: a licensed 1920s Japanese temple experience where every puzzle serves the story, every detail has a reason, and the Japanese design team refused to allow a single wrong-era lightbulb.
Sixty minutes inside. You will be talking about it for longer than that.
Ready to step through?
Electric Sheep Bangkok: The Restaurant That Cooks Without Olive Oil
Electric Sheep started with a rule. Every ingredient on the plate must come from Thailand. No olive oil from Spain. No capers from Italy. No imported flour, spirits, or wine.
Chefs Amerigo Tito Sesti and Yoan Martin spent years earning a Michelin Star before walking away from imported kitchens to build something entirely from what is here. The result is Mediterranean cuisine that tastes like nothing else in Bangkok, because it could only have been made in Bangkok.
Come in sceptical. Leave wanting to understand how they did it.
Ready to find your table?
Thailand Visa Guide for Expats and Digital Nomads
Thailand has some of the best long-stay visa options in the world right now. The DTV alone has made Bangkok one of the most accessible cities on the planet for remote workers. But the rules have tightened, rejection rates are up, and getting this wrong means leaving the country and starting the whole process over from outside Thailand.
This guide covers the four main long-stay options for 2026: the DTV, the LTR, the Thailand Privilege Card, and the Retirement visa. What each one actually requires, who it suits, and the things most guides either get wrong or leave out entirely.
Ready to figure out which one is yours?
Gelior Gelato Bangkok: The Place That Fits a Life Into Every Cup
Gelior Gelato started with a memory. Every city Kimmy has ever visited, what she remembers afterwards is the ice cream she had there. That instinct became a gelato place in Bangkok, built around the idea of fitting a whole life experience into one small scoop.
She and Tim spent over a decade in Japanese fine dining before choosing Bangkok as the city to open their first place together. The flavors show it. Thai jasmine rice. Salted egg yolk caramel shoyu. Lemongrass and cardamom sorbet. Around 12 in the case on any given day, two rotating out every week, all of them made fresh.
People walk in skeptical. They leave wanting more. That shift, Kimmy says, is the whole reward.
Ready to find your flavor?
Cost of Living in Bangkok for Expats (2026): The Real Numbers
Bangkok's cost of living lives in the space between street food stalls and rooftop cocktails, between a ฿10,000 studio and a ฿70,000 one, between what you save and what you choose to spend on anyway.
Here, the numbers tell two stories at once. One is a city that still rewards a simple life with cheap, excellent food and low daily friction. The other is a city that has quietly caught up to European prices for the things that used to be its bargain, wine, nightlife, imported comforts.
It is a budget shaped less by the city than by the life you decide to build inside it.
Ready to find out what your money actually buys here?
Everything You Need to Know About Eating in Thailand
At first it feels simple You sit down order something and eat
But Thai food is not just about what you order It is about how you eat how you share and how you move through the meal
Once you understand that everything changes
Open the guide and learn how to eat in Thailand like it is meant to be experienced
The North of Koh Phangan: The Part Most Tourists Never See
Most people never make it to the north. They find their place in the south or west and stay there.
But just twenty minutes away the island shifts The roads get quieter the pace slows down and everything feels a little more real
This is where Koh Phangan opens up in a different way
Open the guide and explore the part of the island most people never see
Your First 24 Hours on Koh Phangan
Your first day on Koh Phangan sets the rhythm for everything that follows.
It is easy to arrive and feel slightly lost, surrounded by options but unsure where to begin. This guide gives you a simple direction without overplanning. Just enough structure to land well, move with ease, and step into the island in a way that feels natural.
Open the guide, take it step by step, and let the island meet you halfway.