SOI SUKHUMVIT 81, SUAN LUANG — An infrared thermometer pointed at the concrete outside the tent read 46.2 degrees Celsius at 4:16 p.m. on Oct. 7. Beneath the tent, it read 34.3 degrees.

“It’s much cooler; it eases the heat,” said a motorcycle taxi driver in an orange No. 33 vest. “It helped us a lot.”

The 4-by-8-meter tent, made of UV-resistant material, stands beside Regent Home on Soi 81, which connects to On Nut 10. The site previously had only vendor umbrellas printed with brand logos.

Somjit Lalert, 59, leads a 150-driver motorcycle taxi crew, or win, that works a 1.5-kilometer route around the clock. Drivers often wait in the sun between the morning and evening BTS rushes.

On Oct. 7, about a dozen of them showed international visitors from the Global Heat Forum what they built to adapt to rising temperatures.

Somjit, who has worked the stand for more than 20 years, coped with the heat long before the tent. She cut her hours, wore lighter clothes and usually carried a portable fan, though she forgot it in her rush to the visit.

“Without the fan, I get hot and irritable,” Somjit said.

What she lacked was an explanation.

“I just knew it was hot,” she said. “Why is it so hot?”

She found answers through heat workshops run by HomeNet Thailand, the Just Economy Labor Institute and HERA, a women-focused climate adaptation group based in Amsterdam.

Somjit said she learned to read the heat index and how climate change drives rising temperatures.

From June to October 2025, the three groups held 20 workshops for 319 informal workers from eight provinces, 299 of them women.

The sessions covered the link between climate change and heat and helped workers identify solutions for their communities.

The Soi 81 upgrades followed those workshops.

Siriporn Rathie, HERA’s Thailand director, said workers like Somjit never started from zero. Their adjusted hours and clothing, she said, were “already adaptation,” and they lacked “the opportunity” to build on it.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all; you need each community to lead,” Siriporn said. “And when they do that, it’s going to sustain over time.”

Somjit’s experience is common among informal workers, who make up 27.9% of Bangkok’s workforce, according to the National Statistical Office.

Somporn Ngowlin, 58, managed the heat on her own before anyone gave her numbers.

She collects scrap with a saleng cart in the On Nut 14 Rai Community in Lat Krabang. She sets out at 6 a.m. and heads home at noon, when the day gets too hot. She carries water and sips as she goes.

Her home has no air conditioning, and she said the stuffy air offers little relief.

“Even with the fan on, it’s like being in an oven,” Somporn said, noting she prefers sitting beneath a tree outside.

Kanokporn Husawasdee, who sells pork sticky rice beside a BTS exit on Phahonyothin 47, wakes at 1 a.m. to prepare her stall.

She said customers now thin out by 9:30 a.m., half an hour earlier than before, because of the heat. Her April electricity bill nearly doubled to 3,800 baht, she said.

“Whatever it takes, I still have to sell it all,” she said.

For workers like Somporn and Kanokporn, the workshops connected those daily problems to climate change.

Early sessions were a hard sell, Siriporn said. Workers told organizers they were fine and the heat wasn’t hurting their health.

Organizers changed their approach. Instead of explaining scientific terms, they asked workers what heat meant to them, why they thought it was getting hotter and what they did to cope.

Siriporn said people then started doing the math. They tracked income and spending more closely and found bills climbing while customers thinned out in some trades. 

“These riders, they were very clear that in the past 10 years, they could feel the heat,” Siriporn said. “But they didn’t relate it back to climate change.”

About 70% of participants said afterward they better understood heat’s link to climate change, according to HERA.

Somporn went to the workshops with one question: Was the heat getting worse?

“I wanted to know, because my neighbors are complaining (about the heat),” said Somporn, her community’s health volunteer.

Bangkok’s average temperature is projected to rise 1.9 degrees, from 34.2 in 2025 to 38.1 by 2050, making it the hottest city in ASEAN, according to the ASEAN Center for Energy.

The city’s built environment also adds to the urban heat island effect: Heat-absorbing surfaces, limited green space and poor ventilation can make areas hotter than their surroundings.

Somporn now shares what she learned with neighbors, including ways to improve ventilation at home and the need to drink water regularly. She said she’s proud that people listen.

HomeNet, a network that works with informal workers, began working on heat in 2025, said Poonsap Tulaphan, its director. With HERA’s support, it improved about 20 worksites, including the motorcycle stands in Soi 81.

Somjit’s crew received three upgrades from an about-60,000-baht grant. 

A UV-protective canopy now covers the soi’s entrance. The tent next to the Regent stand shelters about 50 drivers. The crew’s office now has a shaded net, a nap area, a renovated bathroom and a shower with better ventilation.

After the tent was installed, monthly rent at the Regent stand rose from 2,000 to 3,500 baht. The crew’s central fund covers the increase. Office renovation costs also ran over budget, and the crew paid about 20% of the total.

The win’s savings group, formed in 2016, has about 60 voluntary members who each deposit 500 to 1,000 baht a month, Somjit said. All 150 drivers also pay 200 baht a month into a central fund for emergencies such as accidents.

Siriporn said that investment helps make community-led solutions sustainable.

“You can’t go in with, ‘Let’s put up the shade, let’s create a cooling center,’” Siriporn said. “You want it to be owned by the community themselves, so you have to go back there and talk to them again and again until some leaders are emerging, and they’ll tell you what they want.”

Beyond physical upgrades, HERA is testing a cash assistance program with HomeNet. It pays about 1,000 workers 300 baht a day when the heat index hits 47.5 degrees, a level reached on five days so far in 2026.

The groups hope to expand the program in 2027 to 10,000 to 20,000 workers in more provinces.

“We want this to be evident to the government so they can actually pick this up and do something about it,” Siriporn said, adding that heat is a relatively new field.

Bangkok has an urban heat management plan that includes revising the building code for heat resilience, developing “urban ventilation corridors” and adding community cooling centers in all 50 districts.

The city ran more than 300 cooling centers this summer. But Somjit said those were too far for her crew to reach.

“Win drivers are out in the sun, sweating, and when you join other people, there must be a smell,” Somjit said. “We don’t want to impose that on them, so we decided not to go.”

At Soi 81, the crew still lacks reliable water and electricity at the soi entrance and Regent stands. A solar-powered setup, Somjit said, doesn’t provide power at night.

“If we got electricity from a government agency, we could pay for it monthly,” she said. “The roof would help passengers, drivers and people walking by, and we could put fans up.”

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