Trendy and Hipster Areas in Bangkok
A visual guide from the Bangkok travel guide — see all posters in Visual Guides.
On Phahonyothin Soi 7 the smell of espresso starts about thirty metres from Ari BTS and does not let up: roasters, natural-wine counters and one-room bakeries share the lane with civil-service canteens that have been there for decades. Bangkok's independent scene is not a single district but four or five, each with its own accent — riverside warehouses on one side of town, glass-fronted compounds the size of small malls on the other. Most sit within a few minutes' walk of a BTS or MRT exit, which is the practical reason they clustered where they did.
Where to go
Ari, two stops north of Victory Monument, is the low-rise one: sois 1 to 5 hold Nana Coffee Roasters, natural-wine bars and a Sunday-morning jogging crowd. Thonglor and Ekkamai, off Sukhumvit 55 and 63, run richer and glossier — The Commons on Thonglor Soi 17 is the template, an open-air food-and-drink stack that half of Asia has since copied. Downriver, the Creative District around Charoen Krung and Talat Noi is the one to walk: Warehouse 30's converted godowns, ATT19's antique-dealer gallery, and a grid of mechanic shops and shophouse cafés between Song Wat Road and the water.
How to do it well
These areas run on different clocks. Ari works best from mid-morning to late afternoon, when the coffee places are open and the lanes are quiet; Thonglor barely stirs before six and keeps going past midnight. Charoen Krung and Talat Noi are a daytime walk that turns into a drinking route after dark, when the gin bar Teens of Thailand and its neighbours on Chinatown's Soi Nana open up. Distances inside each pocket are short, but crossing between them in evening traffic is slow — take the BTS to Ari, Thong Lo or Saphan Taksin and only then start walking. February's Bangkok Design Week usually fills the riverside sois with installations.