Visiting:
City center, north, or near
Banthat Thong - Student and Street food road (very local, way better than Chinatown or Chatuchak for food)
Siam center - You can just walk around this area, lots to do, especially for young people. Any shopping or fun stuff can be done here
Chatuchak weekend market - Huge market that sells everything, anything you need, you will find here. Thais also go here, not just tourists.
Dip onsen - Clothed onsen with ice baths, warm baths, saunas, and a relaxation room. Feels like a tiny bit of nature in the middle of the city, good place to escape to, best value onsen in the city if you go on weekdays (500 baht for the whole day), vibe is modern, western, and very social. Food is good but hipster and overpriced.
Silom
Talat Noi & the Charoen Krung area- Artsy neighborhood
Sathorn 11 art space - Art gallery with dive bar in the back, has wine too
Mojo Bangkok - Live music bar owned by music lovers for music lovers, genre of music
depends on day of the week. Order minimum 350b worth of drinks to support the musicians.
Yunomori onsen Sathorn - Real japanese style onsen with many different baths to choose from, feels like a resort. Saunas, warm baths, tea baths, silk baths, ice baths, steam rooms, showers, relaxation building, garden, restaurant (overpriced) all here, 650 baht.
The Standard Hotel - Beautifully designed hotel. They also offer an activity here where you can pay about 1k (I think) and do their Standard Bar Crawl. They have bars on every floor, so they give you a fake passport, you start from the top floor to see the sunset, then stop by each floor. The bartender gives you a stamp, and you get your cocktails.
The Mahanakon Sky Tower - Tallest building in Bangkok I think.
Benchakitti Forest Park - In my opinion, best park in the city, feels the most natural, swan boats can be rented I think (for free)
Sukhumvit
Arcadia Barcade - Arcade bar with 80s music, blade runner theme, and rooftop film nights. Vibe is very much millennial geek.
Allso bar - social bar, friend meetups every saturday, cheap drinks, conversation cards
Find the locker room - Unique hidden cocktail bar
J Boroski - Custom cocktail bar, they don’t have a menu, you describe your drink, and they make it. Make sure to give them a budget.
Aroi sushi - 700 baht sashimi buffet, extremely good value.
Dasa book cafe - 3 storey second hand book store.
Puzzle room bangkok - The only good escape room place I’ve been to, see rooms online and reserve before going.
Grano di pa - Pizza place with great Tiramisu (and the best pizza I’ve had so far in BKK), right next to Arcadia.
The Fig Lobby - Another really cool hotel. Very artsy.
Coucou social game bar - Board game bar with good music and free snacks.
Midori music bar - Cool looking bar and vegetarian restaurant, hidden in a building in the heart of Phrom Phong and situated next to a sex shop (illegal!)
Tori Izakaya - Japanese Izakaya that does a lunch set in the day with refillable rice and soup, honorable mention: Yurijin Izakaya & Japanese Dining Ekkamai, you can basically get a free meal there because most of it is free, but food quality is nothing to go crazy about.
Hokkaido Restaurant Genshinyaki - My favorite Izakaya in Bangkok, authentic, fair prices, lunch deals, great quality food. Honorable mention for only bentos: Orange House Manga Cafe - authentic, extremely good value for money, cats.
Srinakarin (in my opinion not much to do in this part, big, industrial, dusty)
Bulldog burgers - Best burgers I’ve had in Bangkok
Living (foreigner friendly)
I will talk about all the neighborhoods in BKK proper, not anywhere in the outskirts that are too far out or that feel generally more provincial. Far, inconvenient (seriously, watch video essays on how bad the public transport coverage is for the average thai person), boring, dirty.
Huge Thai area, the real Thai Bangkok. Cafes, malls, lots of great food (maybe one of the best areas for authentic thai food wherever you look). Local and cheaper, but unfortunately quite far out. Lat Phrao is on the yellow line, so you would either need to transfer or spend a great amount of either time or money to come into the city (taxi or buses).
Fancy area, but for Thai people, so it doesn’t feel super out of reach, showy, or expensive. Trendy, young, innovative, up and coming, and ambitious. Ari is very clean, charming, and not as busy or overwhelming as other stops on the Sukhumvit line. Demographic seems to be young, fit, and bright people (Thai & foreigners alike). This neighborhood even has its own instagram account.
The city center, you can find anything in Siam, and it is not just dominated by tourists, Siam is part of the ‘real Bangkok, the CAPITAL CITY’, when BKK kids don’t know what to do, they hang around Siam square with their friends. Everything happens here, concerts, new franchises, billboards, cafes, new businesses by new graduates (proximity to Chulalongkorn university), and more. Popular student neighborhood Sam Yan (which has its own MRT station), is a nice little area.
One of the poshest areas. Pilates, luxury malls (think the Dior golden building), office buildings, brunch places, nice cars, and embassies. Very pretty. Witthayu road, for example, is lined with trees, you get what you pay for, or maybe even less (this area is ridiculously overpriced). Good for the type of people who like to live luxuriously or arguably just want people to think they live luxuriously. When I think of someone from Phloen Chit I think of girls who flash their gold watches, matcha and well dressed, lululemon + boob job combo friends on instagram, you talk to them and they have absolutely no opinions on anything whatsoever, and their friends who they love so dearly all sit in silence around them when they go out and drink on rooftop bars. Phloen chit has no soul, flat, all showy, but I will say this area is beautiful during christmas.
The most disgusting part of town, the scum of Bangkok. 99% prostitution, Pattaya old boys, Losers back home, pedophiles, hooligan STD-ridden backpackers. Due to the large portion of South Asian and MENA immigrants here, there is a lot of good ‘ethnic’ food (African, Middle eastern, Central Asian, South Asian, etc.), this is also a good area for clubbing if you love partying. Rats and cockroaches also run rampant among the creepiest people you’ve ever met, just disgusting. In the daytime, it blends in a little with Asok and Phloen Chit so it's not so bad, but otherwise, it’s Nana (derogatory).
Just fine, one of the fancier neighborhoods for foreigners, but not as fancy as PC &CL. Feels very ‘city’, malls, office buildings, etc. A good distance away from everything, and home to Benchakitti park, but in my opinion, too close to NANA.
One of my favorite neighborhoods in Bangkok. Quite fancy, but has personality. Phrom Phong is where all the cool stuff happens. When some new unique cocktail bar opens up, or you hear about a cool 3 storey secondhand book store, or a storytelling club, debate club, niche gathering, thrifting events, 70s themed bars and sex shops, networking for female digital nomads etc. It’s usually in either Phrom Phong, Ari, or Thong Lor. Very cool area. Some streets are very japanese, this area has a huge japanese population to the point where announcements in Emquartier are sometimes made in Japanese, so you can also find good Japanese places here. The Sois here are quite livable, many are tree lined and pretty (eg Soi 24, 26) but the downside is that it’s expensive, and at the end of the day, it is a popular area, so traffic is insane, and it's a bit messy. Another downside is it’s quite fancy so you live in a bit of a bubble and it’s not very Thai (rare to see big markets or street vendors selling veggies, for example), my friend would always eat out because she said it was cheaper than buying groceries, I found out it was because she was only shopping at Villa market (expat grocery store, it was the closest grocery store.) Still one of my favorite areas.
Phrom Phong’s sister, again, cool area, this is where all the Thais come to party. Most of my pinned locations in Thong Lor are bars. Hidden cocktail bars, Quirky concept bars, Vinyl bars, etc. I don’t feel so strongly about this area outside of the cocktail bar scene, it is just ‘part of the city’ like how Asok is for me, I will say that it feels just a tiny bit more local than Phrom Phong or Asok, like many Thai people live here as well as foreigners. Again, it is quite fancy, so rent will be high, especially near the BTS. You might think of Thong Lor as the gateway into the ‘new’ Bangkok, it’s the transition point, still a little Thai, but getting super fancy and ‘capital city’.
Ok, now we’re getting Thai. Thai area, a little up and coming, some new trendy places, some international food spots, a little multicultural, but generally it’s Thai. Good place to be if you want to be close to everything but also not live in a bubble. Many cheap food places still, authentic Bangkok here, rent will also be much cheaper.
Even more Thai, I would choose Ekkamai over Phra Khanong because Ekkamai is more up and coming and fun, Phra Khanong is where it starts getting boring, super duper Thai now, much cheaper though. Ekkamai downwards is where you will be able to find much cheaper condos near the BTS. I don’t have much to say about Phra Khanong, it has more of a humble vibe if you like that, not particularly pretty, but they’ve got W market where everyone hangs out, a nice street of cheap but chill and fun bars + one of the most popular rock climbing gyms in Bangkok. Overall not bad at all, but just not super exciting. Most people I know who live in Phra Khanong downwards are either a bit frugal or just super Thai, like for example, they went to university in Thailand and never left.
Sister of Phra Khanong but even more boring. To give you an idea, I found out about On Nut on a Bangkok meme page, the meme read ‘when your mate that lives in a 24sqm apartment in On Nut offers to host afters’ and it’s someone slowly creeping out of the picture to go home. I saw that and figured that must mean it’s super cheap, which is true! I think the meme sums it up perfectly, just super cheap, this is not anyone’s first choice I’d say, it’s more if you’d like to save money, but I wouldn’t call it miserable at all if you’re near the BTS, nice access to everything, humble like Phra Khanong (our mall connected to the BTS is century On Nut and Lotus on the other side, very Thai.) It is a little more unsafe, but by Thai standards, so you’re completely fine. Just a very Thai area, very cheap. As someone who lives in On Nut, I barely spend any time here, I just live here and go into the city every single day. If you are a homebody, go ahead and get an apartment near On Nut BTS, it will be beautiful but much cheaper, and still close to the cooler areas on the green line. Blocs 77 and Mori Haus are some of the nicest condos I’ve been to, and they’re near the On Nut BTS station. Blocs 77 is situated in front of the river, and there’s a waterfront / promenade. Mori Haus is like a resort, many of these places offer a free shuttle to the BTS as well, check out the area near Habito mall, actually such a nice, quiet area, and it’ll be cheaper than Thong Lor and such.
Honestly I don’t know much about these areas, I’m going to lump them all together, just very Thai like On Nut, but more removed from everywhere else. I chose On Nut because it has that balance of being cheap but also not so far from the city. You will definitely find super cheap condos here that are beautiful still. The people I know who live here care about having a really nice condo but don’t want to spend as much. It is also much much quieter and has MUCH less traffic.
Again, don’t know it so well, I usually avoid Bang Na, it’s so industrial, road-y, and polluted, actually I FUCKING HATE BANG NA. Yes I said it. Big and grey, and I would also call Bang Na very old, not sure what I mean by that but it just is. Lots of families here, good for if you want to settle down and get a big house. So roady, even the BTS station is super wide. I get scared riding my motorbike down that area because there are so many trucks. La Salle is supposed to be younger and cooler, I don’t know.
I would not live here just because it’s quite far out, Thai public transport is just not great, living far out means you need to make many connections. Been there, done that. I hear that a lot of tourists are told Khao San is the ‘center’ of Bangkok. Geographically, yes, in any other sense, no. Siam would be more center, Khao San is quite far out. In the daytime, the actual area is quite nice. It’s spacious, very clean, quite developed, but still with many cheap areas. At night, everything revolves around Khao san road. Khao san road is not just a party street, it’s specifically for kids who want to get drunk for cheap, backpackers, etc. I personally hate it, but again, the area itself is not bad, just far out. Some cool bars out here too, and this is where I get my film developed, so points for being trendy and young.