Set on the upper floors of the Baiyoke Tower II skyscraper in the Pratunam district of central Bangkok, the Baiyoke Sky Hotel is the highest hotel in Thailand and one of the highest large hotels anywhere in South-East Asia. The hotel occupies floors twenty-two through to seventy-four of the eighty-eight-floor tower, providing six hundred and seventy-three guest rooms across more than fifty individual room floors. The hotel opened in 1998 as the principal occupant of the new Baiyoke II tower. Th.....

Rising three hundred and four metres above the Pratunam district of central Bangkok, the Baiyoke Tower II is one of the most prominent individual landmarks of the modern Thai capital and was the tallest building in Thailand continuously from its completion in 1997 through to the completion of the King Power MahaNakhon in 2016. The eighty-eight-floor building combines a high-volume international hotel on the upper floors with a substantial commercial and retail base at the lower levels, alongside.....

A curved white building at the busy Pathumwan junction marks the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, one of the Thai capital's main public spaces for contemporary art. It stands among the shopping malls of the Siam district, directly linked to the elevated railway and to the neighbouring MBK Center. The idea for a public art centre was approved by the city governor in 1995, but the project stalled in 2001 when a new administration proposed turning the site into commercial retail space instead. Sust.....

Watching Muay Thai, Thailand's national sport and martial art, is one of the most popular evening activities for visitors to Bangkok. Fight nights are held across the city, and the experience combines elite combat sport with longstanding ritual and music. Muay Thai is known as the art of eight limbs, because fighters strike using fists, elbows, knees and shins. Each bout is preceded by the wai khru ram muay, a dance in which fighters pay respect to their teachers, performed to a live ensemble w.....

Set in a restored colonial-era mansion on South Sathorn Road in the central commercial district of Bangkok, the Blue Elephant Bangkok is one of the most distinguished high-end Thai restaurants in the capital and the principal flagship of an international Thai restaurant network with branches in London, Paris, Brussels, Copenhagen, Lyon, Malta, Beirut and Phuket. The Bangkok flagship opened in 2002 in the converted Thai-Chinese Chamber of Commerce building, one of the few surviving early twentiet.....

Occupying a substantial city block at the corner of Ratchadamri Road and Rama I Road in the central Pathum Wan district of central Bangkok, Central World is one of the largest shopping malls in Thailand and one of the principal commercial landmarks of the central city. The complex covers around five hundred and fifty thousand square metres of gross floor area across eight retail levels and contains around five hundred individual shops, around one hundred restaurants, two large department stores .....

Set in a small open-air shrine compound at the corner of Ratchadamri and Ploenchit Roads in the central Pathum Wan district of central Bangkok, the Erawan Shrine is one of the most heavily visited religious sites in the central Thai capital and provides the principal Bangkok shrine to the Hindu god Brahma. The shrine has been continuously active since its dedication on 9 November 1956 and is currently visited by around fifteen thousand individual worshippers and tourists every day. The shrine w.....

Standing twenty-one and a half metres tall on the small Phra Lan square in front of Wat Suthat in the historic Phra Nakhon district of central Bangkok, the Giant Swing is one of the most distinctive surviving traditional Thai religious monuments anywhere in the central capital. The structure consists of two great teak posts connected by an elaborately carved horizontal lintel and originally supported a swinging platform used during the annual Triyampavai-Tripavai festival. The original Giant Sw.....

Opened on 9 November 2018 on the western Thonburi bank of the Chao Phraya River in the Khlong San district of Bangkok, ICONSIAM is the largest luxury shopping complex in Thailand and one of the principal commercial landmarks of the modern Thai capital. The complex covers around five hundred and twenty-five thousand square metres of gross floor area across seven retail levels and was the largest single private property development in Thai history at the time of completion. The development was ca.....

A short narrow street in the Banglamphu district of the historic Phra Nakhon area of central Bangkok, Khaosan Road has been the principal international backpacker destination in central Thailand continuously since the early 1980s. The street covers approximately four hundred metres between the Chakrabongse and Tanao Roads and contains around two hundred individual restaurants, bars, guesthouses, travel agencies, market stalls and small budget tour operators. The street takes its Thai name from .....