Bangkok places to visit, for very specific reasons

‘I went there for a manicure and left with a roll of film and a serious urge to buy a used guitar.’

There’s a suspicious amount packed into Lido Connect’s second floor. In one run of shopfronts, Nailvana does nail art; Xanap, develops actual rolls of 35mm film; Unisound Bangkok sells second-hand Japanese guitars and other instruments; and RENTROOM fills curated racks with vintage and Y2K clothing. Add rotating small Thai labels including Unfound Project, Blulagoon and 22 October Group, and you have a floor held together by one idea: ‘things a slightly niche Bangkok 20-something would actually want’. Nothing feels mall consultant-approved. It’s more as if a group of friends were handed shopfronts and told to sell whatever they were already obsessed with.

Address: 2/F, Lido Connect, 256 Rama I Road, Siam Square (between Soi Siam Square 2 and 3)

Hours: Most second-floor shops open roughly 11am-8pm, though times vary by tenant; check individual Instagram pages before visiting

Read: ‘Bangkok's 10 best film labs’ by Tita Honghirunkham, Feature Writer.

Read: ‘The best vintage shops in Bangkok’ by Kraprib Premsinee, Writer.

‘I went there to have coffee made by a woman who found her calling at 70.’

Ploenpit Rianmek – better known as Auntie Pim – launched Mother Roaster in February 2019 as a two-stool stand on Mahaphruttharam Road, pulling shots on a manual espresso machine. It went viral on Thai social media almost immediately, and by the end of the year she had moved into what became the shop’s signature setting: the second floor above a working car-parts junkyard in Talat Noi. This isn’t set dressing. The ground floor really is a mechanic’s workshop, and you climb a narrow staircase past engine parts to reach the coffee.

Four branches later, Auntie Pim is still the reason people make the trip. She didn’t arrive through third-wave coffee culture or a barista course;  her son began taking her to a café at weekends, and she kept going after retirement. There’s something worth sitting with here: she didn’t slow down at 70, she started something new.

Address: 1172 Soi Charoen Krung 22, Talat Noi

Hours: Roughly 10am-6pm; check before visiting.

Read: ‘Charoen CITYZEN: a food and art walk through Talat Noi’ by Kaweewat Siwanartwong, Senior Staff Writer.

‘I went there to let a stick decide if this is finally my year.’

Wat Mangkon Kamalawat is Bangkok’s largest Chinese Buddhist temple, founded in 1871 and still the centre of the city’s Chinese New Year celebrations. Beyond the courtyard stalls selling incense and offerings, the real ritual takes place inside: kau cim, one of the oldest forms of fortune-telling still practised, dating back to the 12th century. 

Kneel with a question in mind, shake a cylinder of numbered bamboo sticks until one falls out, then match its number to a printed slip of classical Chinese poetry – sometimes with a temple volunteer helping decode what it means. This is a serious ritual, not a tourist add-on: locals use it before real decisions, much as others might check a horoscope app.

Address: Charoen Krung area, Chinatown

Hours: Daily, 8am-6pm, free entry

Read: ‘Best Bangkok shrines and sacred sites for Songkran luck’ by Tita Honghirunkham, Feature Writer.

‘I went there to eat fruit that wasn’t fruit.’

Luk chup once looked mainly like bowls of tiny mangoes, chillies and mangosteens; now it might resemble a fried egg, a cartoon character or an entire mango sticky rice set. None of it is fruit, egg or anything else it pretends to be. It’s mung bean paste, hand-moulded, hand-painted and sealed with a glossy agar glaze so convincing that most people need a second look before accepting it’s dessert.

Baan Luk Chup began in 1977 as a grandmother’s home-based side business and has grown into a family operation with three branches: the original production site on Charan Sanitwong Soi 50, another Bangkok branch on Arun Amarin Road and, should you be heading that way, a third in Pak Chong, Nakhon Ratchasima.

Address (production branch): 36 Soi Charan Sanitwong 50, Charan Sanitwong Road, Bang Yi Khan, Bang Phlat, Bangkok 10700; Arun Amarin branch: near the Arun Amarin intersection, Bangkok Noi

Hours: Customer reviews commonly list the Arun Amarin branch as open Friday–Wednesday, 8am–7pm, and closed Thursday; call ahead to confirm, as the shop does not publish these hours itself. Tel (Charan Sanitwong branch): 02-424-8606

Read: ‘Bangkok's cutest desserts that are (almost) too good to eat’ by Meena Janekrabuanhad, Staff writer.

‘I went there to watch a full cast perform their hearts out for an audience nobody could see.’

Sai Yong Hong is one of a dwindling number of touring Chinese opera troupes still working in Bangkok, commissioned by Chinatown-area shrines to perform as offerings rather than entertainment. Actors spend hours in full makeup and costume before taking to a stage outside a temple, performing stories from Chinese folklore to live music on traditional instruments. The local regulars who turn up are almost beside the point. As one performer told the New York Times, they don’t perform for people; they perform for the gods.

There’s no fixed schedule: performances are booked around temple festivals and deity birthdays, so check the troupe’s Facebook page for local listings before setting out.

‘I went there to see a Buddha that fooled everyone for centuries.’

The Golden Buddha at Wat Traimit weighs 5.5 tonnes and is 83% solid gold. Cast sometime in the 13th or 14th century, it spent roughly 200 years hiding in plain sight. As Burmese forces threatened Ayutthaya in the mid-1700s, the statue was covered in plaster and made to look like an unremarkable temple Buddha, presumably for protection. The disguise lasted until 1955, when ropes gave way as the statue was being moved to a new building. It fell, the plaster cracked and thel gold underneath was finally revealed.

Address: Chinatown, near Hua Lamphong

Hours: Daily, 8am-5pm; the attached museum closes on Mondays. Entry is around B100, plus B40 to see the Buddha itself.

Read: ‘Things to do in Yaowarat’ by Tita Honghirunkham, Feature Writer.

‘I went there to drink in an old herbal medicine basement, now a moody cocktail bar.’

Philtration is tucked beneath a century-old heritage house in Siam, in the former underground medicine-making space of the Moh Mee family. The hidden speakeasy takes its cues from the family’s herbal medicine legacy, with cocktails built around Thai herbs, spices and old medicinal ingredients. Try the Mohmeetini, a martini spiked with Moh Mee’s Uthai medicine, or the Opium Den, a floral, fruity cocktail inspired by the old opium dens. The basement feels more like a secret dungeon than a cocktail bar, with low ceilings, stone corridors and dim lighting adding to the sense that you’ve stumbled somewhere you weren’t quite meant to find. It’s the kind of place where the story behind the drink is almost as good as the drink itself.

Address: 2 Soi Kasem San 3, Wang Mai, Pathum Wan, Bangkok 10330

Hours: Mon-Sun, 6pm-midnight

Read: ‘Bangkok’s 10 best speakeasies right now’ by Tita Honghirunkham, Feature Writer.