Bangkok does New Year’s Eve with a certain theatrical confidence and NEON Countdown has long been its most persuasive argument. Over a decade, the city’s end-of-year ritual has grown sleeker, louder and oddly communal, drawing travellers who plan December around basslines rather than fireworks. This tenth anniversary edition is at one vast stage, a newly claimed home at Rajamangala Stadium and a line-up designed to carry a crowd from dusk to countdown without distraction. Screens tower, lights behave theatrically and the music insists on momentum, not nostalgia. By the time midnight arrives, celebration stops feeling performative and starts to resemble release. Bangkok, briefly, agrees on the same rhythm.
December 30-31. B4,300 via here. Rajamangala National Stadium, 4.30pm-midnight