Our picks for the best things to do in Bangkok this weekend

The magic’s back, and this time it comes with a live orchestra. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban returns to the big screen, only this isn’t your usual rewatch. ALCOPOP and Five Four Live are teaming up with the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra to bring the film’s third chapter to life – quite literally. As the story unfolds on a 40-foot screen, every sweep of John Williams’ score will be performed live, conducted by Timothy Henty. Expect the trembling strings when the Dementors arrive, the brass that lifts the broomsticks and the haunting melodies that made growing up at Hogwarts feel monumental. It’s nostalgia, sharpened and reimagined, where cinema meets symphony and you remember exactly why the magic never really left. November 8-9. B1,200-4,000 via here. Prince Mahidol Hall, Mahidol University.

What began as a modest night has stretched its limbs across two evenings, morphing into something between a fairground and a fever dream. Over 100 vendors will set up camp – cannabis growers beside kratom brewers, wellness gurus beside people who just really like loud guitars. It’s less a market, more a conversation about what ‘sustainable’ looks like when fun is part of the brief. ChangChui’s grounds split neatly into three worlds: healing, battle and stoner. One offers herbal workshops and massages, another swaps gloves for guitars, and the last hums with smoke and basslines. Expect headliners like Srirajah Rockers, Desktop Error, Bomb at Track and Rejizz, but the real intrigue sits with Nudkinpuk’s next act – a carnival with dirt under its nails. November 8-9. B150 via here. ChangChui Creative Park, 4pm-midnight

Oysters have long been one of the ocean’s most prized treasures, celebrated for their delicate flavour and luxurious appeal. This November, Chatrium Grand Bangkok invites you to savour the very best of the sea. Oyster Month: A Symphony of the Sea is a month-long culinary event spotlighting international masters, from Michelin-starred chefs to oyster-shucking champions. Highlights include Abby Zhang (China), Oyster Shucking Champion; Daniel Notkin (Canada), the renowned ‘Oyster King’; and Alvin Leung (Hong Kong), the two-Michelin-star ‘Demon Chef’, alongside expert mixologists pairing champagnes with oysters. Activities not to miss include a bubble and oyster party by the pool, complete with DJ beats and hosted by Vranken; a special bar takeover by Andrew Whibley on November 1 and an evening of Michelin-star excellence with a curated dinner set by Chef Alvin on November 2.   November 1-30. Chatrium Grand Bangkok, Open daily 6.30am-10pm

Tsai Kuen-Lin's solo exhibition does something radical: it makes rivers audible. During his residency, the artist submerged recording equipment beneath the Chao Phraya River, Ping River and Ang Kaew Lake, capturing underwater symphonies most of us will never hear. Mae Nam – Mother Water – treats these recordings as living archives rather than ambient noise. What makes this particularly compelling is his material shift: gone are the PVC pipes from earlier outdoor works, replaced now with clay and ceramics embedded with traces from those exact recording sites. Sound becomes tangible; earth meets liquid. It's an exhibition that asks you to reconsider water not as backdrop but as protagonist, carrying memories of communities who've shaped and been shaped by its currents. Wind, earth, water, fire – all four elements collapsed onto gallery walls, whispering stories we've forgotten how to hear. Until January 10. Free. SAC Gallery, 11am-6pm

Buckle turns ten this year. The exhibition charts a decade of the Buckle collection, tracing the spark of its rebellious beginnings and its evolution into a streetwear staple. Each corner of the space tells a story, from early sketches that defied convention to bold pieces that carved their own rulebook. The archives invite a closer look at the textures, cuts and unexpected details that made Buckle a fixture in fashion capitals, while moments of the collection are frozen in display, like snapshots of style history. Walking through feels like wandering through someone else’s diary, only one filled with attitude, creativity and a knack for making the ordinary feel unapologetically iconic. Until November 16. G/F, Central Embassy, 10am-10pm

Shereif Eldesouky’s new exhibition is a meditation on how we break apart and find our way back. The Egyptian mixed-media artist, now based in Bangkok, draws on memory and sibling love, framing both as fragile yet astonishingly resilient. His chosen metaphor is the reef: sometimes bleached, sometimes reborn, always in flux. The pieces trace cycles of sorrow and repair, suggesting that the same emotional currents that pull us away can, in time, return us to one another. Eldesouky mirrors this in his process, painting, dismantling, then reassembling fragments into forms that speak of survival and renewal. It’s at once personal and planetary, asking us to see our own bonds in the same light as coral – vulnerable, but never beyond revival. September 20-November 15. Free. Bangkok 1899, 11am-6pm

Bangkok doesn’t really need another rooftop, but it does need a pool party worth ditching your Saturday plans for. Sunset Splash x Innerbloom is angling for that spot – set high above the city with the skyline as its backdrop. The dates are scattered across the year (September 13, October 4, November 8 and December 6) like seasonal markers for when you should probably bring your swimsuit. Expect the Innerbloom DJ crew working the decks, joined by live sax and percussion, plus dancers who make the whole thing feel more festival than hotel amenity. Drinks are dialled up with bubbles and cocktails – free-flow for women between 2pm and 4pm – and the food is just as curated as the soundtrack.  September 13, October 4, November 8 and December 6. B500 via here. W Bangkok, 2pm-9pm

Malee Naree, also known as Watcharakoranan Panya, paints like she’s decoding human contradiction. In her exhibition In Layers, each piece slips between tenderness and tenacity, dream and daylight, revealing how the human spirit is stitched together with both grit and grace. The closing work, I Am a Robot, plays with the edges of identity, asking what happens when technology starts to mimic our emotions a little too well. Yet beneath the metallic glint lies something deeply human. Until November 30. Free. Blacklist Gallery, 10am-6pm

Jiajia Qi arrives in Bangkok with her first solo exhibition in Thailand, but this isn’t a simple retrospective or a neat display of greatest hits. Supported by Mondriaan Fonds, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Thailand, the show stretches across her past works and new experiments, each piece circling back to her obsession with place and the slippery ways it shapes us. The framework leans into Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s idea of ‘nomadic thought’ where history isn’t pinned down and geography refuses to play by institutional rules. It’s less about tidy narratives and more about movement, flux and the sensation of being caught in between. Expect to leave with the feeling you’ve wandered somewhere unfamiliar, yet strangely close. September 25-November 8. Free. SAC Gallery, 10am-6pm

A four-month experiment that asks what happens when those guiding us through exhibitions stop being mere explainers and start becoming storytellers, confidants, maybe even co-conspirators. Curated by Pongsakorn Yananissorn, the programme gathers twelve hosts – to rethink how knowledge moves through art spaces. Through workshops and shared encounters, they explore what lingers after the lights dim and the last viewer drifts out. The focus rests not on the artworks alone but on the people orbiting them: the artists, the visitors, the community that quietly sustains it all. GHost 2568 turns the act of guiding into something intimate and alive – a reminder that art, at its best, is a conversation still unfolding. Until November 16. Free. Bangkok Citycity Gallery, 11am-6pm