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

Song Wat turns playful without losing its sense of history. For Bangkok Design Week, the district becomes a walkable board game, stretching across streets that once carried trade, gossip and daily deals. Building on the earlier manhole cover project, this new chapter invites visitors to play merchant, navigating landmarks and stories that shaped the neighbourhood’s working life. Set along Song Wat Road at Tuk Khaek, Merchants of Song Wat reimagines the area as a network of warehouses and shops. Players move as caravans, trading goods, striking bargains with local businesses and slowly building their own corner of commerce. The rules stay friendly, the visuals clear, drawing from familiar colours and signs around the area.    January 29-February. Free. Song Wat, 2pm-8pm on weekdays and 1pm-7pm on weekends.

Japan Expo Thailand turns 11 and returns with the confidence of something that knows it no longer has to explain itself. Across three days this February, the festival reshapes Bangkok into a loose map of Japanese fixations, from obsessive food corners to showcases that nod at craft, pop culture and newer creative experiments. One minute you’re watching a crowd queue politely for takoyaki, the next you’re drifting past contemporary art, anime curiosities and stages hosting headline Asian acts. Beyond the fanfare, the appeal sits in its range. Travel dreams, study ambitions and licensed collectibles share floor space without judgement. Business conversations hum quietly at the edges. Japan appears less as a distant reference point and more as a familiar neighbour, one that has been part of the region’s cultural vocabulary for years. Consider it a reunion rather than a spectacle.   February 6-8. Free. Central World, 10am-9pm

Steel doors slide open again at New World Mall, a place once synonymous with weekends, first dates and air-conditioned escape. Long dormant, the building now hosts 8+1 Circuit of Stories, an exhibition mapping Banglamphu to Khaosan through shared memory rather than nostalgia. Eight surrounding neighbourhoods sit alongside one economic strip, from Khaosan Road to Phra Athit and Phra Sumen, forming a loose circuit shaped by lived experience. Residents speak first here. Voices, photographs, worn objects and half-remembered details anchor the work, gathered and reimagined by five artist-designer collectives. The mall becomes a hinge between past and present, holding fragments without polishing them too smoothly. Wandering through the installations feels less like sightseeing and more like listening in on a long conversation already underway. What emerges is not a landmark story, but a portrait of place built from ordinary lives and stubborn continuity.   Until February 8. Free. New World Mall, 11am-10pm

Hands still matter, even now. At Rosewood Bangkok, Made in Thai-Hands arrives through a collaboration with Play Art House, offering a thoughtful look at living craft traditions shaped by patience rather than speed. Curated by independent artist Seada Samdao, the exhibition brings together 10 Thai artists working between inherited techniques and contemporary thinking, without treating either as fixed. Moving through the space feels like travelling across different landscapes, guided by texture, material and touch. Threads hold hours of quiet labour, pigment settles through instinct and surfaces reveal years of repetition. Nothing rushes for attention. Instead, each work carries the weight of human effort and the calm confidence that comes from knowing a process deeply. While the rhythms of making remain central, the voices feel current, led by a generation carrying tradition forward with clarity rather than reverence. Craft here feels alive, personal and quietly defiant.   Until March 20. Free. G/F, Rosewood Bangkok, 9am-9pm

Anyone who’s grown up with Isan music knows the feeling. A few notes land and suddenly your body answers before your brain does. Feet shuffle, shoulders loosen and the night quietly rearranges itself. The Modern Sound from Isan leans into that instinct, setting up at Marshall Livehouse with sound so clean it feels almost unfair. The bass hits right, the melodies stay sticky and dancing stops being a decision. Between tracks, the room smells faintly of spice. Lab Krung handles the food side with dishes designed for sharing, wiping sweat from your brow and pulling you back for more. It’s not a throwback or a novelty act. This is Isan culture meeting the present, confident enough to let the music do most of the talking and the crowd finish the sentence.   February 7. Free. Marshall Livehouse, 1pm onwards

Jesper Haynes presents a photography exhibition that looks back at downtown New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s with clear eyes and no soft focus. Faces feel close, streets feel tight and the city shows itself without asking for permission. Featuring figures like Andy Warhol and Naomi Campbell, the work traces Haynes’ long fascination with street life, sparked when Warhol invites him to New York as a teenager and quietly changes his direction. Haynes earns a reputation for photographing the edges of urban life with honesty that never feels staged. His black-and-white images read like pages torn from a private notebook, raw but deliberate. Often described as a rebel diarist, he documents nights, friendships and passing moments that refuse nostalgia. What stays with you is the intimacy, as if the city leans over to tell you a secret and trusts you not to interrupt.   January 24-February 14. Free. Chaloem La Art House, midday-6pm

Bangkok welcomes 2026 with a knowing wink as Muse Anime Festival sets up at JAM SPACE, a familiar meeting point for pop culture devotees. This is less trade fair, more shared obsession. Fourteen anime titles spread across 17 photo zones turn fandom into a walk-through experience, complete with oversized sets and scenes designed for lingering rather than rushing. Expect towering inflatables of Momo and Okarun from DAN DA DAN plus Rimuru, the eternally cheerful slime, looming large for cameras. Beyond the visuals, shelves fill with officially licensed pieces and harder-to-find imports, tempting even the disciplined collector. Food gets its own moment too, thanks to a themed cafe riffing on SPY x FAMILY and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime.    January 10-March 29. Free. 4/F, MBK Centre, 11am-9pm

Memory often settles in the body before it reaches language. A brush of skin, the pressure of a hand, the sting that lingers just long enough to stay. This project leans on that idea, inviting Badego.bodega to curate an intimate gathering of seven tattoo artists: De hour, Deanxittt, Ice House Studio, Lau Garan Studio, matattyesyes, Sakiw Tattoo and Troll The Tatt. Together, their works read like a shared archive of touch, where personal histories sit quietly beneath ink. Each mark holds a moment that resisted words, shaped instead through line, colour and trust. The exchange between artist and wearer matters as much as the finished image, a private conversation made visible. What emerges feels tender rather than dramatic, reminding us that presence is often felt through skin, not screens, and remembered long after the feeling fades.   January 29-March 19. Free. MunMun Srinakarin, 10.30am-9.30pm

This feels like the sort of exhibition you stumble across on a slow afternoon and end up thinking about days later. Jean-Paul De Croux’s abstract paintings sit quietly, asking you to slow your pace and notice what’s happening on the surface. Inspired by the natural world, each canvas carries traces of time through layered marks, rough textures and gestures that feel both deliberate and instinctive. Light slips across the work in subtle ways, changing how colours behave and how forms settle. Emotion isn’t announced but sensed, like weather rolling in. Nothing here feels fixed or final. Memory, movement and material seem to shift depending on how long you stay with them. It’s less an exhibition to decode and more a moment to share, reflective without being precious and reassuringly human in its restraint.   Until February 8. Free. 5/F, Art Jewel, Siam Paragon, 10am-10pm

Sahamongkol Film has been rolling out free screenings for years now, and the fourth edition lands with the easy confidence of a ritual everyone already understands. Nine films stretch across nine nights, projected at the open plaza outside Kasetsart University’s Central Lecture Building. Outdoor cinema has become almost routine lately, yet this one still draws a crowd. After wandering the Kaset Fair with skewers and sweet drinks in hand, people drift over to Zone K, mats tucked under arms, ready to settle in. The appeal is simple and stubbornly effective. Sit on the ground, share snacks, watch a familiar title or discover something new under open sky. Beyond the films, quiet extras wait in the wings, including activities and surprise actor appearances kept deliberately vague. It feels communal rather than curated, the kind of evening that unfolds without instructions.   Until February 7. Free. Kasetsart University, 7pm onwards