Bangkok Guide
Northern downtown: around Siam Square
Siam Square, at the heart of the northern downtown district, has just about everything to satisfy the Thai consumer boom – enormous malls and department stores, the finest boutiques, Western fast-food restaurants and cinemas. Don't come looking for an elegant piazza though: the "square" is in fact a grid of small streets on the south side of Thanon Rama I, and the name is applied freely to the surrounding area. Sights are not the main draw here, though the charming teak home now open to the public as Jim Thompson's House is a Bangkok highlight.
Among other diverse attractions, there's the hi-tech aquarium at Siam Ocean World, fun for kids and adults alike; the strikingly contemporary, ambitious, modern art gallery Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre; the noisy and glittering Erawan Shrine; and the beautiful gardens and objets d'art housed in the elegant teak buildings of Suan Pakkad Palace Museum.
This area is well served by the Skytrain, which has several useful stations in the neighbourhood, and by the Khlong Saen Saeb canal boat service.
Staying in or around Siam Square puts you as central as Bangkok gets: right in among the city's best shopping possibilities and a wide choice of Thai and international restaurants and food courts. There's no ultra-cheap accommodation here, but a few scaled-up guest houses complement the expensive hotels. Concentrated in their own small "ghetto" on Soi Kasemsan 1, which runs north off Thanon Rama I, between the Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre and Jim Thompson's House, these offer typical travellers' facilities and basic hotel comforts at moderate prices.
Read more ▼
- Sight(s) ▼
- Sports and Outdoor ▼