Rising On The River

In the neighbourhoods along Bangkok’s iconic Chao Phraya, a new generation of artists, designers, and chefs have created some of the Thai capital’s most exciting places to visit.

- Rachna Sachasinh

ASK ANYONE WHO, like me, grew up in Bangkok in the 1970s, and they’ll tell you about suffering through interminable weddings at a riverside hotel in Bangrak, one of the Thai capital’s oldest districts. In those days, status-obsessed locals would shuffle over to Charoen Krung Road, Bangrak’s main drag, elbowing through steamy markets and stalls selling jok, or Chinese rice porridge, to submit to an eternity of long-winded wedding toasts.

My father, however, had better ideas. He and I would show up, make our rounds politely, then decamp to the nearby Oriental hotel, now the Mandarin Oriental (doubles from ₹28,200; mandarin oriental.com), his old friend Nelson in tow. Over cocktails, the men would hatch outlandish plans. They dreamed of launching Bangkok’s first yoga studio, and a hospital-themed aperitif bar called The Pulse. My father, a physician, and Nelson, a flâneur who dressed in crisp linen suits, had no business sense, and when they did eventually put their schemes in motion, both immediately flopped.

If they’d only waited a few decades, their ideas might have gone down better. Because today, Bangrak is the epicentre of Bangkok’s Creative District, a trio of neighbourhoods populated by artists, designers, chefs, and musicians. Lured by low rents and a post-industrial aesthetic, these upstart entrepreneurs are renovating shop-houses and using them to reinvent izakaya food, or experiment with artisanal spirits. Young and edgy, the Creative District has become the city’s must-visit destination.