Rama 9 & Ratchadaphisek
The corridor developers bet on when Silom ran out of land — and the first Bangkok business district planned around a metro line rather than a road.
Rama 9 Road and the Ratchadaphisek ring were laid out in the 1980s and 90s as an outer business corridor. The MRT Blue Line opened along it in 2004 and the offices followed the trains, reversing the order in which Silom and Sathon grew.
The Ratchada Train Night Market — those famous rows of coloured tarpaulin roofs photographed from the Esplanade car park — ran from 2015 until it closed in 2021 for pandemic-related reasons. Successor markets in the same corridor carry the format, so check current listings before making the trip.
Ratchada is also the everyday version of Bangkok's Koreatown: barbecue restaurants serving the city's Korean students and workers rather than tourists, open past midnight. The whole corridor sits on the Blue Line — Huai Khwang, Thailand Cultural Centre, Phra Ram 9 — so you can move along it without a taxi until the last train.
Two things almost no guidebook sends you to: the Bangkok Bank Museum inside the bank's headquarters, and the Stock Exchange of Thailand building. Both are more interesting than the towers around them.