Bangkok, the world's most visited city, is undergoing a transformation that is drawing British travellers in record numbers. More than a million Britons visited Thailand last year, while Bangkok itself attracted more than 30 million international visitors in 2025.
The city's famously frenetic energy is being joined by a younger, creative side that embraces contemporary art, ambitious food and a booming fitness and wellness culture. Crucially, this new Bangkok has not replaced the old one - the two now sit side by side.
A riverside reinvention
One of the most interesting places to see this change is along the Chao Phraya river, known as the River of Kings. The Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok, which opened in 2020 in the city's Creative District, sits on a former riverside trading site and took several years to build.
Designed by Jean-Michel Gathy, the 299-room hotel feels more like an urban resort than a city hotel. Water is everywhere - courtyards filled with water plants and flowers flow into one another, with black tiles beneath the shallow pools making them appear ink-dark. Two huge fig trees rise beside the lobby, while ceilings soar as high as 15 metres.
Wellness becomes cool
Thai culture runs throughout the hotel, with local artists commissioned to create works including enormous sculpted elephants. Guests can learn Thai calligraphy, tea blending and Thai dance, try Muay Thai in a professional ring, or make a traditional jasmine garland.
This reflects another change sweeping Bangkok: wellness has become cool. In the city's parks, thousands of people run and exercise together, with fitness increasingly feeling social. The hotel's Urban Wellness Centre offers yoga, Thai treatments, steam rooms, vitality pools, sound healing and ice baths.
Old and new side by side
The river reveals a side of the city almost impossible to see from the road. From a traditional long-tail boat, tiny wooden houses on stilts, fishermen working from the banks and huge catfish moving beneath the surface reveal a whole city built on water.
Just a short boat ride away, Song Wat Road has been named by Time Out as one of the 40 coolest neighbourhoods in the world. Old Chinese shophouses now sit alongside independent coffee bars, galleries and young creative businesses. At one end of the road, welders turn discarded car parts into enormous robot sculptures.
Back at the hotel, the food scene continues without needing to venture out. Brasserie Palmier offers French cuisine surrounded by tropical greenery, while Riva del Fiume serves handmade pasta and wood-fired Neapolitan pizza beside the river. Behind a vast black entrance, Yu Ting Yuan serves high-end Cantonese food, and BKK Social Club brings the glamour of different cities - this week Mexico - to Bangkok. Cafe Madeleine is a riverside patisserie that is gloriously pink, from boxes of sweets to a pink bicycle with a basket overflowing with flowers.
Even the hotel's ballroom manages theatre, with crystal droplets covering the ceiling like diamond rain and huge curtains that pull back to reveal the river.
Bangkok has always been thrilling. Who knew it could be relaxing too?
