Bangkok Atlas

Methodology

Bangkok Atlas is a map of Bangkok for visitors. This page explains how the areas on the map are drawn and where our data comes from.

Three geographic layers

  1. Official districts. Bangkok is administratively divided into 50 districts (khet) and 180 subdistricts (khwaeng). We build on these exact boundaries — the whole city is covered, with no gaps.
  2. International residential zones. Ten broad market areas (Central Sukhumvit, Silom–Sathorn, Riverside…) that group related neighbourhoods.
  3. Named neighbourhoods. The names people actually use — Thonglor, Asoke, Langsuan, Ari. These are Atlas-defined market areas, not official boundaries. We anchor them to official subdistrict lines wherever possible and mark each with a boundary confidence: official (exact administrative lines), approximate (colloquial area mapped to nearby official lines), or emerging (definition still settling).

Vivid means relevant — nothing else

Color intensity on the map encodes one thing: international residential relevance. Tier 1 (full color) areas have a demonstrable, continuing foreign-resident housing market plus at least four of: rapid transit, international-standard healthcare, international schools, international groceries and services, deep quality-housing supply, an active foreign-language property market, access to employment and lifestyle centers, and a recognizable identity that isn't a developer invention. Tier 2 (soft color) areas are culturally significant or niche markets. Tier 3 (neutral) areas complete the map.

Relevance is deliberately independent of price and prestige: an affordable neighbourhood can be highly relevant, and a prestigious address is not automatically a good place to live.

Photographs

Every photograph on this site comes from Wikimedia Commons under a licence that permits commercial use — CC0, public domain, CC BY or CC BY-SA — and each one carries its photographer, its licence and a link to its Commons page. Nothing is used under a non-commercial or no-derivatives licence, and nothing is scraped from a business's own site or a review platform.

That standard leaves gaps, and we would rather show a gap than the wrong building. A photo is attached to a place only when the evidence ties the two together: an image Wikidata designates for that exact entry, a file in that place's own Commons category, or a search result whose filename names the place as its subject — never merely something photographed nearby. Many hospitals, schools and shopping centres in Bangkok simply have no freely-licensed photograph in existence, and those places show their illustrated mark and no gallery.

Signature routes

Signature routes are days out we put together ourselves: three to five stops that work well in one order, with how long to stay at each and how to get from one to the next. We choose the stops; nobody pays to be on a route.

Each stop is researched like every place on the map. Opening hours and last entry come from the venue, the operator or a government body, and we leave them out when none publishes them. Ticket prices are the foreign-visitor price per adult; where no official price exists we show a price from two dated, independent reports and mark it “reported”. Times between stops come from our own router, and evening routes follow the sunset on the day you go.

Times are typical, not a timetable. Before you start, a route warns you when a stop is closed that day, when you would arrive too late for last entry, or when a dated event such as a royal ceremony affects it. If a stop closes or its data no longer holds, the route is paused until it has been researched again. Every route says the month it was researched.

Sources

Administrative boundaries from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL), cross-checked against the official structure of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration. Market-area definitions informed by established property-market research and current rental/resale evidence. Editorial content is written by Bangkok Atlas from the sources above.

Canon last reviewed 6 August 2026. Boundaries and inclusion are re-audited as the market moves — corrections welcome.