Sukhumvit Area Guide: Nana to Thong Lo and Ekkamai

Sukhumvit is the longest unbroken run of hotels, food and transit in Bangkok, and for most visitors it is the right default. It is also the easiest area to get wrong by a hundred metres.

Read the soi numbers first

Everything on Sukhumvit hangs off the main road by soi number. The numbers climb west to east, odd on the north side, even on the south. The two sides do not pair up — Soi 31 sits roughly opposite Soi 24 across eight lanes of traffic — so two addresses that look adjacent on a map can be ten minutes apart via the nearest footbridge. A slash marks a branch lane: 31/4 is the fourth turning off Soi 31.

Three sois are known by name rather than number. Asok is Soi 21, Thong Lo is Soi 55, Ekkamai is Soi 63. Learn your number and your side of the road before you land. It is the one detail that makes a driver's job simple and saves you standing on a kerb explaining yourself.

Nana and Asok: central, busy, efficient

Nana (BTS E3) gives you the same skytrain access as the addresses further east for noticeably less money. The trade-off is the crowd at the mouth of every soi — Nana Plaza sits on Soi 4, and the pavements stay loud until late. Walk two hundred metres up Soi 11 or Soi 13 and the noise drops away.

Asok (E4) is the junction that matters. The BTS meets the MRT Blue Line at Sukhumvit station by skywalk, and one MRT stop north at Phetchaburi a covered walkway reaches Makkasan on the Airport Rail Link. If you are moving in and out of Suvarnabhumi on a tight schedule, nothing on this stretch is faster. The hotels are large, the lobbies are constantly in motion, and that volume of traffic is its own kind of privacy.

Phrom Phong to Ekkamai: the residential end

Phrom Phong (E5) sits at Soi 24, with Emporium, EmQuartier and EmSphere built around the station and Benchasiri Park behind. Soi 39 opposite is the Japanese quarter and the best concentration of quiet, good dinners in the area. Rooms here tend towards serviced-residence proportions — more space, calmer corridors, fewer tour groups.

Thong Lo (E6) and Ekkamai (E7) are where Bangkok's own money eats and drinks. Note that Thong Lo runs for kilometres north of the station, so a hotel described as being "on Thong Lo" may be a motorbike ride from the platform. Check the sub-soi number before booking. Ekkamai is quieter again, slightly more residential, and easier to move around at night.

Moving between them

• Nana to Ekkamai is four stops and under ten minutes on the BTS.
• Above ground, the same trip at 18:00 can take forty.
• Taxis are plentiful but the U-turn structure means short hops often go the long way.
• The skywalk covers much of the stretch between Nana and Asok, which matters in rain.

Trains run from early morning until around midnight. After that you are on the road, and the drive back from Thong Lo to Nana is quick when the traffic has thinned.

Why it suits a discreet stay

The hotel stock here is vertical, international and busy around the clock. Lift lobbies are separated from reception, guests come and go at all hours, and nothing about an evening arrival reads as unusual. Most visitors who meet an escort in Bangkok do so as an outcall to their own hotel, and Sukhumvit makes that straightforward: a named soi, a clear building, a short walk from a station.

Policies vary between properties, so ask your hotel directly rather than assuming. More area guides are on the blog.