Benjakitti Forest Park
A Park Grown on the Ashes of a State Cigarette Factory -- Benjakitti Forest Park occupies land that once held the Thailand Tobacco Monopoly's cigarette manufacturing complex, a state-run factory that operated in the heart of the city for decades before being relocated and the site repurposed as green space beginning in the 1990s. The park expanded significantly in a major phase completed in 2022, adding a wetland forest section built around reclaimed water-treatment ponds that now host boardwalks winding through planted mangrove and swamp forest species, an unusual piece of constructed wetland ecology for a central business district. It sits directly beside the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center, so the park functions as a green buffer between Bangkok's financial and exhibition district and the elevated Benjakitti Park skywalk that connects to Lumphini Park beyond it, part of a broader effort to stitch together the CBD's fragmented green spaces.
Visitor Information & Practical Details
- Place NameBenjakitti Forest Park
- AddressRatchadaphisek Rd, Khlong Toei, Bangkok 10110, Thailand
- Opening Hours05:00 – 21:00
- Admission / PriceFree
- PhoneNot listed
- Official Websitehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjakitti_Park
- GPS Coordinates13.72941, 100.55855
Best Itinerary Visiting Benjakitti Forest Park
Combine Benjakitti Forest Park with nearby landmarks using our step-by-step walking and transit route.
Places Near Benjakitti Forest Park
Build your own custom walking route in the MyGuide app by combining these nearby stops.
Lumphini Park
A Park Named After Buddha's Birthplace, Donated by a King, Now Home to Giant Monitor Lizards -- Lumphini Park takes its name from Lumbini in present-day Nepal, the birthplace of the Buddha, a naming choice made when King Rama VI donated this royal land for public use in the early 20th century, creating Bangkok's first public park. Today the park is as well known for its resident population of Asian water monitor lizards, some growing well over a meter long, as for its green space itself; the lizards roam freely along the lake's edges and have become an unofficial symbol of the park, equally beloved and startling to first-time visitors. Set apart from the traffic and density of the surrounding Silom and Sathorn business districts, the park functions as one of the few places where Bangkok's air and noise noticeably change.
Erawan Shrine
A Shrine Built to Appease Bad Luck, Now Known for Hired Dancers and a 2015 Bombing -- The Erawan Shrine, dedicated to the four-faced Hindu creator god Brahma, known in Thai as Phra Phrom, was erected in 1956 after a string of construction accidents and worker injuries during the building of the adjacent Erawan Hotel; astrologers attributed the mishaps to bad spiritual timing in the hotel's foundation, and the shrine was installed to correct it, after which the construction problems reportedly stopped. The shrine became known for visitors who, upon having a wish granted, hire classical Thai dancers to perform at the site as a form of thanks, a transactional ritual now continuously staged throughout the day. In 2015 a bomb exploded at the shrine, killing more than twenty people in an attack whose motive and perpetrators were never definitively established, after which the shrine was repaired and reopened within weeks.
Asok Skywalk
A Walkway Built to Tame Bangkok's Most Congested Intersection -- Asok Skywalk is a segment of Bangkok's growing network of elevated pedestrian walkways, built to connect the Asok BTS Skytrain station directly with the Sukhumvit MRT subway interchange across the street without forcing pedestrians to cross at ground level through one of the city's most notoriously congested intersections. The walkway forms part of a broader strategy, repeated at several other BTS-MRT interchange points across Bangkok, to stitch together the city's elevated rail and underground systems with covered, air-conditioned pedestrian bridges that bypass street-level traffic entirely. For a city built around canals long before cars and still struggling with some of Southeast Asia's worst traffic, these skywalks function as a kind of second, elevated street grid layered above the first, letting commuters move between transit lines, office towers, and shopping centers almost without ever touching the pavement below.
Mahanakhon SkyWalk
A Skyscraper Deliberately Designed to Look Unfinished -- King Power Mahanakhon's exterior is wrapped in a distinctive 'pixelated' pattern of jutting and receding glass-box units, a facade that gives the tower the appearance of a giant pixelated ribbon still being peeled away, a deliberate design choice rather than a construction defect. When it topped out in 2016, it briefly held the title of Thailand's tallest building before being surpassed by a newer tower just a few years later. Its SkyWalk observation deck occupies the upper floors and includes a glass floor section that lets visitors look straight down more than 300 meters to the street below, along with an open-air Skybar on the roof that is among the highest rooftop bars in the world. The building anchors the Silom financial district's skyline alongside the elevated BTS Skytrain line that runs past its base.
Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC)
A Museum that Exists Because Activists Fought a Mall for the Land -- The Bangkok Art and Culture Centre occupies a site at the Pathumwan intersection, directly across from Siam Discovery and MBK Center, that for years was earmarked for yet another shopping mall before a sustained public campaign by artists and civic groups pushed the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to instead build a contemporary art space on the land. The center finally opened in 2008 after roughly a decade of advocacy, delay, and political wrangling over its funding and purpose. Its building wraps nine floors around a central spiral atrium, a layout explicitly designed to reference the ramp of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and it operates independently of government art institutions, giving it more latitude to show contemporary and sometimes politically pointed Thai work than state-run museums.
Jim Thompson House
A Silk Revivalist's Home, Built from Six Relocated Teak Houses, Ending in an Unsolved Disappearance -- Jim Thompson was an American architect and former wartime intelligence officer who settled in Bangkok after World War II and is credited with reviving Thailand's declining silk-weaving industry into an internationally recognized export. His house, completed in 1959, was not built new but assembled from six traditional teak houses bought from different parts of central Thailand and reconstructed on this site, reversing the usual orientation of Thai houses so the best rooms faced the klong canal rather than the street. In 1967, Thompson vanished without a trace while walking in Malaysia's Cameron Highlands; no body, evidence, or confirmed explanation was ever found, and the disappearance remains officially unsolved, adding a layer of mystery to the collection of Southeast Asian art he left behind.
