Thonglor & Ekkamai Route

The character of the two sois

Thonglor (Soi 55) and Ekkamai (Soi 63) run north off Sukhumvit Road in parallel. Both are high-rent residential streets where old carts mix with careful bistros and cafes. The deeper you go the quieter it gets, and the signs shift from English toward the local script. Thonglor is denser with shops; Ekkamai is a little calmer, with more charcoal and hotpot places at night. Thin cross-lanes join the two, so walking up one and down the other lets you make a loop without retracing your steps.

Old carts and new shops

What makes this area interesting is that shops of different prices and eras sit side by side. After a bowl of twenty-baht boat noodles stacked up at the table, you can move to a three-figure honey toast or specialty coffee on the same street. Neither ranks above the other; in Thonglor and Ekkamai they simply coexist. The Isaan som tam begins with the pounding of the mortar, the kaphrao with settling on a heat number, the mu kratha with tending your own pan. Much of it is eaten hands-on, so each plate keeps you close to the shop.

How to walk this route

Get off at BTS Thong Lo and head north up Soi Thonglor. Start sweet with the After You honey toast, turn into a cross-lane to stack bowls of boat noodles, then slot in a Roots coffee at The COMMONS. By day move on to the heat-graded kaphrao and the pounded som tam, then cross toward the Ekkamai side. Finish in the Ekkamai evening around a mu kratha pan and walk to BTS Ekkamai. The whole thing is about ninety minutes on foot, but sweet, hot and scalding arrive in turn, so it walks easier with pauses between. Day and night shops differ — keep the dessert and coffee to daytime and the charcoal and hotpot to late afternoon onward.