Wat That Thong Has Entered Songkran, and Ekkamai Will Have to Cope

If you have not yet made Songkran plans and were hoping Bangkok might make the decision for you, Wat That Thong has kindly stepped in. The old temple fair beside BTS Ekkamai is back for ten days, which means one of the city’s more charming annual collisions of piety, commerce and mild chaos has resumed right on Sukhumvit’s doorstep.

Time Out notes that the fair runs through April 15 and comes with the usual proper temptations: traditional sweets, savoury street food, retro-market bric-a-brac, fairground rides and the sort of live music that makes a Bangkok evening feel slightly less like urban endurance sport and slightly more like community life. In a city that increasingly packages everything as an activation, a temple fair still feels blessedly unserious about itself.

That, really, is the appeal. Songkran in central Bangkok often arrives with sponsored stages, engineered exuberance and enough water cannon hardware to suggest an impending coup. Wat That Thong offers a more neighbourhood version of the festival: families wandering about, people grazing at food stalls, children negotiating with plastic toys they absolutely do not need, and adults pretending they are only there for the atmosphere when plainly they are also there for the fried things.

Its location helps. Being next to BTS Ekkamai means even the chronically unprepared can emerge from an air-conditioned train and claim they always meant to spend the evening in culturally meaningful fashion. There are photo spots for those who require digital proof of joy, but the place sounds more interesting as a lived-in Bangkok ritual than as content, which is increasingly rare and rather welcome.

For expats who want a Songkran outing without hurling themselves straight into the city’s more feral water wars, this is the sensible compromise: festive but not deranged, traditional without being solemn, and convenient enough that nobody can honestly complain about the journey. In Bangkok, that combination counts as excellent planning.