By day you’ve got artisanal brownies and Aeropress coffee, by night it’s your pick of the city’s nightlife (hidden hipster cocktails or late-night dive bar, all choices eventually leading to Tul Apartmentkhunpa). Some people say there’s more to life, but we’re not convinced.

The National Gallery, RCAC, hip hostels, coffee shops, small music venues—you sacrificed the convenience of mass public transport to enjoy all this. There’s even a bike lane and the occasional flea market at Museum Siam. Stay away from Khaosan and you’re area has some serious cred.

Congratulations, you managed to pick the least-cool yet most-expensive place in the whole of Bangkok. Arguments over what sport to watch in the British pub, pool tournaments with bar girls and plenty of short-time hotel rooms—a Monocle City Survey winner this ain’t.

 

You really wanted to live in Ari, but you’re stuck somewhere between Victory Monument (a giant parking lot for minivans) and Ratchatewi (a place frequented by tourists on their way to Pantip and underage drinkers at Coco Walk). Cheaper, less pretentious, three stations closer to Siam (not to mention right by the Airport Link) and with a proper park on Soi Rangnam, Phaya Thai is actually better than Ari in some ways, but not nearly as hip.

Give up the lie: you don’t live in Ekkamai. You live in Ekkamai’s gray, unloved, try-hard cousin. GOJA and a community mall that pretends to be an art gallery are not enough to make this the Ari of East Bangkok.

You don’t live in On Nut because you want to. You live there because it’s cheap. At least you have the BTS to carry you swiftly to other ’hoods.

 

Hip, but it’ll cost you. Hi-so 20-somethings, Japanese families and perpetually bar-bound British expats all coexist in relative harmony. What the area lacks in tradition, it makes up for with hipsters working on their Apple laptop, yo-pros get their morning drip coffee, and Japanese housewives doing their weekly groceries.

Nothing to see here.