#bangkok — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #bangkok, aggregated by home.social.
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[#TRADESHOW] #ASEAN #International #Machinery #Equipment & #Technology #Exhibition 2026 from September 2 to 4, 2026, at #IMPACT Exhibition and #Convention #Center in #Bangkok, #Thailand. As a major machinery and equipment #trade #expo focused on Southeast #Asia, the #event serves as a #B2B #business #platform for #intelligent #manufacturing equipment, #printing and #packaging machinery, food and pharmaceutical processing #equipment, and rubber and plastic machinery. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/asean-international-machinery-equipment-technology-exhibition-2026/
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The Ghost Tower of Bangkok
The story behind Sathorn Unique, the building that time forgot
“Some buildings tell you where a city is going. Others remind you where it has been.”
I saw it from the Chao Phraya River.
There it stood against the brilliant Bangkok sky, impossibly tall and strangely unfinished, surrounded by gleaming skyscrapers, temples, boats and the constant movement of one of Asia’s busiest cities.
I had seen the building before, of course.
But seeing it from the river made me look at it differently.
There was something almost haunting about it.
Not because of the ghost stories.
Because I suddenly wondered:
What happened to this building?
Why would a skyscraper in the middle of Bangkok, in such a spectacular location, simply be left standing unfinished for decades?
That curiosity led me to the story of Sathorn Unique Tower, better known today as Bangkok’s Ghost Tower.
And its real story is far more interesting than the legend.
It was never supposed to be a ghost
In the early 1990s, Bangkok was booming.
Thailand’s economy was growing rapidly. New businesses were emerging, property prices were rising, and the Bangkok skyline was beginning to transform.
Sathorn Unique was born during that optimistic period.
Designed by architect and property developer Rangsan Torsuwan, the project was launched in 1990 as a luxury condominium development. It was planned with around 600 residential units and commercial space, in a prime location near the Chao Phraya River.
The tower was ambitious.
It was tall.
It was elaborate.
And it was supposed to represent the future.
The structure eventually rose to 49 floors, including two underground levels, reaching approximately 185 metres into the Bangkok sky. (Wikipedia)
At the time, nobody was calling it the Ghost Tower.
It was simply called Sathorn Unique.
And people were buying into the dream.
Then everything became complicated
In 1993, Rangsan Torsuwan was arrested in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate the president of Thailand’s Supreme Court.
It was a highly controversial case that would continue for many years.
Rangsan was eventually convicted, but in 2010 the Court of Appeal acquitted him.
The legal battle, however, had already affected his ability to secure financing for his developments, and Sathorn Unique experienced delays. (Architectural Digest)
Then came something much bigger than one man’s legal troubles.
Something that would change Thailand’s economy forever.
1997: The crisis that stopped Bangkok
In 1997, Thailand was hit by the Asian financial crisis, known locally as the Tom Yum Kung crisis.
The property market collapsed.
Financial institutions failed.
Developers ran out of money.
Construction projects throughout Bangkok suddenly stopped.
And the cranes that had once symbolized Thailand’s booming economy became silent.
Sathorn Unique was caught in the middle of it.
By then, the tower was already around 80 to 90 percent complete, according to the developer’s son, Pansit Torsuwan. More than 500 units had reportedly already been sold. (BK Magazine)
Imagine that.
Forty-nine floors of concrete already standing.
Apartments already sold.
People who had already invested their money.
And then the money disappeared.
Construction stopped.
The workers left.
The unfinished tower remained.
A dream trapped in concrete
This is the part of the story that makes the Ghost Tower more than just an abandoned building.
People had actually bought these homes.
They had imagined living there.
They had invested their savings in what was supposed to become a prestigious Bangkok address.
But finishing the building after the crisis became financially complicated.
In a 2017 interview, Pansit Torsuwan explained that completing the tower would have required roughly 1.5 billion baht, while the original contracts would have generated only around 600 million baht from existing buyers.
The family wanted a solution that would allow the original buyers to be repaid rather than simply abandoning their claims. (BK Magazine)
So the tower remained trapped between its past and its future.
Too expensive to simply finish.
Too complicated to easily sell.
Too valuable to demolish.
And too unfinished to become the home it had promised to be.
Bangkok moved on
This is what fascinates me most.
The building did not disappear.
Bangkok grew around it.
New skyscrapers rose.
Luxury hotels opened.
The BTS expanded.
Restaurants, malls and modern condominiums transformed the city.
The Chao Phraya continued carrying boats past the riverbank.
And Sathorn Unique remained exactly where it had been.
A giant piece of 1990s Bangkok standing in the middle of modern Bangkok.
It became a kind of architectural time capsule.
A reminder of the moment when the city’s dreams became too big for the economy that was supposed to support them.
An academic study of the tower describes it as one of the most visible remaining physical reminders of Thailand’s 1997 financial crisis. (Sage Journals)
And then came the ghosts
Of course, Bangkok being Bangkok, an abandoned 49-story skyscraper was never going to escape ghost stories.
Stories began circulating that the land had once been a cemetery.
Others claimed the building’s location was unlucky because its shadow fell toward nearby Wat Yan Nawa.
Whether these stories are true is another matter entirely.
But they became part of the tower’s mythology.
And when a building already looks like a setting from a horror movie, people don’t need much encouragement to add a few ghosts.
The tower’s empty balconies, exposed concrete and dark interiors certainly provide an excellent stage for the imagination.
Something real happened there too
The Ghost Tower’s reputation became darker in 2014 when the body of a Swedish man was found on the 43rd floor. His death was reported as suicide.
The incident received considerable attention and added another layer to the building’s already unsettling reputation. (Architectural Digest)
From then on, the name Ghost Tower seemed almost impossible to shake.
The building became an urban legend
As the years passed, urban explorers became fascinated by Sathorn Unique.
People wanted to climb it.
Photographers wanted the view.
Adventurers wanted to see what was inside.
Photographs appeared online showing Bangkok from the tower’s unfinished upper floors.
But there was a very important detail that sometimes got lost in the excitement:
It was private property.
The building was never intended to be an urban playground, and entering it without permission was dangerous because of the unfinished structure, open areas and lack of normal safety systems. The owner eventually pushed back against trespassing and the growing reputation of the building as an adventure destination. (BK Magazine)
So today, I am perfectly happy seeing it from the river.
Some places are better appreciated from a safe distance.
Especially when they have 49 floors and a reputation like this one. 😂
From abandoned tower to movie location
The Ghost Tower eventually became part of Bangkok’s pop culture too.
In 2017, the tower was used as a filming location for the Thai horror movie The Promise, which drew heavily on the atmosphere of the 1997 financial crisis and the tower itself. (Major Cineplex)
It is difficult to imagine a better movie location.
The filmmakers didn’t have to create an abandoned skyscraper.
Bangkok already had one.
The Ghost Tower has another story to tell
What I find most interesting is that calling it a “failed building” doesn’t really tell the whole story.
Sathorn Unique represents something much bigger.
It represents the optimism of Bangkok in the early 1990s.
It represents the risks of a property boom.
It represents the devastation of the 1997 financial crisis.
It represents hundreds of people who bought into a future that never arrived.
It represents a developer’s determination to protect the interests of those buyers.
And it represents the strange way cities preserve their history.
Sometimes history is kept in museums.
Sometimes it is written in books.
And sometimes it is standing 185 metres tall, covered in weathered concrete, right beside the river.
And then Bangkok had another test
In March 2025, when a powerful earthquake in Myanmar sent strong tremors through Bangkok, Sathorn Unique was suddenly back in the news.
People naturally wondered about the safety of an unfinished tower that had been standing for almost three decades.
The building remained standing, and its structural frame again attracted attention because of its resilience. (pptvhd36.com)
There is something almost poetic about that.
The tower survived the financial crisis.
It survived decades of abandonment.
It survived Bangkok’s transformation.
And it survived a major earthquake.
The Ghost Tower keeps standing.
Looking at it from the Chao Phraya
And now I look at my photograph again.
The river is in the foreground.
A boat is passing.
There is a temple sitting quietly beneath the skyline.
Modern towers rise behind it.
And in the middle of everything stands Sathorn Unique.
Unfinished.
Unoccupied.
Unforgotten.
There is something strangely beautiful about that contrast.
Bangkok is a city that rarely stops moving.
But this building has been standing still for more than thirty years.
It was designed to be a place where people would wake up every morning, open their curtains and look out over Bangkok.
Instead, Bangkok became the view looking back at it.
The real ghost
Maybe the Ghost Tower isn’t really about ghosts at all.
Maybe the ghost is the future that never happened.
The families who were supposed to live there.
The homes that were supposed to be filled with furniture, laughter and ordinary morning routines.
The businesses that were supposed to occupy the lower floors.
The lights that were supposed to turn on every evening.
The lives that were supposed to unfold behind those unfinished balconies.
All of those possibilities disappeared when the economy collapsed.
And yet the building remained.
A giant reminder that sometimes the things we build outlive the plans we had for them.
A photograph, a river, and a story
I didn’t set out that day to learn about Thailand’s economic history.
I was simply on the Chao Phraya River, taking photographs of Bangkok.
Then I looked up.
And there it was.
The Ghost Tower.
What initially looked like an abandoned building turned out to be a story about an entire era of Thailand.
And perhaps that is what I love about traveling.
Sometimes you don’t need to search for history.
Sometimes history is standing right in front of you, waiting for you to ask, “What happened here?”
So the next time I pass Sathorn Unique from the river, I won’t simply see an unfinished skyscraper.
I’ll see a dream from 1990.
A crisis from 1997.
Three decades of Bangkok history.
And a building that, somehow, is still waiting for a future that may never come.
**Bangkok keeps moving.
The Ghost Tower keeps waiting.**
And perhaps that is why it remains one of the most fascinating buildings in Bangkok.
💖💖💖
#bangkok #thailand #tower #travel #writing -
[#TRADESHOW] #ASEAN #International #Machinery #Equipment & #Technology #Exhibition 2026 from September 2 to 4, 2026, at #IMPACT Exhibition and #Convention #Center in #Bangkok, #Thailand. As a major machinery and equipment #trade #expo focused on Southeast #Asia, the #event serves as a #B2B #business #platform for #intelligent #manufacturing equipment, #printing and #packaging machinery, food and pharmaceutical processing #equipment, and rubber and plastic machinery. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/asean-international-machinery-equipment-technology-exhibition-2026/
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Roderick Warich, geboren 1983 in Köln, war Hauptautor des Films Zerrumpelt Herz. Gemeinsam mit Sandra Wollner schrieb er das Drehbuch zu The Trouble With Being Born, mit Timm Kröger das Drehbuch zu Die Theorie Von Allem.
Am 26.08. zeigen wir seine zweite Regiearbeit #FuneralCasinoBlues.#EintrittFrei Anmelden: [email protected], 0234-9117790
#Film #Kino #EksystentFilmverleih #Bangkok #DasKleinsteKinoBochums #EintrittFreiInBochum #KulturInBochum #Bochum #StayingUndergroundSince2002
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La météo aéronautique de aéroport de Don Mueang International à Bangkok (Thaïlande) est “METAR VTBD 220200Z 19009KT 9999 FEW020 SCT040 30/23 Q1011 NOSIG” : Ce que ça signifie sur https://www.bigorre.org/aero/meteo/vtbd/fr #aeroportdedonmueanginternational #aeroport #bangkok #thailande #vtbd #dmk #metar #aviation #meteoaero #avgeek vl
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Thailand has many temples. Wat Samphran is the only one guarded by a giant green dragon.
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Renowned Thai actor Ray MacDonald found dead at Bangkok home at age 49
BANGKOK, Thailand – Award-winning Thai actor and television personality Ray MacDonald was found dead at his home in the Pattanakarn area of Bangkok on the morning of August 19, sending shockwaves through Thailand’s entertainment industry. He was 49. MacDonald …
https://justpaste.in/news/renowned-thai-actor-ray-macdonald-found-dead-at-bangkok-home-at-age-49/
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[#TRADESHOW] #ASEAN #International #Machinery #Equipment & #Technology #Exhibition 2026 from September 2 to 4, 2026, at #IMPACT Exhibition and #Convention #Center in #Bangkok, #Thailand. As a major machinery and equipment #trade #expo focused on Southeast #Asia, the #event serves as a #B2B #business #platform for #intelligent #manufacturing equipment, #printing and #packaging machinery, food and pharmaceutical processing #equipment, and rubber and plastic machinery. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/asean-international-machinery-equipment-technology-exhibition-2026/
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#FuneralCasinoBlues ist eine #ElegieÜberDasVerschwinden, die Sehnsucht – und #StädteDieDichVergessen, noch bevor du gehst.
Das Kleinste Kino Bochums in der BASTION zeigt ihn am 26. August. #EintrittFrei Anmelden: [email protected], 0234 - 911 77 90
#Film #Kino #EksystentFilmverleih #Bangkok #SchwüleNächte #DasKleinsteKinoBochums #EintrittFreiInBochum #KulturInBochum #Bochum #StayingUndergroundSince2002
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[#TRADESHOW] #ASEAN #International #Machinery #Equipment & #Technology #Exhibition 2026 from September 2 to 4, 2026, at #IMPACT Exhibition and #Convention #Center in #Bangkok, #Thailand. As a major machinery and equipment #trade #expo focused on Southeast #Asia, the #event serves as a #B2B #business #platform for #intelligent #manufacturing equipment, #printing and #packaging machinery, food and pharmaceutical processing #equipment, and rubber and plastic machinery. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/asean-international-machinery-equipment-technology-exhibition-2026/
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RAGA by Gaggan Anand: New Delhi’s 22-Course Modern Indian Fine Dining Symphony Opening August 2026 https://www.diningandcooking.com/restaurants/12462/ #Bangkok #Chef’sCounter #CulinaryArt #FineDining #GagganAnand #gastronomic #IndianRestaurant #IndianRestaurants #MasalaLibrary #ModernIndian #NewDelhi #RAGA #RagabygaganCom #reservation #TastingMenu #WinePairing #ZorawarKalra
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[#TRADESHOW] #ASEAN #International #Machinery #Equipment & #Technology #Exhibition 2026 from September 2 to 4, 2026, at #IMPACT Exhibition and #Convention #Center in #Bangkok, #Thailand. As a major machinery and equipment #trade #expo focused on Southeast #Asia, the #event serves as a #B2B #business #platform for #intelligent #manufacturing equipment, #printing and #packaging machinery, food and pharmaceutical processing #equipment, and rubber and plastic machinery. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/asean-international-machinery-equipment-technology-exhibition-2026/
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Said goodbye to these cuties today. Fun staying at a hostel with a family of cats.
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I did an arty day today. Lots of free exhibits at River City.
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[#TRADESHOW] #ASEAN #International #Machinery #Equipment & #Technology #Exhibition 2026 from September 2 to 4, 2026, at #IMPACT Exhibition and #Convention #Center in #Bangkok, #Thailand. As a major machinery and equipment #trade #expo focused on Southeast #Asia, the #event serves as a #B2B #business #platform for #intelligent #manufacturing equipment, #printing and #packaging machinery, food and pharmaceutical processing #equipment, and rubber and plastic machinery. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/asean-international-machinery-equipment-technology-exhibition-2026/
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"A plastic eater in Bangkok’s canals"
https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/08/a-plastic-eater-in-bangkoks-canals/
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[#TRADESHOW] #ASEAN #International #Machinery #Equipment & #Technology #Exhibition 2026 from September 2 to 4, 2026, at #IMPACT Exhibition and #Convention #Center in #Bangkok, #Thailand. As a major machinery and equipment #trade #expo focused on Southeast #Asia, the #event serves as a #B2B #business #platform for #intelligent #manufacturing equipment, #printing and #packaging machinery, food and pharmaceutical processing #equipment, and rubber and plastic machinery. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/asean-international-machinery-equipment-technology-exhibition-2026/
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[#TRADESHOW] #ASEAN #International #Machinery #Equipment & #Technology #Exhibition 2026 from September 2 to 4, 2026, at #IMPACT Exhibition and #Convention #Center in #Bangkok, #Thailand. As a major machinery and equipment #trade #expo focused on Southeast #Asia, the #event serves as a #B2B #business #platform for #intelligent #manufacturing equipment, #printing and #packaging machinery, food and pharmaceutical processing #equipment, and rubber and plastic machinery. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/asean-international-machinery-equipment-technology-exhibition-2026/