Bangkok’s weekend begins with one of the city’s most recognisable annual traditions. Yaowarat is going vegetarian to mark the start of the kin jay festival, bringing food stalls, worship, and processions into Chinatown as the nine-day observance begins.
Away from the crowds, there are more than a million books to dig through at Big Bad Wolf, an exhibition dedicated entirely to stationery, live snake demonstrations at one of Bangkok’s oldest scientific institutions, and a photography show looking at the city beyond its postcard image. Here are five things to do in Bangkok from October 9 to 11.
On this page:
| Event | Date | Location | Highlight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yaowarat Vegetarian Festival 2026 | October 9 to 18 | Yaowarat Road, Chinatown | Vegetarian food, worship, processions and traditional performances take over Chinatown. |
| Big Bad Wolf Bangkok 2026 | October 2 to 13 | PLATINUM POP, Ratchaprasong | Browse more than one million books across two floors, with prices starting at 20 baht. |
| Stationerycore | October 9 to 11 | TCDC Bangkok | Test pens, papers and materials while exploring stationery design from around the world. |
| Snake Farm at Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute | October 9 to 11 | Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute, Pathum Wan | See live snakes and demonstrations while learning about venom and snakebite treatment. |
| Two Worldviews, One Vision | October 9 to 11 | Old Town Gallery | Photography capturing Bangkok’s markets, rainy streets, bridges and overlooked everyday scenes. |
Yaowarat Vegetarian Festival 2026
Date & Time: October 9 to 18; official opening ceremony Saturday, October 10
Location: Chinatown Gate and Yaowarat Road
Price: Free entry; food purchased separately
Yaowarat turns yellow and white this weekend as Bangkok’s best-known Vegetarian Festival begins. The wider Yaowarat event runs from October 9 to 18, while the traditional nine-day vegetarian observance starts on Saturday, October 10. Food stalls line both sides of the road, serving everything from familiar noodle dishes and fried snacks to mock meats, sweets and dishes prepared specifically according to jay principles.
Saturday is the biggest day of the opening weekend. The ceremony around Chinatown Gate includes a large vegetarian noodle dish prepared for 1,000 people, lion and dragon performances, and a procession featuring Guanyin and deity palanquins connected with Chinese shrines around Yaowarat. A section of Yaowarat Road will close to traffic from 4pm to 10pm for the festivities.
Food is only part of the reason to go. The festival remains closely tied to worship, merit-making and the Chinese-Thai community that has maintained the tradition for generations, so the atmosphere around the shrines and Chinatown Gate is quite different from an ordinary night of street-food hunting.
Big Bad Wolf Bangkok 2026
Date & Time: October 2 to 13, 10am to midnight
Location: PLATINUM POP, Ratchaprasong
Price: Free entry
Big Bad Wolf celebrates ten years in Thailand with what organisers describe as its biggest Bangkok book hunt yet. More than one million books are spread across two floors and 60,000 square feet, with titles from over 40 international publishers and prices starting at 20 baht.
The sheer range makes this more useful than a sale aimed only at serious readers. Fiction sits alongside cookbooks, photography, design, children’s titles, hobbies, business books, pop culture and box sets, so it is easy to disappear between the shelves for considerably longer than planned.
It also stays open until midnight every day. That makes it one of the easier options this weekend to fit around dinner or other plans rather than setting aside an entire afternoon for it.
Stationerycore
Date & Time: Running until October 18, 10.30am to 7pm
Location: Creative Space, 5th Floor, TCDC Bangkok, Central Post Office Building
Price: Free
Stationerycore takes an unexpectedly serious look at the world of notebooks, pens, paper and all the small objects that somehow turn a quick trip to the stationery shop into a much larger purchase. The showcase runs at TCDC Bangkok until October 18 and is open throughout this weekend.
The best part is the Material Try-On Zone, where visitors can actually test different papers, pens, textures, colours and materials rather than simply looking at them through a display case. Elsewhere, award-winning stationery from around the world shows how designers approach function, materials and the oddly satisfying details that make one pen or notebook feel better than another.
It is gloriously niche, but also easy to drop into for an hour while exploring Charoen Krung and Bang Rak. Entry is free, and no registration is needed for the main showcase.
Snake Farm at Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute
Date & Time: Friday, 9.30am to 3.30pm; Saturday and Sunday, 9.30am to 1pm
Location: Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute, 1871 Rama IV Road, Pathum Wan
Price: Thai adults 40 baht; foreign adults 200 baht
Bangkok’s Snake Farm is more than a place to look at cobras behind glass. Operated by the Thai Red Cross Society’s Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute, it combines public education with research into snakes, venom and snakebite treatment.
Timing the visit properly makes a difference. On Friday, the farm holds a venom-extraction demonstration at 11am followed by snake handling at 2pm. Weekend hours are shorter, but visitors can still catch the snake-handling demonstration at 11am on Saturday or Sunday.
Admission remains inexpensive, particularly for Thai visitors, and reduced rates are available for students and children. It is one of those Bangkok institutions that many people know exists without ever actually visiting.
Two Worldviews, One Vision
Date & Time: October 9 to 11, 10am to 6pm
Location: Old Town Gallery, Chakkraphatdi Phong Road
Price: Free
Belgian photographer Alain Callebaut looks at Bangkok without leaning on temples and skyline shots in Bangkok Raw, one half of the exhibition Two Worldviews, One Vision. His photographs instead move through rain-soaked streets, markets, bridges and narrow alleys, catching quieter pieces of everyday city life.
The exhibition’s second collection, Make Women Happy All Over the World, uses light and shadow to explore the human form. That section is displayed upstairs and includes fine-art nude photography, so entry to that part of the exhibition is restricted to visitors aged 18 and over.
Seemingly, Bangkok Raw is the more interesting reason to visit, as it turns familiar wet streets, ageing buildings and busy markets into subjects worth stopping for rather than scenery passed on the way somewhere else.
This weekend moves from one of Bangkok’s oldest Chinese traditions to snakes, books, stationery and rainy streets seen through somebody else’s camera. Yaowarat may draw the biggest crowd, but the smaller detours could be just as memorable.
The story 5 things to do in Bangkok this weekend (October 9 to 11) as seen on Thaiger News.
