Bangkok Trivia
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47 free Bangkok trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Bangkok's official name is 168 letters long and its real name is a matter of debate, which tells you something about the city. This quiz starts with the trading post that outlived Ayutthaya, King Taksin's Thonburi, Rama I's move across the river in 1782, the French expelled in 1688, the modernising kings Mongkut and Chulalongkorn, the end of absolute monarchy in 1932 and the boom decades that gave the city its traffic. The landmarks follow: the Grand Palace, the Emerald Buddha and its three sets of gold robes, Wat Arun's dawn god, Wat Pho's 46-metre reclining Buddha and its massage school, the Golden Mount, Vimanmek's teak, Chatuchak's 15,000 stalls, Khaosan Road, Yaowarat and Lumphini Park. There are questions on the Skytrain, tuk-tuks, numbered motorcycle-taxi vests, Suvarnabhumi, the Chao Phraya boats, Songkran, Muay Thai stadiums and the Big Mango nickname. Easy questions ask which country Bangkok leads and what a tuk-tuk is; hard ones want the year the French were driven out and how many express-boat stops line the river. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and its sites, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Try our Thailand and Southeast Asia quizzes next.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Thai band Asanee–Wasan had a hit whose lyrics are entirely what?
Bangkok's full name
Bangkok's full name, the ceremonial one, runs to 168 letters, the longest place name in Guinness World Records, and the song's tune is how many Thais remember it.
Q 02The short Thai name Krung Thep is usually translated into English as what?
City of Angels
City of Angels is the usual rendering of Krung Thep, the name Thais themselves use for their capital; 'Bangkok' is heard mostly from foreigners.
Q 03Bangkok stands in the delta of which river?
The Chao Phraya
The Chao Phraya is Thailand's principal river: every Thai capital, past and present, has stood on its banks or branches, and it still carries rice south to Bangkok's port.
Q 04By which nickname was Bangkok known in the 19th century?
Venice of the East
Venice of the East suited a city whose canals were its streets: most people lived on or beside the water until roads arrived in the 1860s, and many canals have since been filled in or paved over.
Q 05Which king moved Siam's capital across the river to Bangkok's east bank in 1782?
Rama I
Rama I chose the east bank because a wide bend of the river wrapped it like a moat against Burmese attack; his predecessor Taksin had ruled from the opposite shore.
Q 06After Ayutthaya fell in 1767, King Taksin set up his capital at which west-bank town?
Thonburi
Thonburi was the capital for only 15 years: Taksin was overthrown in 1782 and his successor moved the court across the river, leaving the old town as the west bank of today's Bangkok.
Q 07Which European power was expelled from Siam after a 1688 siege of Bangkok?
France
France had garrisoned a fort at Bangkok under the pro-Western King Narai; after a coup in 1688 the new ruler Phetracha besieged the garrison until it agreed to sail away.
Q 08A bloodless 1932 coup in Bangkok ended what in Siam?
Absolute monarchy
Absolute monarchy ended when a small group of army officers and civilian officials, some of them educated in Europe, seized power and gave Siam its first constitution.
Q 09Which two kings, the ruler portrayed in The King and I and his son, modernised 19th-century Bangkok?
Mongkut and Chulalongkorn
Mongkut and Chulalongkorn opened Siam to Western ideas while its neighbours were being colonised; under them Bangkok gained steam engines, printing presses and railways.
Q 10Bangkok's seal shows the god Indra riding which animal?
A white elephant
A white elephant carries Indra on the seal; the rare animals were so prized in Siam as a sign of good fortune that one stood on the national flag until the 1910s.
Q 11Which Bangkok landmark hosted a Brahmin rite until 1935?
Giant Swing
The Giant Swing stands in front of Wat Suthat; in the yearly rite men swung high from its towering frame, and it was stopped after a series of fatal accidents.
Q 12Sappaya-Sapasathan, completed beside Bangkok's river in 2021, is described as the world's largest what?
Parliament building
Parliament building: at 424,000 square metres it overtook Romania's Palace of the Parliament, and Thai lawmakers were already meeting there in 2019, two years before it was finished.
Q 13The Emerald Buddha in the Grand Palace's temple is actually carved from which material?
Jasper or jade
Q 21Which Bangkok street, whose name means 'milled rice', became a world-famous hub for backpackers?
Khaosan Road
Khaosan Road takes its name from the rice once traded there; guesthouses for foreign travellers appeared in the 1980s and turned the short street into a magnet for backpackers from all over the world.
Q 22Which airport replaced Don Mueang as Bangkok's main international gateway when it opened in 2006?
Suvarnabhumi
Suvarnabhumi took over every flight on 28 September 2006, but Don Mueang did not stay shut: it reopened and has grown into one of the world's largest low-cost airline hubs.
Q 23What is Bangkok's BTS rail system, opened in December 1999, popularly called?
The Skytrain
Jasper or jade, not emerald: the name describes only the deep green colour of the stone, and experts disagree on which it is. The figure came to light in the 15th century in Chiang Rai.
Q 14Before it came to Bangkok, the Emerald Buddha spent more than two centuries in which city in Laos?
Vientiane
Vientiane kept the statue for over 200 years, in a temple built specially for it, until a Siamese army captured the city and carried the image off to Siam.
Q 15The Emerald Buddha's costume changes three times a year to mark what?
The seasons
The seasons: Thailand counts three, so the statue has three costumes, for summer, the rains and the cool season, each put on in a royal ceremony.
Q 16Wat Arun, on the west bank, takes its name from a Hindu deity associated with what?
The dawn
The dawn: King Taksin renamed the temple for the dawn, after the Hindu god Aruna, when he set up his new capital beside it following the fall of Ayutthaya.
Q 17Wat Arun's towering central spire is covered in mosaics made from broken pieces of what?
Chinese porcelain
Chinese porcelain covers the spire in floral mosaics: ships arriving from China carried old crockery as ballast and dumped tonnes of it at Bangkok, where temple builders put it to use.
Q 18Wat Pho is famous for a 46-metre gilded Buddha shown in which pose?
Reclining
Reclining: the figure, added by Rama III in 1832, shows the Buddha entering nirvana, and the soles of its feet carry 108 auspicious signs in mother-of-pearl.
Q 19Wat Pho is regarded as the birthplace of which practice, still taught there today?
Traditional Thai massage
Traditional Thai massage is still taught at Wat Pho because Rama III made the temple the guardian of Thai medicine when the craft was dying out; its 1,431 teaching inscriptions are on a UNESCO register.
Q 20Which Bangkok weekend market is nicknamed JJ?
Chatuchak
Chatuchak is also spelled Jatujak, which is where 'JJ' comes from; its thousands of stalls sell everything from pets to antiques, and it is billed as the largest weekend market in the world.
The Skytrain runs on viaducts above the main roads; after decades of shelved plans it opened as the city's first rail escape from its notorious traffic jams.
Q 24What is Bangkok's motorised auto-rickshaw taxi popularly called?
Tuk-tuk
Tuk-tuk imitates the putter of the three-wheeler's small engine; fares are haggled over before setting off, whereas the city's car taxis run on meters.
Q 25Bangkok's registered motorcycle-taxi drivers are recognisable by what?
Numbered vests
Numbered vests, usually orange, show the district where each driver is registered and allowed to pick up passengers; the drivers wait in ranks at the mouths of side streets.
Q 26Which neighbourhood, famed for its street food, is Bangkok's Chinatown?
Yaowarat
Yaowarat took shape after 1782, when Chinese merchants living on the site chosen for the new royal citadel were moved a short way downriver; it has been the city's Chinese quarter ever since.
Q 27Vimanmek Mansion, a royal residence in Bangkok's Dusit Palace, was built of which wood?
Teak
Teak: billed as the world's largest golden-teak mansion, it was closed in 2016 and taken apart so its foundations could be repaired; in 2019 palace officials said it would be rebuilt exactly as it looked.
Q 28Bangkok's man-made hill, Phu Khao Thong, began as a giant chedi at which temple?
Wat Saket
Wat Saket holds the hill, known as the Golden Mount: Rama III's huge chedi collapsed because the soft soil could not bear its weight, and the rubble was later crowned with a smaller one.
Q 29Which festival, the traditional Thai New Year, turns Bangkok's streets into a giant water fight each April?
Songkran
Songkran's soakings grew out of a gentler custom: sprinkling water on Buddha images and pouring it over the hands of elders as a New Year blessing.
Q 30Bangkok's Rajadamnern Stadium, opened in 1945, is a famous home of which sport?
Muay Thai
Muay Thai had no central arena until Rajadamnern: ordered in 1941, it was stalled by the Second World War, opened in December 1945 as an open-air ring and gained a roof only in 1951.