Soi Arab, Middle Eastern dining district in Sukhumvit, Thailand.
Soi Arab is a narrow side street in Bangkok's Sukhumvit district, running between Soi 3 and Soi 5, lined with Middle Eastern restaurants, shisha lounges, and specialty shops. The street is flanked on both sides by shopfronts and outdoor seating areas, forming a compact commercial strip catering to Arab visitors and travelers.
The street began to take shape as an Arab neighborhood in the early 1980s, when the Shahrazad restaurant opened in 1983 and drew other Middle Eastern businesses to the area. Over the following decades, the district grew as more Arab visitors came to Bangkok and looked for familiar food and goods.
The street is known for its shisha lounges, where visitors can experience the tradition of water pipe smoking as practiced across the Arab world. Menus range from Lebanese mezze to Yemeni rice dishes, offering a variety of cooking styles rarely found together in one place in Bangkok.
Nana BTS station is right nearby, making the area easy to reach from most parts of Bangkok. Most restaurants and cafés open in the late afternoon and close around midnight, so an evening visit works best.
Several shops along the street sell agarwood, an aromatic wood used in Middle Eastern perfumes and incense that ranks among the most expensive natural scents in the world. These shops primarily serve Arab buyers and are rarely found elsewhere in Bangkok outside this street.
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