Friendly Stranger is a cheap rooftop bar in Bangkok, four floors up a shophouse on Ekkamai 26, where eight of us spent a Friday night in July 2026 for under ฿10,000 between us. The crowd is almost entirely Thai, the bands sing mostly Thai songs and the prices suit people who live here. This post covers how to find the door, what the drinks and the food cost, where to sit for the music and when the terrace fills up.

Finding The Door On Ekkamai 26

My wife and I took motorbike taxis from the mouth of Soi Ekkamai, next to the BTS Ekkamai exit, which cost ฿30 each and dropped us outside the bar. Look for a yellow folding gate, a striped step with Hello Stranger spelled out in tiles and a white lightbox overhead that reads Bar & Bistro, Rooftop 4th Floor.

A yellow folding gate open on a shophouse passage, with Hello Stranger spelled in tiles on a black and white striped step and beer kegs stacked inside.
The way in on Ekkamai 26. The step greets you before anyone else does.

There is no lift, so you climb four flights of stairs. The first three floors look abandoned, to the point where I thought the place had closed down, because only the top of the building appears to be in use. Keep climbing.

A bare stairwell with worn timber steps, a stepladder and a wooden sawhorse on the landing, glass blocks in the wall and posters higher up.
One of the lower landings. It looks like a building site because nothing below the roof is in use.

Paintings hang in the stairwell, a photo booth corner waits near the top and the last door opens onto a terrace of breeze block walls, hanging plants and strings of bulbs.

Groups of drinkers at dark tables on a covered rooftop terrace, with a lit indoor bar room visible through glass doors behind them.
The terrace looking back towards the indoor room, where the bands play, at 9.11pm.

What A Cheap Rooftop Bar In Bangkok Costs

My wife and I shared a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon at ฿890, which was nothing special and perfectly drinkable. Our friends went for the offer that explains the bar's following: four bottles of Regency with four free mixers for ฿1,999. Regency is the Thai brandy that groups here reach for on a night out, poured over ice and topped up with cola, soda or water. The promotion card says it runs all day and all night, so it still applied when we sat down at about 9pm.

Beer drinkers get their own deals on the same card: three pints for ฿229, six for ฿399 or 10 for ฿549, while the same deals in jugs cost ฿629, ฿999 and ฿1,499. Those run all night from Monday to Thursday but only from 5pm to 8pm on Friday and Saturday. A bottle of water is ฿50. Eight of us drank and ate until midnight and the bill still came in under ฿10,000.

Bar Food Made For Sharing

The food is Thai drinking food, served in steel trays lined with the bar's own printed paper. The sharing plates on the bar's Wongnai menu are ฿189 each, fried chicken wings and glass noodle salad among them, while a plate of holy basil wagyu beef on rice is ฿219. The Fried Spicy Pork Ball Salad at ฿189 is laab rolled into balls and deep fried: dark, chilli-flecked pork with whole dried chillies on top, plus raw long beans and cucumber to cool things down.

Dark fried pork balls with whole dried chillies in a steel tray lined with Friendly Stranger paper, beside raw long beans and cucumber.
The Fried Spicy Pork Ball Salad, ฿189.

We also ordered goong chae nam pla, raw prawns dressed in fish sauce, which arrived on shredded cabbage with a green seafood dipping sauce, a crispy fried topping and a tray of sliced bitter melon.

Raw butterflied prawns on shredded cabbage, with a bowl of green dipping sauce, a bowl of crispy fried topping and a steel tray of sliced bitter melon.
Goong chae nam pla with its sauce and bitter melon on the side.

The third tray, also ฿189, was a heap of tiny freshwater shrimp fried whole until crisp, with diced shallots, sliced green chillies and a wedge of lime on the side. It is the sort of dish a table picks at for an hour between drinks.

A steel tray of small crispy fried shrimp with diced shallots, sliced green chillies and a lime wedge, with two glasses on red coasters behind.
Crispy fried shrimp, ฿189, at 10.40pm.

Thai Bands Inside And A Quieter Terrace

Local Thai bands play in the indoor room and swap over every hour or two. The set is mostly Thai songs with a few English ones mixed in, which suits the crowd because this is a bar for locals first. The Thai songs were fine to listen to, while the English ones came out muffled with shaky pronunciation. A full evening built around the music is better spent on the live jazz at Crimson Room.

Where you sit decides how much of the band you hear. Inside, the sound is loud enough that a trip to the toilet left my ears ringing. Out on the terrace it drops to background level, so eight people could talk without shouting. The price of that is the heat, because the open air gets warm after a couple of hours even at night.

The indoor room at Friendly Stranger under a corrugated roof with timber beams, an orange FS neon sign on a post and customers seated facing the bar.
The indoor room, with the bar's initials in neon, at 11.41pm.

When To Go

The bar opens from Monday to Saturday, 5pm to 2am. When we arrived at about 9pm on a Friday there were still free tables on the terrace. By 11pm it was packed and it was still packed when we left at midnight, nearly all of it local groups drawn by the prices and the easy atmosphere. We had phoned ahead on 082 524 9922 to hold a table for our group, which I would do again for any party larger than four.

A night view from a rooftop over a Bangkok road, with old shophouses, a side street, a black building with a yellow neon sign and a tower in the distance.
The view from the terrace rail on 3 July 2026.

Friendly Stranger is the opposite of the hotel rooftops that fill most lists of nights out in Bangkok. You get a terrace above Ekkamai, Thai bands, shared trays of food and a bill that eight people can split without wincing. The prices are down to earth, so we will be back when the mood takes us. For more things to do in the city once the hangover clears, the rest of the site has you covered.