This is a city that builds towers just to add rooftop bars on top, that paints motorbike helmets with glitter, that treats traffic like performance art. So of course it’s now taking its flirtation with the future literally skyward.
This week, EHang – a Chinese aviation firm best known for turning sci-fi sketches into machinery – launched Thailand’s first Advanced Air Mobility Sandbox. It’s a government-approved test zone that lets pilotless air taxis float legally above the city, rewriting what Bangkok traffic might mean in the next decade. The star of the show, the EH216-S, looks like something from a designer’s dream sequence.
The launch drew a mix of aviation officials, local engineers and curious onlookers who watched the aircraft complete its test loops without so much as a wobble. It wasn’t the spectacle of technology for its own sake, but a public rehearsal for something bigger – a move towards making air taxis part of the city’s everyday rhythm. The Ministry of Transport pitched it as a step toward smart urbanism and carbon-free travel, which could link high-rise life with island escapes in a single glide.
If the next stages go as planned, these aircraft could soon be hovering between Bangkok and its weekend playgrounds – Pattaya, Phuket, Koh Samui – replacing ferry queues with flight paths. And while it all sounds a touch futuristic, it fits Bangkok’s logic perfectly: the city where wires tangle, towers shimmer and the impossible feels entirely plausible.
Up here, above the honking and neon, the future looks distinctly Bangkok – electric, experimental and just a little bit surreal.