Culture & heritage
Thai massage, temples and royal cuisine — the origins
Behind every treatment and every dish lies a story stretching back centuries. To understand Thailand is to trace it back to its temples, its palaces, its regions and its rites — an exploration that Bangkok, better than any other city, makes it possible to undertake.
The origin of traditional Thai massage
Nuad boran — literally "ancient massage" — is said to have been born more than two thousand years ago. Tradition attributes it to Jivaka Kumar Bhaccha, a physician contemporary with the Buddha and a founding figure of traditional Thai medicine.
Blending Indian influences — energy lines, postures close to yoga — with local knowledge passed down orally from generation to generation, it took shape in the temples before being recognised by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity in 2019.
It is not a relaxation massage in the Western sense of the term. It is a complete medical practice, aimed at restoring the flow of vital energy along 72,000 lines known as sen, through deep pressure, stretching and joint manipulation.
Wat Pho: guardian of ancestral knowledge
Wat Pho, on the Bangkok riverbank facing the Grand Palace, is home to the oldest school of traditional massage in the country. Engraved in the stone of its chedis, you can still read the diagrams of the energy lines — a library of stone commissioned by King Rama III in the 19th century to preserve this endangered knowledge.
Temples are not only places of worship: for centuries they served as medical schools, libraries and centres for the transmission of knowledge in Thai society. Wat Pho is the most striking example — it still hosts months-long training programmes for practitioners today.
A stone's throw from the temple, the Rattanakosin district concentrates the heart of the city's Khmer and Siamese history: the Grand Palace, Wat Arun on the opposite bank, the canals of Thonburi. A perimeter of a few square kilometres in which the full depth of Bangkok can be read.
Ancestral culinary art: the five flavours
Thai cuisine rests on a subtle balance between five fundamental flavours: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and spicy. Each dish seeks the harmony of these five notes, never the excess of a single one — this is what distinguishes it from most Asian cuisines and makes it so hard to reproduce faithfully outside Thailand.
The techniques — granite pestle and mortar for curries and sauces, high-heat wok for stir-fries, steaming in banana leaf for desserts — are handed down from generation to generation with an almost artisanal precision. The recipe is not in a book: it is in the hand and in the memory.
The essential ingredients — galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, bird's eye chilli, fermented shrimp paste — can be found in every neighbourhood market in Bangkok, from Chatuchak in the north to Khlong Toei in the south. It is by discovering them on site that you understand why Thai cuisine is so aromatic.
The royal cuisine of Bangkok
Born in the palace kitchens of the Bangkok court from the 18th century onwards, royal cuisine is distinguished by the extreme finesse of its cutting, the artistic sculpting of fruit and vegetables into flowers or animals, and flavours deliberately milder and more balanced than popular cooking — designed for the court, where an excess of chilli was not the done thing.
It is a cuisine of patience and precision, where presentation matters as much as taste, and where every plate is conceived as a visual composition. Its most faithful expression is found in a few Bangkok houses that have kept this tradition alive.
The Dusit district, around the present-day Royal Palace, and the historic heart of Rattanakosin preserve houses and markets that perpetuate these royal recipes — often unknown to tourists, but very much alive for the Bangkok families who hand them down.
The cuisines of the Thai regions
The North — the Lanna region, around Chiang Mai — offers its mild curries of vegetables and pork, its dipping sauces (nam prik noom, nam prik ong) and its emblematic khao soi, that noodle curry with Burmese and Yunnanese influences that exists nowhere else.
Isan, the north-eastern plateau bordering Laos, offers a rustic and generous cuisine — green papaya som tam, laab of minced meat with herbs, sticky rice served in small woven baskets. This is the popular cuisine you will find in the eateries of Sukhumvit or Silom in Bangkok.
The South, finally, with its powerful coconut-milk curries (massaman with Muslim influences, gaeng tai pla with fermented fish), its sambals and its spicy generosity that contrasts with the delicacy of the centre. One nation, profoundly different tables depending on the latitude.
Bangkok, crossroads of all traditions
Bangkok is unique in that it brings all these regional traditions together under one sky. In the Silom district or around the Or Tor Kor market in Chatuchak, you can eat a khao soi from the North at midday and a curry from the South in the evening, a few hundred metres from a spa that practises nuad boran according to the rules of Wat Pho.
A new generation of Bangkok chefs is carrying Thai cuisine to the very highest level worldwide, reinterpreting this regional and royal heritage without betraying it. They often work in discreet spaces in Thonglor or the Riverside — neighbourhoods we particularly love to explore.
From the Grand Palace to Wat Arun, from the old town of Rattanakosin to the canals of Thonburi, Bangkok keeps the living memory of a kingdom that was never colonised. It is this cultural continuity that gives the city its very particular character — and that makes every visit, even the hundredth, just as rich.
Frequently asked questions
Where can you learn Thai massage in Bangkok? Wat Pho offers internationally recognised training programmes lasting several weeks. Quality independent schools also exist in the Silom and Thonglor districts.
What is the difference between Thai massage and oil massage? Traditional Thai massage (nuad boran) is performed clothed, on a futon on the floor, without oil — it mobilises the joints and frees the energy lines. Oil massage is an imported technique, often more relaxing and less intensive.
Is royal cuisine accessible to the uninitiated? Yes, provided you know where to look. A few houses in Bangkok serve a faithful royal cuisine without diluting it for the tourist market — our selections strive to identify them.