Bangkok

The Bangkok scene

Bangkok’s rope scene brings Thai teachers together with visiting performers from Japan and the rest of Asia. Yada Kinbaku, founder of the Kotori studio, began teaching in 2018 and has run workshops under the Kotori name since 2019; how her work fits the spread of Japanese rope across Asia is told in Kinbaku in Asia-Pacific. This page describes the places and groups where rope happens in the city now.

Kotori People Studio

Kotori People Studio describes itself as a conscious collective of shibari practitioners with a private studio, located in the Old Town near City Hall and the Giant Swing. Its focus is body-based practice: alongside private classes and sessions it holds rope jams for open practice and mini classes, and its presenters include somatic professionals and body workers. Besides Yada Kinbaku, its site has profiles of the riggers Pawin Kinbaku and PapaBear. In 2026 the studio also presented a Bangkok Shibari Showcase.

Teaching collectives and a documentary

Bangkok Shibari, also known as ShibariWorkshopsTH, says it wants to raise awareness of shibari and train people who want to learn to tie. Its Foundations course is made up of four self-contained workshops, Awareness, Technique, Connection and Spontaneity, taught by MyLavanderMoon, Laodai, C00 and UnnamedMinor. The group has said it was making a documentary about shibari in Bangkok. In 2026 Bangkok Shibari, a film of almost an hour in which local practitioners describe how they came to rope and what it changed for them, was screened at Cinema Oasis from 30 May to 11 July with three short films and an exhibition of work by ten shibari artists; the Bangkok Post gave the collective’s address for enquiries. Reporting on it in the Bangkok Post, Thana Boonlert wrote that practitioners present rope as a form of emotional connection and that in Thailand the practice now mixes its Japanese roots with European influences and a distinctly Thai feel.

Guest teachers from abroad

Bangkok Kinbaku Lab, led by the Thai rigger Topp Shibari, says it wants to make rope art more widely known through performances by leading riggers from Thailand and abroad. One example is Hajime Kinoko, who first came to Bangkok in 2023 and returned in June 2026 for a weekend the lab called Amazing Tied-Land: a show day with performers from Singapore and Japan and his own rope installation, then a workshop and an evening rope jam held in the spirit of Ichinawa Salon, his rope jam in Tokyo.

Rope nights at kink venues

Some rope practice takes place in wider kink settings. KinkyBKK calls itself Asia’s kinky community center and holds its events at PULSE Club Back Door on Silom Road; ticket pages on the PULSE site list shibari workshops on themes such as rope play, predicaments and bedroom bondage, plus an improvers’ class. 500 Cafe, a fetish and BDSM community café run by the FORFUN shop, opens on Fridays and Saturdays and holds a rope jam every Friday night.

Languages

Event pages in Bangkok are often bilingual: Bangkok Kinbaku Lab’s listings come in English and Thai, and Kotori’s website is in English. For advice on joining classes in another country, see Rope when you travel.