The Day My Bangkok Tower Swayed — The March 2025 Earthquake

I was on the forty-third floor when it started.

Around 1:30 PM on March 28, 2025, I felt the strongest earthquake I have experienced in my life. I live in a tower that is approximately fifty stories. I was near the top. The building moved in a way that buildings are not supposed to move — a slow, lateral sway that kept going far longer than you expect these things to go.

What It Felt Like

The first sensation was confusion. Living in a high-rise, you get used to subtle movements — wind loads on the structure, the building settling. What happened on March 28 was not subtle. The sway was wide enough that objects moved on surfaces. I could hear the walls making sounds I did not want to analyse too carefully.

I did not go under a table. I went to the doorframe, which is what you are supposed to do, then immediately questioned whether a doorframe in a fifty-story Bangkok tower was offering me anything structural. It probably was not. But you do the thing you remember from earthquake safety training even when you cannot fully justify it.

The movement lasted approximately ninety seconds. It felt considerably longer.

After

Some residents on the upper floors found they could not open their doors — the building had shifted enough that door frames were no longer quite square. The pool, the onsen, the sauna, and the gym were all closed while the building was inspected. Half the elevators were taken out of service.

Someone posted a TikTok video showing my building swaying. I watched it from my apartment. Seeing your building move from the outside while you are inside it is a strange perspective. The tower I live in is the middle one in the video — the slightly yellowish one. It moves. The engineering is designed to allow it to move. That is correct and safe. Knowing this intellectually and watching it happen are different experiences.

The Earthquake

The earthquake was centred in Myanmar — a 7.7 magnitude event near Mandalay on March 28, 2025. It was one of the deadliest earthquakes in Myanmar’s history. The death toll in Myanmar reached into the thousands. Buildings collapsed in Mandalay and surrounding areas.

In Bangkok, the shaking was felt strongly across the city but structural damage was limited mostly to older buildings that were not constructed to the seismic standards introduced after Thailand updated its building codes in the 1990s. The tall modern towers — built with base isolation or designed to flex — performed as designed.

Several buildings in older parts of Bangkok sustained damage. There were deaths and injuries in the city, mostly from falling objects and stairwell accidents during evacuation. The scale of what Bangkok experienced was minor compared to what happened in Myanmar.

What I Did Next

I moved to the coast. Not immediately — I stayed in Bangkok for a few more days while the building was assessed and the facilities were reopened. But the earthquake had done something to my concentration. My working rhythm in the apartment was disrupted. I found myself listening for sounds I had not noticed before. The floor had not moved again but I kept waiting for it to.

This is a normal response. After a significant earthquake, many people experience hypervigilance to building sounds and movements — a kind of sensory recalibration that takes time to settle. Knowing it is normal does not make it less real. After about a week, I needed a new environment to reset my routine. The coast provided it.

On Living High

I chose a high-floor apartment in Bangkok for the view and the relative quiet above the traffic noise. Those reasons have not changed. But March 28 added information to my understanding of what that choice involves. A high floor is further from the ground during a seismic event. The sway at forty-three floors is more pronounced than at ten.

Bangkok is not in a high seismic risk zone by global standards. The March 2025 event was felt strongly because of the alluvial soil beneath the city — Bangkok is built on a thick layer of soft clay that amplifies seismic waves, transmitting energy from distant earthquakes more efficiently than harder ground would. The city has felt earthquakes from Myanmar and the Andaman Sea before. It will feel them again.

I would not move to a lower floor because of this. But I now know what the upper floors feel like when the ground moves, and I understand that knowledge in a way I did not before March 28.