People

The city has a fairly cosmopolitan population. More than 50% of the population has Chinese lineage. Long term foreign residents include over 2,50,000 Chinese nationals, 30,000 Japanese, over 5,000 Americans, 45,000 Europeans, 15,000 Taiwanese, over 5,000 south Koreans, 25,000 Malaysians, 4,000 Singaporeans, 15,000 people from Arab and African countries and 1,00,000 Indians (including 35,000 Sikhs), over 80% of hwom have settled down here over long period of time and have Thai citizenship. Add to this half a million illigal imigrants from a wide variety of countries like Cambodia, Burma, Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Nigeria, India, Bangladesh, China, and others and ofcourse last but not the least a huge floating population of foreign tourists.

92% of the population are Buddhist. The rest are Muslim (6%), Christian (1%), Jewish (300 residents), Hindu (0.6%), and others.