Gone are the days when being a green hotel meant guests slept in tents in the middle of a forest: these days you can be green even in the middle of a bustling metropolis like Bangkok. The Old Bangkok Inn is a small ten-room place that's got a number of neat strategies going to be environmentally friendly.
The owners of the hotel decided from the outset that they wanted to be environmentally sound and from the renovation of the original house to the hotel you see today, there were many decisions made to stay low impact. For example, only salvaged wood was used in the renovations and all the fixtures, linen and curtains were locally produced.
Siam@Siam is a new boutique hotel in Bangkok, where hoteliers are still proud to utter the words "boutique hotel". Rooms are set in industrial style concrete against brightly colored furniture. However, the coup de grâce is the gorgeous infinity pool that affords guests views of Bangkok while they soak.
Caveat Siam: The hotel is noisy and in a busy location -- what Bangkok hotel is not? So ask for a room away from the road and you should be in a better position if you are a light sleeper.
The hotel is a five minute walk from MBK, the Discovery Center, and Paragon. The entire hotel is WiFi rigged, even the restaurants.
Tip: Even though this hotel soft opened back in December of 2006, many local taxi drivers are still confused as to the hotels whereabouts. Do yourself a favor and learn how to say the hotel address in Thai. It is on King Rama Road.
Want proof that becoming a parent changes everything? Turn back the clock a couple years and Vikram Chatwal the hotelier was a mess--reports were, his NYC property, Dream NYC smelled like ass, staffers forgot wake up calls for VIP reporters, and the long promised guest iPods were nowhere to be found.
Dream Hotel New York quickly became one of those hotels that we would hear about being offered up to corporate travel road dogs at cut rates, which usually means the hotel has plenty of rooms available. Whether this was because of its Times Square location or its many documented early service issues, is open for debate. However, there was definitely little reason to believe that a few years later a Dream Hotel would open on the other side of the world, in Bangkok Thailand, and Dream would become a bit of a mini-franchise, but that appears to be what has happened.
Not only did Vikram open Dream Hotel when he said he would, late last summer, but the world's first Sikh billionaire-in-waiting's Dream Hotel Bangkok is getting rave review from recent guests and tipsters:
·I had stayed at the Dream Hotel in New York last year and must say that the one in Bangkok is far superior!
·I like the bar lounge area and they had 2 for 1 happy hours which made it even better.
·42'' plasma TV with many English language channels
·The staff are mostly young, good looking Thais. Some of them are quite new and one can sense that in some clumsiness and slowness in service but their friendliness and enthusiasm more than compensated for that.
·It's located in a quiet street off the bustling Sukhumvit area.
·I was a little worried about whether I would find the hotel (especially after reading previous review). However I came well preprared with an excellent map which was emailed to me from the reservations department upon request.
·The only negative I have is the lack of natural light.
Vikram Chatwal the hotelier appears to be on the upswing. Could the upcoming Lamb's Club Hotel in New York end up surprising?
What could these three words have to do with one another? Well, at the Shanghai Inn in Bangkok's Chinatown you can stay in "chic chinoise" (four poster beds and "jeweled-tone walls", so says NG Traveler) while accessing the hotel's free wireless internet. And for only $67 a night!
Of course, it sounds too good to be true and it is. Reviewers say the hotel is fun to look at but not to stay in. For starters, it seems the staff has some problems with their indoor voices:
The staff is incredibly loud: shouting, laughing, talking into walkie talkies, etc. The cleaners started pushing trolleys from 5 in the morning and made terrible noise with plastic bags. The receptionists speak very bad English. Normally, I find this charming, but this was just too much.
More complaints were about the noise within the hotel, not from staffers (although this reviewer mentioned that too):
The noise was incredible- showers, toilets, televisions, shouting, and even sex noises just to top it off. and it was ALL night followed by the cleaners with loud walkie talkies at 6am.
Should you stay here because the price is right and free WiFi is tempting, another past guest says don't book any rooms near the cafe or the front desk.
Should you believe everything you read in a hotel review? Should you jump off a skyscraper if someone tells you too? Of course, you have to take everything you read everywhere with a grain of salt, but blogger thru-e-rain decided it was better to be safe than sorry after her online review discoveries on her recent trip to Bangkok with her Mom. Her plans went astray when the Baiyoke Sky Hotel was fully booked and she ended up settling for the Baiyoke Suite instead. That's when things got a bit strange:
I was reading online hotel reviews and they were mostly NEGATIVE in nature. Almost 95% said it was a terrible hotel to stay in ... The scariest review that I read was that someone went into their room at 5am in the morning, and fortunately the couple was awake and asked what that fella was doing, and that chap just said he got the wrong room and left. Atrocious right?! ... So I had this formation to BLOCK the door, should anyone want to try to get in to attack us! Nice? I used all the portable stuff there was in the room already, short of carrying the huge sofa to the door as well.
The result? Well, she doesn't say exactly, saying that the hotel was actually pretty nice. So presumably no mystery men got past her blockaded door and the holiday was happy ever after.
Vikram Chatwal's minions over at The Dream Hotel Bangkok sent us this updated photo of the hotel's exterior.
Although we have yet to discover what the inside of this place smells like, we say that Vik did a pretty good job of turning this place around from its former life as The Somerset Hotel.
If you are going to run around the world creating ultra sleek minimalist hotels, it doesn't hurt to have a sugar daddy that is also a top hotelier.
That is exactly the relationship Christina Ong and Ong Beng Seng seem to have. Ain't love grand.
The Singaporean entrepreneurial power couple has developed some fashionable hotels in their time, the one that has recently come to our inbox is the Metropolitan Bangkok.
Large rooms, the highly touted Como Shambhala spa, and a staff most guests give high marks:
Spent 4 nites [sic] at the Metropolitan Bangkok recently. The staff are well trained, friendly and ever willing to meet your every need, however small it may be. The rooms are large and well furnished - the only setback would probably be the lack of a power outlet for shavers in the bathroom.
So shave in advance, or go au natural during your stay--problems solved.
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by amandak
