Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok, Thailand
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Deluxe Room: Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok, Thailand -
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Jim Thompson Suite: Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok, Thailand -
Royal Oriental Suite: Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok, Thailand -
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Lord Jim's: Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok, Thailand -
Baan Noi: Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok, Thailand -
Ciao: Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok, Thailand -
Royal Ballroom: Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok, Thailand
Mandarin Oriental 5 Stars
"Century-old Far East institution, a luxury hotel in Bangkok that's still at the top of her game."
Hotel Overview
Review of Mandarin Oriental, by Simon Crerar
So how does he do it? The River Wing of Bangkok’s grandest old lady, Mandarin Oriental, is 15 stories high, and boasts 150 sumptuously appointed rooms and suites. All day, every day, the wonderfully flamboyant, impeccably attired bell boy Sorn gently ushers guests into the elevator. With a swirling flourish reminiscent of the most highly trained classical Thai dancers, he calls the lift, holds the doors and swoops a hand inside before gently ushering you inside. Magically, he has somehow remembered your face and floor. Does service get any better?
Well as you probably know already, yes it does. It’s surely no surprise to discover that in the amazing capital of Thailand, the Kingdom’s most prestigious address is a shining beacon of unsurpassable good service, refined taste and lavish décor.
Thailand’s oldest hotel, the Oriental has 1,300 staff catering to 400 rooms, the highest staff to guest ratio in the industry. Most work here for 16 years on average, an impressively long time in a business with such rapid turnover. The Authors’ Wing, all that is left of the original 19th-century hotel, houses suites named after guests such as Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham and Noel Coward.
We checked in late on Saturday evening after six head-spinning, energy-sapping hours in Bangkok’s Chatuchak market, the world’s most brilliant place to shop. Exhausted, we didn’t feel like leaving our marvellously luxurious river view room’s comforting embrace, and so dived into the room service menu.
In-room dining can often be a disappointing letdown in even the best hotels, but this dinner was a fantastic a la carte-esque experience, with a round table wheeled in by a bow-tied waiter who whipped off the silver warming plates to reveal superbly presented, generously portioned Gaeng Phed Ped Yang barbecued duck curry and Khao Phad wok-fried rice with pork and shrimp.
After a comfortable night’s sleep, next morning we started with the hugely varied breakfast buffet, served on the hotel’s stunningly appointed riverside terrace. Then we lounged by the pool, where ever-attentive staff ply guests with endless refreshing iced waters, gazpacho and cool towels.
To unwind further, we booked ourselves in for a wonderfully relaxing, 90-minute Ayurvedic treatment in The Oriental’s Spa on the other side of the river, before a buffet lunch overlooking the main property at Thai restaurant Sala Rim Naam, offering more than 50 dishes representing every corner of the Kingdom.
Unplanned, sprawling and chaotic, Asia’s most energetic megacity lacks a clearly defined centre like New York’s Times Square, London’s Trafalgar Square or Paris’s Place de la Concorde. If any one spot marks the centre, it is The Oriental.
Except in the dead of night, Bangkok’s legendary traffic make taxis a nightmare. Thankfully, The Oriental sits at the epicentre of the city’s two lifesaving transport hubs, the mighty Chao Phraya River and the BTS Skytrain. From here you can zip up river to the Royal Palace, Emerald and Reclining Buddhas, or be whisked in air-conditioned comfort above the crowded streets to the new city’s epic malls.
And bell boy Sorn’s secret? You’ll have to stay here yourself to find out...
Facilities
Hotel Policies
Rooms
393Awards
"Top City Hotel in Asia, Top 100 Hotels" Travel + Leisure 11; "Gold List," Conde Nast Traveler 11
Come for...
- Gorgeous views of the river
- Classic Colonialist interiors
- Spectacular service
Not Suitable for...
- Modernists
Children
The Oriental features a fully functional day care centre with fun, supervised activities for kids of all ages. Two swimming pools, including a wading pool that is ideal for children. All restaurants feature child-friendly menu options, gifts including stuffed animals and a book for all children staying in suites. Baby cots available at the day care centre free of charge. Babysitting by experienced carers and tennis coaches, trips to the zoo are all available on request.
Eating in
The hotel's extensive dining options include French, Thai, Western, Italian, and Chinese cuisine, as well as several outdoor dining terraces with river views.
The Press Say
"The grand old lady of the East – opened in 1877 – has emerged from last year’s zillion-dollar refurbishment more than ready to face down any competition." Telegraph 08Reviews
Review of The Oriental, by John Borthwick
Having presided on the banks of the Chao Phraya River near the centre of Bangkok since 1876 and regularly acclaimed as one of the best luxury hotels in the world, The Mandarin Oriental is a series of evocative impressions from the moment guests enter its dress-code conscious lobby. Golden teak and the kind of imperial-era décor, inspiring memories of Coward, Conrad and Maugham, are just the beginning.
Across the river from the luxury hotel, the Oriental Spa lets guests be terminally spoiled by the most skillful of hands. The spa is a temple of teak and calm in a century-old, traditional Thai building from which Bangkok traffic noise is perfectly excluded.
I'm ushered to a treatment suite where even the shower cubicle, in black marble and with six spray jets, seems like a water temple. The luxury hotel's spa was one of Asia's first dedicated hotel spas and is the only one regularly voted "Best Spa in the World." It offers some 50 different options that range from a 30-minute Papaya Body Polish to a wide variety of massages and beauty treatments, including those for couples and jet-lagged travellers.
The Oriental has palmy gardens, pools and a personal butler for each guest. Among my favourite moments at the Oriental are a nightcap-with-jazz in the Bamboo Bar, contemplating the Chao Phraya's restless nocturne from my balcony.
The Oriental has 393 air-conditioned rooms, all sumptuously decorated and wired-for-everything.
The luxury hotel has recently (2004) completed a lavish renovation, including spacious new bathrooms in the River Wing as well as state-of-the-art, in-room entertainment systems throughout. There is also high-speed internet access in all accommodation.
Review of The Oriental Bangkok, by Daniel Scott
There is nothing like a sense of tradition in a luxury hotel to keep guests returning and The Mandarin Oriental makes much of its 125 years of history. Like the Raffles in Singapore it trades on its literary connections, with the likes of Graham Greene, Noel Coward and Joseph Conrad having visited during its hey-day. In fact, when Conrad first visited in 1876 he pronounced himself "worried" by its opulence, and the luxury hotel retains a lavish feel, with Thai silk featuring throughout its public areas and suites. Yet the deluxe rooms in the older Author's wing are reassuringly small, designed on two levels, with a bedroom and modern bathroom crammed in upstairs, and a cubby-hole study and lounge below.
The Oriental makes good use of its location on the banks of the brown-green Chao Phya River, with its swimming pool and a terrace restaurant right at the riverside. A luxury hotel boat takes guests across the river to a fine Thai restaurant, the gym and the spa. While spas are now de rigueur at premium luxury hotels, the Oriental's facility draws connoisseurs of alternative health, delivering both western and eastern treatments in a delicate, intimate atmosphere.
Review of The Oriental, by Caroline Major
On the banks of Bangkok's Chao Praya River, the luxury hotel, The Mandarin Oriental, is one of just three hotels here. Don't underestimate this draw card for both entertainment and transport - the river supports the happy chaos of life in Bangkok. Ferries parade, jammed with commuters, the longtails propelled by strong armed Thai men spew plumes of water and the hotel boats ferry passengers back and forth while the mishmash of commercial barges and boats provide such a fill of Bangkok that you'll feel vindicated in hedonistic pursuit at the Oriental.
With breakfast included in room tariffs, it's fun to check out fellow guests breakfasting on the terrace. The luxury hotel is jumping and plates are laden with the tropical fruits one dreams of in Europe. The maitre'd, bounces between the tables making sure everyone is happy and supplying conversation for those dining alone. The regular guests clearly love him, his attention, his broad Thai smile and singsong voice.
For a glimpse of the Bangkok 'scene', hang out in the luxury hotel's Bamboo Bar, where celebrities and royalty stop by often to listen to jazz or dine in the restaurant. Or join the daily Thai cooking class at the luxury hotel's Cultural Centre, and afterwards indulge in the spa, choosing from the usual suspects on the treatment menu. Cocktails are served up poolside all day.
The luxury hotel's rooms are everything you'd expect from a leading hotel in Asia. Fresh flowers, litres of complimentary drinking water and tropical fruits arrive each morning with housekeeping. The newer wings are contemporary Thai, with specialty suites in the historic authors' wing maintaining a traditional Royal Thai style.
Review of Bangkok-Young lovers and old colonials, by Stuart Wolfendale
Lovers in Asia who want a getaway where they will not be found can forget the distant island lagoons of Tahiti, or hiding amongst the Korean honeymooners on Cheju Island, or a two hour outrigger canoe ride to Porta Gallera on inaccessible Mindora Island. These are the first places that wronged spouses, nagging parents or neurotic offspring will look.
Now, some of the most romantic places to stay are where you would least expect them: in the middle of cities…
Some South East Asian cities have had a stroke of luck. Hoteliers have discovered that guests enjoy a spurious nostalgia. They take a romantic pleasure in a stylish past they were not actually around for. Across the region, famous, sometimes faded fin de siecle colonial hotels have been taken in hand and restored to their former glory.
To spend time in a throwback to an age of gracious living with the contemporary gadget back-up hidden behind the gilded panelling is a splendid setting for lovers.
In Bangkok, The Mandarin Oriental is the guardian of the grand hotel heritage. The Oriental never faded. It moved with the times but kept its past in its silken operating style and the delicate, wooden 'Author's Wing' where one can have afternoon tea in the lounge and browse through extraordinary group photographs of King Rama V's extended family.
Of all the suites named after authors who have stayed there, perhaps the lovers should choose the 'Barbara Cartland Suite.' Our latter day Rodney and Daphne will then enjoy luxurious accommodation decorated entirely in pink - an artistic licence that only that hotel can get away with. [The novellas themselves are not compulsory pre-amour reading.]
A hotel that did fade and was taken back from the rats by The Amanresorts Group is The Strand by the river in the heart of Yangon, Myanmar. Built in 1901 and advertising itself as 'the finest hostelry East of Suez', it is now a 32-suite luxury town hotel, wonderfully restored.
After bathing in a vigorously Edwardian bathroom of wrought iron and gleaming brass, the two lovers could sip at their whisky sour and pink gin and gaze from their balcony over the Irrewady River before dining downstairs in a room identical to that in which young subalterns , planters and ships' officers courted their memsahibs-to- be in an empire that would die with them.
Lovers can capture the past of another empire in the Hotel Majapahit in Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city on northern Java. The Mandarin Oriental Group reopened the hotel after two and a half years of painstakingly reconstituting features such as the art-deco stained glass windows, the terrazzo floors and the colonial style balconies and verandahs.
The hotel was a popular mainstay of the colonial establishment in that part of the Dutch East Indies. It would be easy for modern lovers to imagine the fair skinned young colonial ladies of The Twenties in their faintly flapperish outfits sipping lemon tea with young Dutch dandies, waited on by deep brown Javanese waiters.
Every so often the hotel would be a venue for a packed dinner and dance where those young ladies, gowned and the pride of their Mamas, would dance with their future husbands who would take them, governing, trading or farming, to the ends of the Indies for the rest of their lives.
A colonial hotel rattling with reminiscence is the legendary Raffles in Singapore. Somerset Maugham once said that it 'stands for all the fables of the exotic East.' After a US$160 million overhaul it does so proudly again.
Oh, some say that it isn't the same as it was before the changes - when, in fact, it was going to the dogs. Yet it still has all the famous ingredients for a vigorously romantic stay.
One can fill up with a curry tiffin or give one's girl a goosing under the traveller's palms in the garden. You can both get very frisky over a few Singapore Slings in the Long Bar, where the drink was invented. That'll make you both ready for a few frames in the Billiard Room and you might get to shoot a tiger at the same time. [The last one to be shot in Singapore was an escaped circus animal found skulking under one of the hotel's billiard tables.]
By jove, 'gels' are made of strong stuff these days. It should be just the ticket.