Bangkok Bling – Luxury Hotels in the City of Angels
Bangkok is fast becoming the most designer of Asian capitals. This is a city undergoing mammoth and rapid change – prosperity has come to town, and with gleaming shopping malls and swanky cocktail bars popping up all over the city, Bangkok is really starting to flash its bling.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the city’s many luxury hotels. From Big name chains to heritage and boutique hotels, visitors to Bangkok can find just about every type of luxury accommodation going. The only problem, is picking which one to hit first…
Big Name Chains
Bangkok is awash with luxury hotels from the world’s best-known chains, which means luxury basically comes as standard here.
The Mandarin Oriental is perhaps one of the city’s most well-known and memorable places. An institution in these parts, it basically wrote the book on Eastern luxury when it comes to the hotel game. Every room in this modern palace oozes wow: It’s so elite, you have to be dressed just so even to enter its lobby.
The Shangri-La is another hotel that boasts the X Factor. Situated next to the ever-evocative Chao Phraya River, it’s a stone’s throw away from The Royal Palace, which is far and away Bangkok’s most visited tourist site. Facilities include an award winning cocktail bar (Shangri-La rolled out a series of ‘Blue’ bars on the back of this one’s success), an extensive gym, and a spa so luxurious it makes your skin softer just thinking about it.
Boutique Hotels
Luxx in Silom is one of the nicest boutique hotels you’ll find anywhere in the world. Small, modern, and immensely comfortable, its incredibly welcoming rooms are matched by its friendly staff and exceptionally relaxed atmosphere. Luxx shows that you don’t have to be ostentatious to flash the bling.
Heritage Hotels
The Eugenia is a fascinating place – not least because this self-styled Colonial Mansion is to be found in a country that has never once been colonized! A beautiful, white Victorian mansion, it features an impressive and pleasingly random collection of antique furniture, old-skoll fittings, and taxidermy. This is the type of place where you enjoy canapés just before eating, dine in a Michelin-starred restaurant, and then retire to the library for a sociably digestif. Bling done Victorian style, you could say.