Designs on Bangkok: The new wave of designer hotels

What constitutes a 'designer' hotel? Guest blogger Roderick Eime visits the latest crop of hotels in Bangkok vying for this label.

Pullman Bangkok Hotel G - cheeky urban fun

One doesn’t simply build a hotel these days, it seems, they must be ‘created’.

On my most recent visits to the capital of charming chaos, Bangkok, I’ve had the opportunity to stay in a series of staggering hotels, each seemingly outdoing the other for style, design and ‘lifestyle’ elements.

Despite a reasonable degree of experience covering the hospitality industry, I’ve had to go back to school, so to speak, to acquaint myself with the latest vernacular in hotel-speak. Specifically the terms ‘designer’ and ‘lifestyle’ which, on their own, are fairly self-explanatory, but when applied to the new wave of sexy, chic hotels springing up in the world’s grooviest locales, it helps to understand the motivating philosophy.

Cynics could be forgiven for shaking their heads and dismissing this trend as simply an exercise in marketing semantics. Just add a coat of lurid paint, a set of paisley drapes, an upside-down looking wall hanging and a Daliesque vase and - voilà – you have a designer hotel and a 50 per cent premium on your room rate. Not so apparently.

According to The Boutique & Lifestyle Lodging Association (who are known by the ironically amorphous acronym, BLLA), a property that "combines living elements and activities into functional design giving guests the opportunity to explore the experience they desire" can be deemed ‘lifestyle’. Then ‘designer’ hotels, it would appear, go beyond that and are "distinctive hotels with unique architecture, where the room design is as important as the mattress. Style along with environmental concern are important factors. Design hotels vary by the unique abilities of the people who create them. Artistic expression, functionality, and imagination combine to make the most successful design hotels, and keep guest not only comfortable during their stay, but in a constant state of awe with the hotel designer's creative vision".

Clearly setting a lofty benchmark that goes beyond mere flophouse, these hotels certainly add a new level of flair and excitement to what can be a drab and featureless experience in some bland buildings. As an added bonus, many rooms can be currently had for under $200, unheard of other Asian metropolises.

VIE Hotel, boutique 5-star from Accor's M Gallery Collection

VIE Hotel (Accor’s M Gallery Collection): Designed, naturally enough, through French architectural house, J+H Boiffils’, VIE actually exercises a little restraint, but still exudes cool in its core DNA. Accor’s M Gallery collection of memorable hotels is fronted by brand ambassador, Kristin Scott Thomas, the gorgeous Anglo-French actress who has more charm in her finger nail than most of us put together. She says the M Gallery hotels are “a collection of strong personalities and sharp, strong styling but still elegant, like invitations to discover the new and the unexpected.”

Scarlett, at Pullman Bangkok Hotel G

Pullman Bangkok Hotel G: Not that this is necessarily a universally ringing endorsement, but this hotel really appealed to me through a bit of rough-edged retro cool mixed with a sense of playfulness and urban charm. Pullman is another Accor brand with their eye on upscale business clients in major cities and is growing like crazy. Rebranded and restyled from its former persona as Sofitel Bangkok Silom, the newest Pullman in Bangkok is cheeky and fun with a super cool terrace restaurant. Scarlett, on the 37th floor, is just drop-dead, while 25 Degrees do ground-level burgers with extra pizazz.

Hansar

Hansar: The 94-suite Hansar opened in early 2011 and almost instantly shot to the top of TripAdvisor’s hotly contested ranking. Singapore-based architects WOHA integrated eco-friendly features into Hansar’s design including open-air corridors, natural lighting, and frangipani trees that absorb car emissions outside.

Sofitel So Bangkok Club Signature

Sofitel So Bangkok: An utterly outrageous hotel that pushes every boundary with super edgy design and décor. The executive lounge, Club Signature, is “a masterpiece of high fashion dedicated to the high life inspired by legendary couturier Mr Christian Lacroix”.

Wish list: Hotel Muse, another M Gallery property. See Julie's review of this property from November 2011.

Images for this post are supplied by the respective hotels.

Koh Surin's Nomadic Sea Masters

Guest blogger John Borthwick explores the resilient world of Thailand's sea gypsies, survivors of the tsunami and the onslaught of the modern world.

Ramparts of shimmering rainforest tower above the island as we approach. Perched high on stilts along the shore of this Eden-like bay are some 20 palm-thatched huts, home to the Moken "sea gypsies” of Koh Surin.

The world became aware briefly of the Moken after the 2004 tsunami that devastated Thailand’s Andaman coast. The five tiny islands of the Mu Koh Surin archipelago are part of a marine national park just south of the Thai-Myanmar sea border and some 60 kilometres off Thailand’s west coast.

"The elders had told us that if the water recedes fast it will reappear in the same quantity as it disappeared," recalls Moken man, Sarmao Kathalay. As the ocean drew back dramatically on December 26, 2004 the Moken knew what would follow — a massive surge known as laboon, the "wave that eats people", that is supposedly brought on by the angry spirits of their ancestors. Thanks to their legend, by the time the huge surges hit Koh Surin the Moken had retreated to the hills.

The Moken are known in Thai as chao naam (people of the water) or chao lay (people of the sea), and in English by the romantic term “sea gypsies”. Their two villages, on isolated, pristine shorelines on North and South Surin islands, are well apart from North Surin’s busy tourist campground at Chong Khat Bay.

Many Moken men work seasonally in the national park, so those I find when I visit the village are either very young or old. Bare-breasted mothers sit in the sand playing cards. A man carves a model of the traditional Moken kabang houseboat to sell to tourists. The toy is a reminder of the Moken’s skills as celestial navigators and sea nomads — ways that are fast disappearing.

There’s a houseboat moored where we land. On board lives a family of five — three generations. Farther down the beach, an older man works on a brightly painted spirit totem pole that he is preparing for April’s law bong festival.

                                                     (pics John Borthwick, 2012)

Koh Surin is not an Eden in retreat. Since 1981 the islands have been a Thai marine national park where “development” has not been allowed to stamp its boot. The islands are dense with beauty both above and below the waterline. The reefs are a brainstorm of metaphor-defying colour, movement and sealife. Overlooking the sea is dense rainforest where macaques skitter through the canopy.

While their shamans and animist portents are still vital to the Moken, they can no longer hunt endangered hawksbill turtles, their children attend primary school, and their boats are driven by diesel not wind. For these once-nomadic fishers who presciently survived the tsunami, the shoals of contemporary life are a different and difficult battle.

A Short and Dubious History of Pattaya

What’s in a name? Guest blogger John Borthwick takes a light-hearted look at Pattaya’s possible origins.

On 29th June 1959, or 29 April 1961, four — or five — US Army trucks rolled into a snoozy fishing village on the Gulf of Thailand, east of Bangkok. The village was Pad Tha Ya, aka Pattaya.

The trucks disgorged a cargo of GI's on leave from fighting in Vietnam. Or perhaps 100 marines from an upcountry base at Nakhon Ratchasima. Or American sailors from nearby Sattahip naval port. Or possibly US fliers from the also nearby U-Tapao airfield. Choose the internet-published creation myth that suits you. Like most assertions made about, or in, Pattaya, the truth is mutable.

On arrival in Pattaya for R&R – rest and recreation – the grunts, Green Berets, swabbies or top guns, rented houses along the palmy southern end of Pattaya Beach. Having stayed for a week or so they returned to kill or be killed in ‘Nam. Soon they were replaced by more of their kind arriving in Pattaya. R&R became synonymous with I&I – intercourse and intoxication — and Pattaya’s locals never again had to worry much about the price of fish.

Alternatively, Pattaya’s name might derive from the arrival there of Phraya Tak (later King Taksin) in 1767. The place became known as Thap Phraya, meaning the Army of the Phraya. This morphed to Phatthaya, or Pad Tha Ya. Which can also mean (or so we are told) “the wind blowing from the southwest to the northeast at the beginning of the rainy season.”

Any way the wind blows (which doesn’t really matter, as Freddy Mercury noted), Pattaya today hosts over six million visitors a year. Regardless of its origins, Pattaya — aka Sodom-by-Sea or the Gomorrah-of-Tomorrah — now spells “Nightlife”. In fact the town doesn’t really get going until early evening when hundreds of beer bars thronged by chirpy hostesses start to pump up the volume. For a walk on the mildly wild side, stroll down the famous, neon-blazing Walking Street, the heart and groin of Pattaya after dark. Many visitors just pull up a pew and a beer at one of the street-front bars, there to contemplate the nocturnal human zoo in all its beauty and bawdiness.

As Thailand’s largest resort town, Pattaya reportedly produces annual tourist revenues of around US$1.5 billion and has 35,000 (and growing) hotel rooms. Time magazine described it as “arguably the birthplace of mass tourism in modern Asia and still its undisputed capital.” Not a bad growth spurt for a little-known village that welcomed its first foreign visitors just over 51 years ago. Or was that 53?

(pics John Borthwick, 2012)

Sleepy Koh Phayam

Guest blogger John Borthwick shares another of Thailand's hidden island treasures...

The little Thai island of Koh Phayam floats just south of Burma, seemingly in the waters of amnesia.

A dot in the Andaman Sea 30 km from Ranong, Koh Phayam (pronounced “pie-am”) has no cars or roads, few bars, no condo towers or squealing paragliders. “We have nothing like that yet,” a Thai man tells me. “And I hope we don’t get.”

Phayam’s accommodation consists mostly of bungalow resorts. I’ve booked at Bamboo Bungalows on Aow Yai Beach, that’s run by a mellow Israeli, Yuli and his Thai wife, Nut. Yuli paints a picture of when he arrived here 15 years ago: “Foreigners were as rare as hornbills. There were only five resorts then – now there are 35.”

I grab a kayak and paddle out into the lazy blue swell. A small wave breaks there all day long — hardly classic surf, but still it’s a wave. On Phayam you take naps, long walks, longer reads and perhaps a trip to “town” for cinnamon buns or a few beers.



The island’s two main west coast beaches — Aow Yai and Aow Khao Kwai — are backed by low, forested hills, while the east coast is mostly mangrove shore. I hire a motorbike and explore Phayam’s two “roads” — just 2.5 km of narrow concrete pathways — aiming for the isolated beach of Aow Kwang Peeb. A precipitous track drops me down to its perfect emerald bay with a fingernail of sandy shoreline. I dive right in.



Among the more upmarket accommodation is Payam Cottage Resort. At the other end of the scale are low-rent cabanas where the pathway borders are formed, tellingly, by empty beer bottles.

Phayam’s appeal is still defined by what it lacks: discos, ATMs, beer bars and taxi mafia. However ... back at Bamboo Bungalows I do lap up the cold beer and Nut’s delicious tiger prawns. Yuli jokes, “Guests complained when there was no internet, so I got it. Soon they complained it was too slow, so I installed free wireless. What’s next?”

“The younger backpackers go to the ‘bar islands’,” he says, referring to already demised “paradises” like Phi Phi and Koh Tao, places now awash with tattoo shops and pizza parlours. Phayam is frequently described as “Like Koh Samui or Phuket 30 years ago” — a cliché that’s loaded with troubling prophecy.



Come late afternoon, Koh Phayam’s cicadas crank up the volume and the dusk lightshow begins. Above the ghost islands off Burma thunder clouds are stacked thousands of metres high, grey phantoms of vapour twitching with lightning. The sky slowly burns down from purple haze to darkness while along the beach a party bonfire flares up and a conga drummer kicks in.



(pics: John Borthwick)

What Goes Up...

It’s that time of the year again, when the skies above Thailand twinkle with floating lanterns, drifting on the thermals along with a million hopes and dreams...

Lighting hot air lanterns is a traditional part of the Loy Krathong celebrations all over Thailand (which this year falls on November 28). In the northern Lanna city of Chiang Mai, this beautiful ritual is taken one step further with its own festival, Yi Peng (held on the full moon of the second month of the Lanna calendar, which this year is celebrated November 25 to 29). During this festival, hanging lanterns adorn every house and public spaces in Chiang Mai, while thousands of khom loys (as the lanterns are called) are released into the air en masse, creating a Milky Way of floating lights.

It’s truly a breathtaking sight, and a thought-provoking, spiritual experience. Releasing of the lanterns is said to represent worries and fears floating away on the breeze, and the ritual of lighting the inner fuel cells, waiting for the balloon to fill, feeling that tug as it morphs into life, then gently releasing and watching it drift away is a wonderful, euphoric moment.

But what goes up must come down - and there is increasing concern that the khom loys create an environmental hazard as the lanterns disintegrate and the metal rim falls back to earth (or even worse, into the sea.) And of course, there is also the ever-present danger of fire, with many a lantern misfiring and plummeting to the ground via a tree or wooden house.

The key to a guilt-free Yi Peng festival is to maybe seek out environmentally-friendly versions of the lanterns, made with a bamboo rim; alternatively, perhaps share your khom loy with a friend, thereby minimising the waste.

The same applies for anyone releasing a krathong, the floating offerings released into rivers and waterways. Avoid styrofoam floats at all cost; all-natural materials are not only biodegradable, but far more beautiful anyway.

Bangkok Literary Festival Opens

Damn! I’m a little late for this event - the very first Bangkok Literary Festival. But definitely something I’ll put in the diary for next year - both as a writer and a fan of good literature.

The inaugural event has just begun in the City of Angels, bringing together more than 100 writers, translators and publishers from around Asia and the Pacific in conjunction with one of Asia’s longest-running and most prestigious literary events, the South East Asian Writers’ Award.

The four-day think-tank for writing professionals - with the theme ‘Reaching the World’ - kicked off today with a two day summit exploring the value of literary prizes and the need for quality translators to take Asian manuscripts to the world. The event will also feature author showcase readings by Thai writers, creative writing workshops by international authors, and the gala ceremony for the SEA Writers Award.

Special guests include Australian writer Matthew Condon, author of A Night at the Pink Poodle and The Trout Opera, and Hong Kong author and satirist Nuri Vittachi, who is a great champion of literary prizes, having been the driving force behind the (recently axed) Man Asian Literary Prize. Mr Vittachi will host an ‘open mic’ event called The Storytellers’ Soiree at Q Bar, 34 Sukumvit Soi 11, from 6pm on Wednesday, where writers can read their work and share it with the public.

The literary festival takes places as Bangkok gears up for a year in the literary spotlight, having been designated World Book Capital in 2013 by UNESCO - a title given to a city in recognition of its contribution to the book industry. The committee said it chose Bangkok "for its willingness to bring together all the various stakeholders in the book supply chain and beyond, actors involved in the publication chain for a range of projects proposed, for its community-focused and the high level of its commitment through the proposed activities."

Another notch in Bangkok’s cultural crown, and another step towards it becoming a major player in the world literary scene.

For more information and a list of events at the literary festival, visit http://apwriters.org/home/asia-pacific-writers-supports-s-e-a-write-festival/

A Crappy Cup of Coffee

One of the great things about living in Sydney is its coffee - it really is the best in the world (praise be to Buzzzbar, Newtown, for my morning fix). Or is it? It’s certainly not the most expensive - that honour goes to ... drum roll ... Thailand, where my friends from the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation have produced a brew worth its weight in gold.

Trouble is, it’s shit. Quite literally. Or at least, derived from shit. Pardon my French.

Called Black Ivory coffee, this exclusive drop - offered to guests at Anantara resorts in Thailand and the Maldives - is made from Thai Arabica coffee beans digested by elephants, dispersed in their dung, then recollected and sun-dried before being roasted and brewed using an antique ‘balancing syphon’ method developed in Austria in 1840.

Two cups of elephant poo coffee cost US$50; a kilo of digested beans sells for $1100. Only 50 kilograms of the beans are currently available for sale, while the eles work on creating more.

According to elephant guru John Roberts, enzymes in an elephant’s stomach break down coffee protein, subsequently reducing bitterness. He describes it in his blog (www.elephant-tails.anantara.com) as “very light coffee whose aroma puts you in mind of returning to a proper jungle after a long absence... the sense of steam and vegetation that a well inhabited jungle just has.” Think that means it’s hot, pungent and steamy ... as all good coffee should be.

Of course, elephants aren’t the first animals put to work in the creation of coffee. In Indonesia, beans digested by civet cats were once the most expensive in the world, at $340 for a pound. Mind you, I’d rather drink beans that came through a vegetarian mammal’s tract rather than a stinky carnivore that’s been eating rat guts...

And of course, the elephants get something back - a percentage of all coffee sales goes back to GTAEF, which cares for 30 rescued street elephants, along with their mahouts and families. Which doesn’t leave a bitter taste at all.

www.anantara.com

contemplating a good cup of coffee on an Anantara elephant