Asia After Hours

Four Seasons hotel, Chiang Mai

The Four Seasons likes to emphasize that they are the natural resort compared with the Dhara Devi. I spoke with a person who worked at the Dhara Devi before. It seems that they have in general the more friendly staff, I got to know many of them, also the general manager Mr. Blomqist. The problem is that the resort lacks a real structure and it is not fun to go to their main pool and spa. They have the same buggies (why the hell same design…) like at Dhara Devi, but i prefer to walk. At their pool I feel too much presented and didn’t see any cozy spot. The spa is brilliant, one of my very best spa experiences ever. They gave me their suite room and the therapist was of the same class what the Peninsula offers you in Bangkok. Knowing now at least 1 therapist personally in the top 10 spas of Bangkok, I could provide you with some details, you will not find anywhere else in the internet.
Some people might like that it is so distant, about 30min from the city and close to the Mae Rim elephant camp. I think when I really want to get away from it all, I rather stay at their Tented Camps close to Chiang Rai. So I don’t see the neccessity for myself returning there.
When 2 girls from Bangkok visited me on the second day, I knew it would cause problems if they want to go out. I tried to convince them to just enjoy the villa, but they won to convince me to find out about Chiang Mai’s nightlife which turned out to be a joke. Keep Chiang Mai for relaxing as a tourist. Chiang Mai is for me personally the world’s best retirement spot, I also placed them 3rd in my worldwide city rankings which tells you how much I love it there. If you have children, they have good schools, their university is pretty good as well, Maharaj hospital plays in a high league and it is just a very convenient and not too expensive city.
Best of all is their people : still very honest and friendly, not as rushed and money-focused as some in Bangkok.

Back to the Four Seasons and my criticism : Although they have a very charming cooking school, they dissapointed me there with their Thai food. The girls called the Tom Yum Goong soup : “Water with shrimps”. And they were right, it looked more like Misu soup – well, there is an old saying for Thailand which is often pretty much true : “The more you pay for the Thai food, the worse it gets”…
Second thing was just bad luck and not their fault : My 15 inch laptop fitted just about exact into the safe. Sometime i tried to open it, the safe was somehow locked in the middle of open and close. This procedure turned out to become an all-night (2 hours) event. At first they tried to open it with some electronic keys, that didn’t work. Well, more and more people showed up in the villa around midnight with a 7am check-out next day, 2 sexy, a little drunk girls in the villa who wanted to sleep, and still all my important stuff in there. I the end they did it the brutal way and using heavy machines to drill into that thing and completely breaking it apart with many holes. The girls were cracking up like shit, laughing that I have to get my diamonds out of that thing. Man, I was really pissed there, because I had a flight going out to the Philippines the next day and I wasn’t sure how fast they could open it.
The Thai senior person who was doing the night-shift at the reception was extremely helpful and friendly, we still saw him at 7am, pretty stressful night for him as well. The staff of the Four Seasons in Thailand is just a one of its kind. Many thanks again.

video to follow

Popularity: unranked

Four Seasons hotel Bangkok : the benchmark of Bangkok

The Four Seasons remain at the top of my list. They are simply hard to beat. At Tripadvisor they only rank #50  which just tells every frequent Bangkok traveller how much more accurate my own ranking for Bangkok is. An authority rating/ranking can be better than that of an unknown, certain broad mass which is often not representative anyway. Tripadvsior ranks Chatrium Suites #1, fantastic, I crack myself up…How many of those 479 reviews were paid and staged ones ? Facebook speaks a different language here. The Bangkok Four Seasons currently got 3750 fans, they are right now promoting their way up to 5000. Impressive is that of all world’s Four Seasons, the one in Bangkok seems to be the one with most charms and therefore also got the most fans. Some more analysis in the part 2 video.

In the picture below you see Mr.Lehfeld, the Biscotti manager. It is the best Italian restaurant I have been to in Bangkok so far and it is actually not that expensive. I had a very delicious lasagne there. Sadly Mr. Lehfeld will transfer to Singapore.

The spa is a good one but cannot compete with the very top ones. Those guys below were really funny.

At the pool I met a dentist from Taiwan, Charlie. I had a good chat with him and we exchanged contacts. In Bangkok people seem to totally open themselves. You can talk about everything which people would normally not do in their home country. The mind-fuck system has much less control over your thoughts there.

The pool is very nice, I think I like it most of all Bangkok hotels.

The entrance people are also the best and most professional you can possibly find in entire Bangkok. Special thanks to Frank, a driver there. But the best is probably that you can just walk outside of the hotel. I love walking to places that I like.

The location is just hard to beat and in my eyes it is the most central one for everything. The location is the major driver for everything, it totally determines what is accessible for you within short reach. In the different areas of Bangkok you will see that the type of business travellers / casual tourists change very much. The Siam / Ratchadamri Road location has the most interesting mix of everything in my eyes.

The vibe in the executive lounge and lobby is really exciting. The Peninsula and Sukhothai somehow feel so isolated and a bit out of this world, at the Four Seasons you very much have the feeling to be where the dynamics are coming from.

That person below is also a true character. He got a very British accent and is a very helpful person. Their staff is very rich of interesting personalities.

The staff truely values returning guests and when you treat them well, they do remember you : mutual support, I like that. They have a fine honor codex.

The view of the room was very nice. But let me tell you something I found out for myself. After around a week, the whole luxury and service somehow appeared unneccessary for me. It is good to have a welcome and leaving point I think. I simply didn’t feel much after 7 days anymore, a longer stay would have been questionable for me. I guess for longer stays like a month renting a serviced apartment is the best option. At a certain point you just want to be for yourself, without staff, tourists or going through all facilites before being in your room. With a 1 week Four Seasons stay you can also finance a month stay at a nice Thonglor serviced apartment which can have a pool as well and locals will be your neighbor, not tourists. The room costs THB 23.5K/day plus Tax and Vat.

The only negative remark about my stay was that my pre-confirmed early check-in was messed up. I arrived there 9am but could not enter the room before 3pm. Gladly time was passing fast working on my laptop in the executive lounge. In general I very much dislike waiting on travels. Time is my biggest limitation.

In conclusion the Four Seasons Bangkok is perfect for stays around a week. I will be back often. Such natural smiles you see below is what people keep in mind and that’s a good reason why Bangkok is #1 and not NYC…

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yh9SQAeVKU

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Lf0QaqjaI

Part 3 (to follow)

Popularity: unranked

Bang, Bang, Bangkok : Fuck the pain away

It’s been quiet a while since my last bargirl video.  I only made a little pause to show that the spectrum is getting more diverse. Bargirls will remain an important topic here. The video speaks for itself, I don’t think explanations are necessary.

Check out the video :

http://www.vimeo.com/6878149

Popularity: 1%