Bangkok Confidential: Our adventures along the Chao Phraya River
Bangkok Confidential: Our adventures along the Chao Phraya River
In this episode: We're hotel-hopping in Thailand this week. Here's what we discovered. (Recorded 7/21/23 in Bangkok)
Appears in this episode
Hi again from Bangkok, where we’ve spent the last week hotel-hopping along the Chao Phraya River.
And wow, what a mind-blowing experience!
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Here’s this week’s question: What’s the best hotel experience you’ve ever had? I’m talking about the most over-the-top luxurious resort you’ve ever been to. We’d love to hear about it!
Here’s the Anantara Riverside as seen from the Avani+, a high-rise shopping complex and hotel. This resort had one of the best pools we’ve seen in Bangkok and impressive views of the river and the Krung Thep Bridge.
Aren and Iden enjoy a snack at the Four Season Bangkok. Many of the rooms have a stunning view of the river, and one of our favorite things to do was sit in the room at night and watch the barges go by. Did we mention that Thai food is incredible?
A room at The Siam, one of the other luxury hotels we checked out during our Bangkok visit. Each room here is different and individually decorated. Of all the hotels, this one was the most eclectic. As I mentioned in the podcast, this is where Indiana Jones stays when he comes to Bangkok.
A private villa at the Capella, a boutique luxury hotel located next to the Four Seasons. This hotel had it all — river views, individual service, and a distinctly Scandinavian aesthetic. At times, I felt as if I was touring a museum.
Please don’t forget this week’s question: What’s the best hotel experience you’ve ever had? We love getting your comments.
We’ll have more from Bangkok next week.
Bangkok Confidential: Our adventures along the Chao Phraya River
Another incredible hotel experience. We were driving through Slovenia with no hotel reservations. We saw a palace-like hotel (Hotel Villa Bled) on the shores of Lake Bled in the Julian Alps. We were the only guests in this large hotel. They told us it was empty because people thought there was still war nearby. We were given a huge suite that looked like it was frozen in the 1950s, looking onto Lake Bled and the chapel on the island in the lake. The next morning at breakfast they had made a buffet of everything they thought Americans would like and asked us to tell people it was safe to come to Slovenia. When we checked out, they told us the hotel was the former summer palace of Marshall Tito. The history of who had been in this hotel! We were so touched by the kindness of staff abd wished we could have stayed longer.
My husband worked for the Olympics and we were in Montreaux, Switzerland, for an Olympics-associated meeting. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne, Switzerland, invited us to be their guests in Lausanne to visit the IOC headquarters. They gave us accommodations at the beautiful Beau Rivage Palace on the edge of Lake Geneva. We still talk about the elegant room and the experience of eating breakfast on our balcony looking at the lake and Alps. (For best customer service experience, the St Regis in Abu Dhabi as I've mentioned 273 times previously.)