Anantara Siam Bangkok Hotel

The Hotel

The hotel at 155 Rajadamri Road opened in March 1983 as Regent Bangkok, designed by architect Wimon Lokitsataporn — a 354-room courtyard-pavilion plan deliberately set in opposition to the high-rise tower form that the rest of central Bangkok was adopting at the time. The building took its visual vocabulary from the indoor-outdoor sala arrangement of the Royal Palace's Chakri Maha Prasat era — an entrance saluting elephant on the porte-cochère, a colonnaded Lobby Salon framed in teak and lacquer, and a cascade of garden courtyards descending to the swimming pool. Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts took over operation in 2002 and ran the property as Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok until 31 October 2015. Minor International's Anantara brand assumed operation on 1 November 2015 and rebranded the property Anantara Siam Bangkok — making it the flagship Anantara city property in Asia. The Bencharong Suites and the building envelope are largely as designed in 1983.

The 354 rooms (including 35 suites) are organised across two interconnected courtyard wings, with all rooms looking inward across the property's gardens, the lap pool, or Rajadamri Road. The category lineup runs from the 45-sqm Premier Room (the entry category, which is a comfortably-sized standard at the Bangkok luxury level) to the 80-sqm Premier Junior Suite, the 110-sqm Anantara Suite, and the 170-sqm Bencharong Suite (the property's signature unit, with a private dining room, separate study, and a 32-sqm furnished terrace). The 2015 Anantara conversion refreshed the soft furnishings and the bathroom finishes throughout but left the iconic Paiboon Suwannakudt hand-painted silk murals — depicting the legendary Thai Tha Khae Buddhist dance-drama — in their original 1983 positions in the Lobby Salon, the Aqua Bar, and the Lord Jim's seafood restaurant.

The dining cluster is the property's most established cultural overlay. Spice Market is the original 1983-opened Thai-traditional venue, set in a recreated 19th-century Bangkok market hall (the model that almost every Thai-themed luxury hotel restaurant in Asia subsequently copied). Madison is the dry-aged steakhouse on the second floor with the city's strongest hotel-steak programme. Lord Jim's is the seafood-and-grill room overlooking the lap pool, named for Joseph Conrad's novel and serving a daily-changing market-led menu. Biscotti is the contemporary Italian under chef Davide Pirovano. Aqua Bar is the cocktail bar in the colonial conservatory. The Sunday Brunch — set across all five restaurants and the Lobby Salon, with simultaneous Champagne, oyster bar, sushi counter, foie gras station, dessert atelier, and the only chocolate fountain in any Bangkok luxury hotel that's still operationally honest — has been Bangkok's most-decorated weekly hotel brunch for two consecutive decades and remains the social anchor of the property.

The Anantara Spa is a 1,000-square-metre wellness floor with eleven treatment rooms, two couples' suites, a hammam, and an outdoor traditional Thai-massage sala in the property garden. The 25-metre lap pool with the surrounding teak-decked sun terrace is the city's most-used hotel pool, partly because the Royal Bangkok Sports Club opposite has no public access. Position is the second proposition: directly across Rajadamri Road from the Royal Bangkok Sports Club polo grounds, two minutes from CentralWorld and the Erawan Shrine, four minutes from Siam Paragon and Erawan, six minutes from the BTS Skytrain at Ratchadamri, and a 35-minute drive from Suvarnabhumi International. For travellers who want the original-canon Bangkok grand hotel format with a 40-year track record across three brand-eras intact, Anantara Siam is the considered answer.

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