bangkok luxury hotel
bangkok luxury hotel

Bill Bensley’s Art Deco palace, The Siam

Why should I go now?

Thousands of tourists flock to Thailand every year to take part in intensive wellness and meditation retreats in monasteries round the country, but whilst most of these tend to involve at least degree of comfort deprivation, The Siam is offering its own luxury holistic programme throughout 2017 with visiting artisans running classes to help guests restore a sense of balance into their hectic lives. Think aromatic essential oils, cold towels, soft, fluffy dressing gowns and slippers. In other words, pure, indulgent bliss.

What’s the lowdown?

luxury travel bangkok

A treatment room at the Opium Spa

Designed by renowned architect and interior designer, Bill Bensley, The Siam is a contemporary Art Deco palace with traditional Thai elements, but whilst Art Deco architecture is usually known for its heavy facades and oppressive detailing, the hotel is light and airy with stark white walls and a glass roof atrium. Unlike most of the city’s other luxury hotels – towering skyscrapers, glinting on the skyline – The Siam is more like a creative home with a well curated art collection and original antique furnishings as well as cosy communal spaces where you can curl up in an arm chair listening to one of the hotel’s vinyls; the library area can also be transformed into a private cinema room, on request, complete with popcorn. As such, it attracts a stylish and refined crowd who value aesthetism over elitism. The Opium spa is seductively sultry and Thailand’s Princess  trains regularly in the hotel’s gym, which feature its own miniature Muay Thai ring. The real charm here is in all the thoughtful details; free water bottles to keep you hydrated in the humidity, umbrellas in case of sudden downpours, cards specially printed with Thai instructions for guests to hand taxi drivers, even a guard standing by to stop the traffic when you cross the road for a lunch time street food snack. If you must venture further into the city, The Siam’s sleek yacht transports guests up and down the river from its private pier. It’s as James Bond as it sounds.

Siam bangkok

One of the hotel’s sumptuous Pool Villas

Read next: Minjung Kim’s contemporary ink paintings at Aloft,  Hermès, Singapore

Bangkok's luxury hotel, The Siam

The sprouting glass atrium

Getting horizontal

Our suite was a sensual chamber of cool Art Deco black and white, with enough mirrors to satisfy the most vainglorious of guests and smooth jazz set as the default soundtrack. The room came with a butler, who took personal responsibility for all our needs and was fitted with its own bespoke smart phone programmed with city guides and useful hotel information.

Flipside

The only window in the room was behind the bathtub, but in Bangkok that’s not necessarily a disadvantage. It’s one of the few cities in the world where people actually avoid the views unless you’re into mazes of futuristic skyscrapers. Plus, since most of the hotel is glass and full of exotic plants, it’s easy enough to find natural light when you need it.

Rates: From THB 17,971 a night inclusive of breakfast, excluding tax and VAT (approx. USD $ 500/ €500/ £400)
Millie Walton

thesiamhotel.com

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Dom perignon dinner london

Superstars from fashion, design and media gathered at an uber-exclusive dinner in Vincent Square, central London, last week to celebrate the launch of Dom Pérignon‘s Plénitude Deuxième 2000 champagne.

Sarah Ann Macklin and Rosanna Falconer

Whitney Bromberg Hawkings, Peter Hawkings and Emilia Wickstead

Paco Sanchez and Richard Geoffroy

Louise Galvin and Charlie Bracken

The cuisine and champagne were made even more glorious by the short speeches from Richard Geoffroy, Chef de Cave at Dom Pérignon, which themselves blended the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida with the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. As to the Plénitude Deuxième (P2 for short): released 17 years after the vintage, it’s a sumptuous, complex drink, rich and open as many of the 2000 vintage champagnes were.

Nadja Swarovski and Rupert Adams

Lady Ashley Adjaye and Tamara Rojo

Farhad Heydari and Darius Sanai

Melinda Stevens

The extra time it has spent maturing in the Dom Pérignon caves in France have given it a soulfulness which determines that it will never be sprayed around over over half-naked waitresses in St Tropez nightclubs, as lesser version of prestige champagnes sadly continue to be. Instead, it is a champagne to enjoy with your soul mate, perhaps at a three Michelin-starred restaurant over a proposal. It should be contemplated as I did, wandering outside after the dinner and looking over at Westminster School‘s cricket pitch on Vincent Square, some decades after I last played there, as a desperate last-minute addition to the school Z team, never imagining I would be back 32 years later to sip a drink made 15 years in the future – and why would one, unless one were Baudelaire?

Darius Sanai
Images by Richard Young
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Reading time: 8 min