The Peninsula Bangkok

The first thing a guest sees from the Peninsula's pier is not the hotel but the river. The Chao Phraya is at its widest here, opposite the Sathorn district, and The Peninsula Bangkok stands on the Thonburi bank with its back to Charoen Nakhon Road and its face to the water. The hotel opened in November 1998, in the middle of the Asian financial crisis, and was the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels group's first property in Thailand.

Architecture and design

The tower rises 37 storeys and is drawn in a shallow W. The plan is not a flourish. It means that no room faces the land, and that every bedroom window frames some part of the river and the skyline of Bangrak and Sathorn beyond it. The lobby runs the full width of the ground floor behind a wall of glass, so the view arrives before the reception desk does.

The gardens between the tower and the river are planted with mature trees and run down to a pool built in three terraces, each at a different level and linked by water. A separate building for the spa, in the style of a Thai colonial house with deep verandas and a dark timber frame, stands at the edge of the grounds.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has around 370 rooms and suites. Bedrooms are large by city standards and keep the Peninsula habit of putting controls for lighting, curtains and the television on a bedside panel. Bathrooms have a separate bath and shower and, in most categories, a window of their own. Higher floors look over the river to the towers of Silom and Sathorn; lower floors sit closer to the barges and longtail boats that work the water all day.

Dining

Mei Jiang serves Cantonese food in a dining room on the ground floor with its own river terrace. Thiptara is the Thai restaurant and is set outdoors under banyan trees beside the water, with tables that fill in the evening. The River Café and Terrace handles breakfast and a long all-day menu, and the bar on the upper lobby floor has a view that most guests photograph at dusk. Afternoon tea is served in the lobby, as it is in every Peninsula.

Wellness

The Peninsula Spa occupies the three-storey colonial-style pavilion in the garden. Treatment rooms are arranged over the upper floors, with private suites for couples, and the ground floor holds the relaxation areas. The pool terraces below are shaded by trees and kept away from the road, which keeps them quiet in a city that rarely is.

Weddings and events

The hotel's main function room is the Sakuntala Ballroom, with smaller salons alongside it for meetings and dinners. Weddings use the ballroom and, for ceremonies and receptions, the lawns beside the river, which are among the few large riverside gardens in central Bangkok. The hotel handles Thai, Chinese and Western wedding formats and has a long record of corporate meetings for companies based in the Sathorn business district across the water.

Location

The Thonburi bank is the reason to stay here and the one thing to understand before booking. The hotel is not within walking distance of the Skytrain. Instead, the Peninsula runs its own shuttle boats across the river to a pier at Saphan Taksin, from where the BTS line reaches Siam and Sukhumvit in a few stops. The crossing takes a couple of minutes and runs late into the evening. ICONSIAM, the large riverside mall, is a short distance along Charoen Nakhon Road. Suvarnabhumi airport is roughly 45 minutes away by car outside the rush hours, longer within them. For a luxury hotel in Bangkok it is unusually calm, and that is the trade it offers against the convenience of Sukhumvit.