Of random encounters in Bangkok

K?

So, after hanging out with M a couple of months ago… (and again now)… after seeing P @ Bully’s… finally, unsuspectingly I ran into K at Starbucks on Asoke. Memories of midnight champagne at the Dream and of sushi breakfast at the Landmark. Still crazy, but still gorgeous. How do you say esta es la vida loca in Thai?

Citrus, baby

Oh yeah. The saga continues, and in a couple of days I will be checking in at the Citrus. The reviews are mixed (“tired hotel”, “dirty sheets”) but the photos are cool.

Map here.

The Miracle Mile

So this time around I stayed far from the epicenter of Bangkok’s nightlife, and most definitely in a non-posh hotel. I wonder how would things have been had my first trip there been similar? In fact, I did stay for the first 3-4 nights at the not so hip and not so clean City Lodge on Soi 19, but when I completed the initial booked stay I moved just across the street to the shiny and luxurious Sheraton Sukhumvit Grande.

Hard Rock Cafe, the nightly walks on the “miracle mile”, Narcissus, everything started from there an created the image of Thailand (and Asia) that I still carry in my mind. Wonder if it would have been any different had my initial surroundings been On Nut and the (otherwise, nice) local Thai eatery S. took me to a week ago.

Fragments of Bangkok

• missing Dt… just found the pics from 6 years ago
• going to Sunrise Tacos, I found myself missing K. Crazy as a bat, but gorgeous, and kind hearted in her own unique way
• listening to Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto
• walking in knee deep water just outside Hard Rock Cafe. Where was the Telefon Band?
• met M and was more moved than I thought I would be, and I think she was too. 2 1/2 years since the wild days with C and the first encounter with her
• first time ever in Thailand that I don’t get any kinds of stomach ailments from street foods
• only one trip to the Mango and none known there
• Singapore: comfy. Bangkok: has a soul

Photos, soon.

What?

Who's your copywriter

Not into it that much

Was at the huge bookstore at Vivocity today. Looked at their selection of travel books (totally dwarfed by their immense, outrageously unlimited selection of design books; design books galore, if I may say so). Quite a few of their preferred destinations failed to move me in any way. Europe? blah. America? blah. Australia? why on earth would I care. Interest starts to grow once we’re talking places south of Ciudad Juarez. Socotra, maybe. Palau, definitely.

Feel free to go to Versailles or Manhattan. Just don’t expect to impress me.

Citrus

…is a hip hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

The Petronas Towers come with the package

Does that make me a hip-hotel-spotter? Maybe, but if I could live all my life in places such as this, preferably moving from one to another (say, Dream – Citrus – perhaps Sparks – …), I would be very happy. I just like the feeling of walking into the lobby, of checking into the neon lit room, then going out for a night about town.

Wallpaper* have their own rankings, some of which I do, some of which I don’t agree with – I’m not into the heavily ornated style of the hotel in Florence, for example. The Park Hyatt Shanghai is nice though, just as the Tokyo one where I was going to stay (or not).

Someday.

Black Cat

I already posted a link to Jazz@Southbridge, here is its counterpart in Jakarta.

Meanwhile, at the Sheraton

Here are some of the new Bangkok hotels I was talking about:

CitiChicInKrungThrepNaKha

CitiChic, somewhere on the way to Bed Supperclub.

Sukhumvit! Nana! Asoke!

S15, at the entrance of Soi 15 on Sukhumvit.
Looks like the Dream is getting some serious competition, and I will have to check one or several of the out to see if they can recreate the same sense of exhilaration I had when I walked in the Dream for the first time (my first digs ever in Bangkok was the rather grotty-looking City Lodge on Soi 19; I also stayed at the Sheraton, but I found Shangri La in Jakarta a much better value for money; although I have yet to find a designer hotel in JKT – perhaps Sparks, but it’s way up in North Jakarta, away from the bule friendly areas; and grandkemang isn’t there quite yet). Note to self: I should try to find found some swanky hotels in Singapore, too.

Happiness

Not sure where this poster is, somewhere in BKK; I’m pretty sure I have seen it but I don’t remember the location. Anyway.

Happiness, courtesy of BKK Diaries

Speaking of, I’ve seen the ‘BNE WAS HERE’ decals in various places in SG (first came across it in BKK around New Year’s). Is it a SEA-wide movement? Mystery deepens.