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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Every urban hotel aspires to being a cynosure of the city it’s in. Those that have succeeded can probably be counted on two hands. Having at least a century of operational history helps, as does an unassailable location. Above all such a hotel needs to be a repository of stories, both its own and the ones people create for themselves in it. Which brings us to the Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok, currently celebrating its 150th birthday.
I lived for a while in south-east Asia, so I have my own little volume of memories made on its premises. I once checked my mother and father in after a sweaty adventure across Cambodia, and the hotel’s concierges sorted massages, private temple visits, longtail boat rides deep into the khlong canals and family-style Thai feasts at the river’s edge; it was one of the most joyful times we’ve ever spent together. Years later, when I was based in Bangkok itself, I decamped there when my relationship cratered in decidedly unjoyful circumstances and I needed to be anywhere but the flat I shared with my partner (the hotel’s GM, who was by then a friend, sent up alternating pots of chamomile and bottles of Billecart-Salmon).
The Oriental, as its many devotees call it, was founded in 1876, when Thailand was still Siam. By the late 1880s it was the hub of the city’s social scene. There are books dedicated to its roll call of luminary guests and historic happenings: a young merchant seaman by the name of Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski – later, Joseph Conrad – visited in 1888. The 1920s and 1930s brought Noël Coward and W Somerset Maugham, whose repeat stays sealed The Oriental’s enduring reputation as a writer’s refuge. The early 1940s saw it occupied by Japanese forces, who gutted the ornate interiors and filled the suites with prisoners of war. Postwar, it recovered with the help of expat American silk magnate (and high-ranking OSS agent) Jim Thompson, who quickly became a denizen of its new Bamboo Bar, which remains one of Asia’s most rollicking good-fun places to listen to live jazz.
And so it went, through the construction of two new wings, an enormous spa in its own teak pavilion, and an eventual merger with the Mandarin hotel group. The lobby most evenings is an assemblage of diners, drinkers and garden-variety gawkers come down from the hostels and guesthouses in the sois of Thonglor to snap photos in front of the towering floral arrangements. Regular guests know to get their lengths in early at the pool, tiled in orchid motifs and surrounded by burnt-orange towel-clad loungers, before the sunbathers infiltrate.
The hotel has prepped a fresh face for its big birthday. Every room and suite has been remade; those in the Garden Wing are clad in pale hessian and Thai takes on De Gournay statement walls; the loft-like rooms in the River Wing have sleek velvet sectionals and tables set into bay picture windows, so when you look up from room service or your emails there’s the king of views laid out before you.
Female chefs are gratifyingly present: Anne-Sophie Pic has brought her two Michelin stars to Le Normandie, the French restaurant atop the Garden Wing, which she joined last September. But there’s also 35-year-old Phatchara “Pom” Pirapack, who oversees Baan Phraya, the hotel’s (excellent) new Thai fine-dining venue, wearing her signature Peaky Blinders cap. The terrace at Sala Rim Naam is still the place for more easy-going local food. Or get the club sandwich at The Verandah restaurant, any time of day; in the travelsphere it enjoys its own little cult of personality.
The Mandarin Oriental Hotel Company – Hong Kong-based, with 45 hotels and residential projects in 28 countries – has a dynamic new CEO who’s ex-LVMH, and a huge pipeline in the offing: Mallorca is imminent, as are projects in Bali, Suzhou and Vietnam, and in a couple of years there will be an entire Egypt circuit complete with a Nile cruiser. It’s a growth strategy that’s now endemic to the big luxury brands. How can you express soul at such ambitious scale? Good thing MOHC brass has an edge to leverage: the stories, and the magic, of their first and forever best in class. From THB16,575 (about £395), mandarinoriental.com
