Le Fenix: more a beach party than just a Bangkok hotel

I thought I was seeing things. This, in itself, is not unusual in Bangkok, but let me explain …

Entering the lobby of Le Fenix Sukhumvit Hotel with its playful splashes of orange and red, I felt I’d walked into scene from Alice in Wonderland. You see, there was a gent standing there whose head looked like it was actually poking up through the ceiling, jing jing. I did a double take.

Sure enough, I wasn’t far wrong. It turned out to be a syncronous moment in which the world’s tallest man happened to be standing under the world’s lowest ceiling. And as though that wasn’t funny enough, he turned out to be a Dutchman dressed for whatever reason like Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter.

As I said: unusual sights are in themselves not really unusual in Bangkok.

Le Fenix is full of such quirkiness …

The place itself is comfortable enough, designery enough, to carry off its mid-range value boutique hotel positioning. A see-through swimming pool  on an upper floor that gives revelers on soi 11 below a bottom-dwellers’ eye view of you doing your laps (or lap dance) in the pool for instance.

This hotel is slap-bang in the middle of some great BKK party venues, such as Bed Supper Club (50 metres down the road) and Q Bar (longstanding Bangkok favourite) you will literally fall into if you trip on the stairs coming out of Le Fenix.

And clearly not a few guests had been sipping liberally from the cup of Bangkok's notorious nightlife. A couple of Japanese or Korean girls spent a good 15 minutes trying to get the key in the door of the room next door to mine, giggling all the while, until they realized they were either on the wrong floor or had been using their ATM card instead of their key card. Another Western couple stumbled in around 6am full of good cheer and bon homie, just as I was grumpily heading down for breakfast and an early red-eye flight.

But now, with The Nest, there’s no need to even leave the hotel for one of Bangkok’s coolest nights out. This rooftop bar serves 200 baht cocktails (that’s about $6 to you) and after a few you really feel like you are on the beach in Phuket or even in Ibiza or the Carribean. The beach sand floor creates a let's-get-ready-to-party chilling mindset while the DJ spins loungey sort of stuff.

It’s open from 5pm if you want to catch the sunset and twilight glow over the burgeoning Bangkok skyline, and open till 2am,  to add an extra leg to the Bed and Q Bar routine. 

And popular too … I had to wait for at least 3 full elevator loads to pass my floor before I could get in at midnight.

Three hot dates for your Thailand calendar 2011 ...

Hurry, hurry, hurry!!! Amazing Thailand Grand Sale is NOW on till August 15. It’s a nationwide shopping extravaganza, and when it’s in the world’s best-value destination, you know the deals are sensational.

15,000 shops, departments stores, spas, airlines,  hotels, hospitals, duty free, jewllery, even golf courses are dropping their shorts for you with discounts of up to 80%.

More important events in the Thailand calendar 2011:

5 December 2011: to commemorate the auspisicous  occasion of His Majesty the King’s 7^th cycle birthday anniversary a whole raft of celebrations are planned. If you’ve never witnessed a Royal Barge Procession on the Chao Phraya River, make sure you attend this timeless spectacle. Is there a grander pageant on this planet? None that I've seen so far.

9 November 2011 – 15 February 2012: Royal Flora Ratchaphruek 2011. Also part of His Majesty’s celebrations, this annual flower show is held in the Chiang Mai winter, a beautiful time to visit the north. 30 countries set up colourful and charming displays over 80 hectares … so make sure you take time to stop and smell the roses -- after all, orchids have no smell, jing jing.

Of course there are hundreds of other Amazing Thailand festivals and events you can catch year round, too.

Amazing Thailand's value compared to Singapore

I just returned from Singapore where I paid SGD$100 per night for a shoebox cleverly disguised as a boutique hotel. Forget about room to swing the cat -- I would've bludgeoned the poor thing to death on the walls accidentally on the first revolution.

It was pleasant enough, with an OK location in an interesting Chinatown neighbourhood, but it was a shoebox all the same – complete with rooms without windows. And breakfast was sachets of 3-in-1 coffee and a do-it-yourself peanut butter toasted sandwich, burned while the grinning Chinese duty manager stood there burping in the corner, jing jing.

Now, dear readers, SGD$100 is equal to about 2600 baht per night.  I know places in Chiang Mai where you get an airy room with views of the mountains, a bath tub, and a full American breakfast, all for 650 baht (that's a ridiculous $30 or so). And 2000-2500 baht a night boutique hotels in Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, which include designer chic inclusions, near-BTS locations, a wonderful cooked breakfast selection, and all the smiles you can possibly handle.

If you want to see what you can get for around 2500 baht per night in Thailand (around 80 or 90 real dollars), go to any of the popular hotel booking sites like agoda, asiarooms.com, bookings.com and put in that price range for the destination of your choice, then stand back as the avalanche of choice floods out of your screen.

Just think: what do you get for $80-90 a night in your country? See, travel to Thailand is cheaper than staying home.

That, dear readers, is Amazing Thailand’s amazing value …

Facts on Thailand: a Travel Guide for Beginners.

While researching this blog I was struck by an alarming fact: there are a lot of facts about Amazing Thailand that people – yes, including me – simply don’t know. And that’s a fact.

Like what, you might ask? Well, when I stumbled across a Google search statistic that showed 170 people a month were searching for ‘Chiang Mai Surfers’ that hit pretty close to home – given that I live in Chiang Mai – and I thought, damn that’s one thing I haven’t done here in ages … gone to the local beach for a surf.

Well, sorry to break it to you like this, surfer dudes, the nearest beach to Chiang Mai is probably around 750 km away, and that’s probably in Burma. (Burma, yeah dude, that’s another country in Asia. No, dude, Asia’s a continent. Yeah, we’ve got beaches in Thailand because we’ve got 2705 kilometres of shoreline, just not in Chiang Mai, so chill.)

Little known fact #1: Chiang Mai province is actually home to five of Thailand’s eight highest peaks but I’ll deal with that in a later blog.

So I thought a few bare facts for anyone looking at Thailand travel (or Thailande, Tailand, Koh Thailand or even Thialand as many people mistype it) would be a great place to start this journey.

Local Thai customs:

Thailand is one of the most devout Buddhist countries in the world, with over 90 per cent of its population practicing Theravada Buddhism. Monks and temples are respected and revered, so do use common sense in terms of modest dress and behaviour in their vicinity. The gesture of respect is the Wai, pronounced why. (There’s no truth in the rumour Tom Jones’ song Wai, wai, wai Delihah was written after he had to continually remind his girlfriend to show respect). The wai is performed by raising your clasped hands in a praying position in front of your face with your fingertips about level with your chin plus a downward tilt of the head.

The royal family is absolutely revered by the Thai people, and rightly so. At cinemas they’ll play the royal song, and often at 6pm on a Sunday evening in public markets and stations. It is correct to stand still and silent for the duration.

For years, Thailand has been known as the Land of Smiles. It is not a put on for tourists – I’ve seen plenty of evidence of this well off the beaten track. If you smile it shows your heart is in the right place (jai dee), and you will get an excellent return on investment with a gleaming smile back. A smile is like a master key, and you’ll find it opens the door to better service, better treatment, and possibly friendships. But at very least YOU will feel better and happier within yourself.

The one golden rule for Thais is sanuk (fun). If something’s not sanuk, forget about it.

Popular Thai destinations:

To help you start researching your own Thailand holiday and Thailand hotels, here are the key gateways and destinations you might want to include in your itinerary:

• Ayutthaya
• Bangkok (not spelt Bankok)
• Chiang Mai (no, it’s not spelt Chiangmai or Chang Mai)
• Chiang Rai
• Hua Hin
• Kanchanaburi
• Khao Lak
• Khao Yai
• Koh Chang
• Koh Phanghan
• Koh Samui
• Krabi
• Pattaya
• Phuket (including Patong)
• Sukhothai

I’ll deal with each of these in upcoming blogs, and of course there are thousands more places in between … it’ll take me a lifetime to cover them all, which I fully intend to do. (And if I embrace Buddhism, I’ll have the next life, and the next … to do it.)

Approximate distances between main centres in Thailand.

Bangkok to ...

Ayutthaya: 80 km. Driving time around 1.5 hours.
Chiang Mai: 700 km. Flying time 1 hour 15 mins
Chiang Rai: 825 km. Flying time 1 hour 20 mins.
Hua Hin: 300 km. Driving time 3 hours.
Kanchanaburi: 139 km. Driving time 2.5 hours.
Khao Lak (via Phuket). 880 km. Driving time 12 hours.
Khao Yai: 250 km. Driving time 3 hours.
Koh Chang (via Trat): 330 km. Flying time 1 hour then boat.
Koh Panghan (via Ko Samui): 340 km. Flying time 1 hour then boat.
Koh Samui: 575 km. Flying time around 1 hour 15 mins.
Krabi: 946 km. Flying time 1 hour 20 minutes.
Pattaya: 120 km. Flying time 1 hour 10 mins.
Phuket: 830 km. Flying time 1 hour 25 mins
Sukhothai: 425 km. Flying time 1 hour 25 minutes.

There are 12 airlines (including several budget carriers offering cheap flights) to get you around the country, plus an excellent rail system, buses, boats, tuk tuks, scooters and even elephants. The roads by and large are very good, and I’ll be giving you the low-down on driving Thailand and how best to motorcycle Thailand in later blogs.

Weather:

Mostly hot and humid year round. Hey, it’s a tropical country, what’d you expect? But …

North of Bangkok: From June to October southwest monsoon and rains.
November to February, mostly dry.
March to May, dry and increasingly hot.

South of Bangkok: On west coast, from April to October southwest monsoon. On east coast monsoonal rains from September to December. The south is generally wetter than the north.

Currency:

Thai baht. It’s easy to remember if you’re a fan of the Simpsons – ‘Doh Bart!’ Amazing Thailand has been rated the world’s 2nd best value travel destination, according to Lonely Planet’s ‘Best in Travel 2010’ guide, behind only Iceland which is suffering financial meltdown. Now’s a great time to get Thailand deals due to relative weakness of the Baht. See www.oanda.com for currency exchange rates.

For much more detail on all of the above see www.tourismthailand.org. They’ve even got a cool itinerary generator tool to get you started on planning your next Thialand, er, Tailand, um, Thailand holiday.

So no matter how far you live from the sea, you can always surf across to that site.

PS: Any other facts you think would be useful for me to include? Please leave your comments and suggestions here.