Travel Planning: Bangkok

Made plans over the weekend to go Bangkok over the Labour Day week. Scoot was having a 20% sale on flight tickets, but the timing wasn't too good. Went to Jetstar and found that they are having a 1 day promo as well. Got my tickets at S$174 each inclusive of tax. Not too bad imo.

With the flight settled, next is accommodation. Initially, I was pretty decided that we will stay in Baiyoke Boutique since our experience there 2 years back was awesome (cheap, nice clean room and right smack in Pratunam, which is where we spent most of our time). There are some flaws, but those ain't major and we can live with it.

2 key flaws of Baiyoke Boutique (based on our experience 2 years back)

1. when walking back to the hotel, you need to walk through this tunnel that seems to be the tunnel for some sewage system, so it stinks. so we will always hold our breath and run through it everytime we need to walk past.
2. you need to walk up a small flight of stairs to get to the lift. This is not too friendly if you have big luggages or you're travelling with elderly who can't really climb the stairs

During our trip last year, we booked Baiyoke Suite (sister hotel of Baiyoke Boutique and Baiyoke Sky). In summary, there's 3 good things about Baiyoke Suite:

1. Location (right smack in Pratunam, just a stone away from Platinum mall)
2. Very big room (plenty of space to throw a party, and to put your luggages and shopping loots. The rooms are made up of a living room and a bedroom
3. Buffet spread in their hotel is pretty good, with a nice view of the city

Sounds good? HOWEVER, we will not book this hotel again, unless there is really no choice. Room is super  dirty (OMG. the stains on the sofa is so horrible I dare not sit on them or even place my shopping on it). There are plenty of baby cockroaches running around, and into your luggages and shopping bags. It's quite scary when going through your bags cos cockroaches can come crawling out all of a sudden. Morning call for my husband every morning was my "cry-for-help" because some cockroaches are crawling around the basin/toilet floor/bag. It's that bad.

Back to Baiyoke Boutique. I almost went ahead to book the rooms when my instinct tells me to go read up some reviews in case the standard of the hotel dropped. True enough, the reviews I see on TripAdvisor is pretty disturbing. But I'm pretty surprised that many people commented the place is "run-down" and "needs renovation", given that just 2 years ago it looks pretty new and awesome. Main concern for me when I read for the reviews are "coackroaches" (AGAIN? what's Baiyoke management doing?) and security. Makes me think twice and decide to go search for another hotel.

This time, we will be staying in a newly-opened-in-Nov-2012 hotel called The 93 Hotel. Review on TripAdvisor is pretty positive, though it is slightly more expensive that Baiyoke Boutique and Baiyoke Suite, will give is a go (actually still quite cheap la, at S$60+/night). Some pictures taken from Agoda. Looks good right? But photos can be so deceiving these days. Will update again with real pictures. :)