Hotel History Expert

Luxury is a relevant term. In the late 19th century, Bangkok was a quiet place, with few roads and mainly visited by traders and businessmen.

The Oriental Hotel was the finest resting place in town, boasting gardens extending to the riverbanks and the unusual feature of an upper storey. It had 40 rooms and such luxuries for the time and place as electric light, carpeted hallways, smoking room and billiards room. The hotel was proud to announce: ‘A steam launch conveys passengers and their baggage to and from all the Mail Steamers.’

Another distinctive feature was the spacious bar. Boats lined the river and the officers would drop by to enjoy a convivial drink. One such captain was Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, better known by his later pen name as Joseph Conrad. ‘We talked of wrecks, of short rations and of heroism and now and then falling silent all together, we gazed at the sights of the river.’

Sommerville’s account

Professor Maxwell Sommerville, the first and only Professor of Glyptology at the University of Pennsylvania, travelling with his wife, arrived at The Oriental in 1897.

‘We were impressed with the courtesy of the Siamese from the moment we stepped on shore, which was on a beautiful terrace, shaded by a grove of luxuriant trees, through which sanded paths led to the Oriental Hotel. The manager, an Englishman, proceeded to give us some ideas of the arrangement of the house. The first entrance was into a one-storey garden portal, with six arches built of stuccoed brick, the interior with floor of sand, furnished with hot-weather armchairs and round tables, plentifully supplied with English journals of Bangkok and from the Straits Settlements.

‘We passed into the principal hall, about seventy feet broad by thirty feet deep, serving at the same time as reception-room, library, office, general thoroughfare, billiard-room, and buffet, known in many countries as a bar. It is attended by several Siamese, under supervision of two moonshees. These moonshees can work so rapidly and with such precision by the aid of their wire and ball calculator, the abacus, that every English bank throughout the East is compelled to employ them.

‘Once you have chosen your room, you are simply known by its number. We were known as Number One. It was the last apartment at the manager’s disposal. It consisted of three pieces: a double-bedded sleeping room, a parlour, and beyond that a commodious veranda, well defended from the sunlight by large split bamboo screens. There were two sheets on our bed, which was a luxury we often were denied in India and Burma.

‘Besides the welcome sheets there was a peace-maker. A long, narrow bolster covered with white linen and filled with horse-hair: it is placed on the centre of the mattress, from head to foot, and is an important feature on a double bed on a Bangkok night.

‘The mosquitoes were so vigorous that at any moment of the night, by quickly closing the hands over the forehead, on an average, eight or ten of these musical creatures would remain helpless on the palms of the hands. We thought it not prudent to speak of these executions to the Siamese room-boys, as they, being Buddhists, would not only lose respect for us, but would regard us as guilty sinners.

‘The furniture in our veranda room was all of rattan and cane – deep reclining chairs and lounges with tables attached. No matter how much we would try to barricade the flimsy, short jalousies at the points of ingress and egress to our apartment, one or other of our native servant boys would find his way into our presence. He felt he must begin our day by serving the inevitable chota hazri – the early bite – a cup of tea, toast, and two plantains.

‘These people are so accustomed to see thousands around them without any costume that they have not the slightest curiosity to see how travellers are made up; nor are they indiscreet. In almost all other matters this Siamese hotel is not very unlike what one generally finds in the East.

‘Turn your Kodak on the dining room three times a day, and you will see an efficient corps of Mongolian servants, who in the morning at breakfast, or at noon at tiffin, or in the evening at dinner, are serving mangosteens, bread-fruit, oranges, custard-apples, the health-giving papaya, pineapples, mangoes, and bananas. In the hottest of the hot times of the year, when the griffins are not there, the durian is cut out of doors, and after its unpleasant odour has in a measure passed off, it is served on the table; then it is delicious.’

Today the Oriental Hotel has 331 rooms, including 60 suites, and 12 restaurants and bars. There are no peacemakers!