Saturday, August 6, 2011

Bangkok Hotel Hopping Weekend: Pullman Bangkok King Power

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The second hotel on this trip was the Pullman Bangkok King Power. It was rather busy and there was a slight wait for check-in when we arrived at the hotel around 3pm. On finding out that we were Aclub Gold, we were invited over to the bar next to the check-in area for a welcome drink while waiting for the paperwork to get done.
Lobby Area

Reception Area
Bar Area

After about 5 minutes, we were escorted to our rooms. We were not informed of any upgrades in spite of the Aclub Gold Status at this point. We were showed to what I assumed was an upgraded room since it was on the executive floors but was disappointed when I was told that the room did not include the use of the executive lounge after I inquired about it. This is where the Aclub program sucks where it is not officially written down that lounge access is provided even with an upgraded room that supposed to come with lounge access unlike say the Hilton program where lounge access is specifically mentioned as a perk.

After unsuccessfully trying to get the lounge access for free, I asked about paying for it and was quoted a price of 1500 Thai Bhat (~$50USD) for the use. We accepted since the use of the lounge comes with a cocktail hour, breakfast and more uniquely the use of the King Power Lounge at the Bangkok airport when we fly home. The King Power Lounge in the Bangkok airport turned out to be a real disappointment though - it was small, food and drink choices were limited and I won't waste time purposely heading over to it.
King Power Lounge Bangkok Airport



The room that we had was rather nice but we were definitely slightly disappointed after the nice suite we had at the Vie. 




View from the room
One of the nice thing about this hotel is the pool. It's big and one can definitely do laps, which we did the next morning before breakfast. The gym however was a major disappointment as it was small and didn't really motivate us to go use it. The spa as usual at major hotels is overpriced.
View of the pool from up top



The cocktail hour at the executive lounge runs from 5-7pm. There's some sushi, pastries and other snacks served but the quality was so so and definitely not enough for dinner. Drinks were definitely better with pretty good wine and non-generic alcohol being served.



The hotel also has a couple of restaurants. We ate breakfast in the main restaurant instead of the lounge. It had a wide variety of food including western and Asian choices but we liked the breakfast at the Vie better. It was also pretty packed and busy. The Thai restaurant in the hotel serves a pretty good set porridge supper meal which we enjoyed after a nice 2 hour long massage.
There isn't much to do around the hotel. There's the King Power duty free mall that we browsed around the afternoon we checked-in. There are also some massage places and local eats right by the hotel but that's it. The hotel has a tuk-tuk service to the Victory Monument BTS station which is a 10 minute walk away.

Overall, the Pullman Bangkok wasn't a bad hotel but it just didn't suit us. It was large, didn't have the vibe or character and didn't location wasn't ideal. It seem to cater more for the business or large bus tourist crowd. Maybe the lack of upgrade left a bad taste in our mouth?

1 comment:

  1. The club coctail hour food is excellent!
    We were backpacking on a tight budget so we only ate at the hotel as it was free (we got a free exec room from a friend for a week and then upgrade to suite with my free-from-a-weblink platinum card. Yeah, nice friends we have :). Breakfast was great at the club as was the superb food in the coctail hours. There was not only sushi, but beef/pork stew or osso-bucco and such. Different every evening. Proper dinner, really.

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