My introduction to the Sofitel SO Bangkok

100   Recommended
April 5, 2014 by

 Map | 10 Reviews | 50% Recommended
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Sofitel So Bangkok
 Map | 10 Reviews | 50% Recommended

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Liked:
Location
Service
Food
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After having spent little over a week at Sofitel Krabi purely for beach/relax time off, it was time to get a feel for the hustle and bustle of busy Bangkok.

Decided to try the Sofitel SO Bangkok as we had two nights in the city before heading back home to Europe.

Logo:


We had made arrangements to be picked up by the hotel in a BMW limo (not sure if there were any other choices at the time tbh, but it was underlined that it was a 5 series - we don't really care tbh) and was picked up at arrivals by a Sofitel representative. A very professional young female greeted us and showed us to the pickup area right outside and small talked about this and that. 5 min later the car arrived and our bags were taken care of.

When we got inside, there were cold ice tea drinks served in cold glass bottles and hand made chocolates awaiting as well as cold water and cold towels for us to refresh.



Seat pockets in front of us included info concerning Bangkok, Sofitel and Thailand in general.


Arriving at the hotel, staff had been informed on before hand that we were on the way, and took our bags straight away and showed into the elevator that took us directly to the Lounge Checkin away from the the main checkin area a good number of floors below us.



The Club lounge is situated on the 25th floor


Checkin desk, but everything is actually done in the actual lounge (to the right)


The SO Bangkok Club lounge, when entering, gives a pretty good picture of what the hotel is going to be like in general. A bit too 90's lounge bar feel for my liking and maybe a bit too wanna-be-hip place...


Not overly crowded this early afternoon...


Another angle


And yet another one


The smoking area was probably, in my opinion the best area of this hotel, andf I don't even smoke


The bar serving area which was open from 17:00 I believe (did not really use it other than for one drink one evening)


And from a different angle


We were given a room on the 28th floor, a so called water element room, and the hall ways were very dark in deed. When getting out on to the bright sunshine it was a bit of a slap in the face


Room 2806


Tbh, I was not sure if the room was an upgrade or not but it was very dark and small and nothing what I had expected of a Sofitel. It was without doubt a hotel that had been thought through from A to Z, but no matter how much I tried, it just didn't do it for me.

From the entrance to the room


Pressed myself against the window to be abele to get this photo taken


White "head-boards" made of fake leather look alike is never a good idea. It gets to look tired very quickly and dirty as well. When I say dirty it was not like very easy to spot, but looking closer you could see it was not fresh...


The bathroom took up about ⅓ of the room with a quite large bathtub (I think I stopped using these in the mid 80's) and a nice enough shower. The only way to cover the glass windows was with electrical controlled shades which were noisy and slow in operation.


Nice views from the room...


When we arrived there we were given a selection of little snacks (beans mashed up and formed as great looking fruits and other things) as well as drinks in the fridge (which we didn't touch). The edibles were not changed and this was a one off thing. At other Sofitel's we've stayed at there has always been some change meaning we got something new every day, but not here by the looks of it.


Close up:


Another thing that kind of threw me off was the quite intricate lighting system. We never got around how it actually worked, as some switches switched everything off, and some did as well bar one lamp and the bathroom lights did not work unless something else had been switched on (or off, never found out) which was not great when one of us had to use the bathroom during the night.

The pool looked nice, but we didn't use use it, as it was pretty crowded when we could have done with a dip and besides we had just come back from a week of fun in the water...


And from the roof top bar looking down at night (a bit shaky as the exposure was set to 1/30, aperture f/2 and I had to hold my arm straight over the railing without catching the attention of the bar staff)


The breakfast area (The Red Oven) was a little to "confusing" for our liking as well. There were a lot of offerings not knowing if this was a lunch buffet or a breakfast buffet. I do appreciate we all eat different things at breakfast, but it was still all jumbled up with no real system in place. It somehow felt more like a train station bistro which made me more stressed than relaxed... I did not want to stand u and take photo of everything everywhere so to disturb other guests, so only one taken from our table.


The red oven did have some nice big windows, though, facing the same direction as our room


One thing that really bothered me was that Juice that was present as Orange juice was in fact mandarin juice and one had to ask for more instead of having it standing out for guests to help them selves. Also, butter was something that the hotel kept in a vault somewhere as it was more or less impossible to get some. The pork sausages were never cooked through, so didn't have any of those, the Canadian bacon was very sloppy (I know the Canadian version is not your streaky back bacon) but there is a limit for sogginess when it in addition to this is dry (yes, I didn't think something soggy could in fact be dry, but hey, it was). What was a success was the Japanese selection and the Chinese dim sum so not all was lost,but I know of some people who will not touch anything not from the West and this would have been a huge problem...

Final Word:

The hotel is in a great location, and the staff excellent. My better half used the spa and said it was amazing and it reasonable priced - I picked up the tab for her (well everything in Sofitel is over priced compared to what you can get else where around the corner). One thing was the staff... Very nice and helpful. I like it when you can have a "normal" conversation with people/staff without having the ultra professional work acting in place (or rather the staff can sense when to be more relaxed with guests, just like the girls in at the Sofitel Saigon Place lounge) and I somewhat got that at the SO Bangkok.

The hotel did not do it for me at all. Somehow it felt like it was trying too hard without quite getting there (interior / design wise). It was too dark, to small and I never got the water element thingy tbh... It was more like a cave feeling that bright ocean blues and colours from the marine wild life.

I think the SO Bangkok is maybe more a breathing hole for expats living in Bangkok or other places around Asia or maybe for people who miss the 90's early 00's lounge atmosphere that kind of died out a couple of years ago (which is strange as the hotel was designed and finished be Lacroix in 2011, but could have been found in a long lost drawer from 2001)...

This said, it doesn't mean it was a bad hotel, as this is very much based on what each individual taste we have... I just didn't get it...

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