FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Le Meridien Chiang Rai, Thailand [Master Thread]
Old Mar 29, 2009, 2:35 am
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holtju2
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Stayed at the Le Meridien few weeks ago for couple of nights. I hadn’t been to Chiang Rai for 14 years so it was about a time to visit the city again.

There are no metered taxis from the airport so we had to take some sort of “airport” taxi. The fare to the hotel that was no more than 10 minutes away was 200THB.

The hotel is relatively close to the airport along the river. Not faraway from the city center, although not within a walking distance. The hotel provides a shuttle bus few times a day to the city center and back. They will provide you with a schedule with the welcome pack.

The hotel complex is not entirely ready yet, although the public spaces are. When we checked in the occupancy rate was in the low single digits and we probably saw four/five other hotel guests during our two nights stay there.

When we were checking in around 10AM or so our room wasn’t ready yet. Considering that there were maybe five other rooms occupied at that time it was quite a surprise for me. After we had look at few rooms the one that was originally reserved for us had been prepared. In Thailand the hotel normally writes down the immigration form numbers but here they actually made a photocopy of the passports.

The room itself is quite typical modern one with an outside balcony. The bathroom is quite spacious. The bathroom toiletries are the usual Le Meridien stuff. Platinum’s shouldn’t expect a suite upgrade to here because they have only one or so suite and they weren’t even finished yet.

There are two bars on the property. One by the river close to the Favola “concept” restaurant and other Latitude 19 which is close to the lobby. We had few drinks at both.

There are two restaurants. The Le Meridien concept “Favola” pseudo Italian/Mediterranean restaurant that appeared to have a pretty good wine selection. The other one is Latest Recipe where breakfast is served and that has a buffet on Fridays that appeared to be rather popular with the locals. The breakfast buffet was very good and the dinner buffet wasn’t bad either. Breakfest buffet was complimentary.

During the stay I never met the GM. I did, however, speak several times with the western F&B manager that had previously worked at the W Seoul and Sheraton Pattaya. One of the front desk managers had preciously worked for Westin Bangkok and Sheraton Hua Hin.

The fitness center had modern equipment, although I did not manage to put them into good use during the two day stay there. The hotel also provides a kids club.

Chiang Rai is probably one of the places in Thailand where renting a car makes sense because of the lack of metered taxis. Budget was supposedly sold out when I inquired from their office but was able to make a booking on the US website though. The car was brought to the hotel and I was able to return it to the airport upon leaving.
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